I realized that I misspoke at one point in the video, when I said something to the effect that harpsichords don't have dampers-they of course do have dampers! I meant to talk about the way that harpsichordists will use very marked finger over-holding in legato passages to give the impression that the dampers are raised, or that the instrument doesn't have dampers. Because of the short lived nature of the harpsichord sound, they can do way more of this kind of finger pedaling than pianists can, and it gives a similar effect to the piano pedal.
This Prelude was the first piece of classical music I learned to play with any level of competence. The contrapuntal and adding the pedal is truly intoxicating to play as well as enjoy listening. When you mentioned the swirling tones of the harpsichord creating that effect it brought to mind the Brandenburg concertos ... the “champagne” level, if you will, of musical intoxication 😊
Its one of the earliest pieces that I learnt on piano. Really simple yet so pleasing and melodious. Thank you for such a charming performance. Your pedal skills were really amazing. Also you blended the notes so effortlessly and skillfully that I literally started swaying to the tune. It lifted my mood up. Loved it👍👍😊
Thank you for the great, very interesting and informative analyses! The Prelude in C Major is probably one the most recognizable pieces of music ever, partly because of the "Ave Maria" that Gounod superimposed on it, as Graham indicated, played on weddings and funerals. I have my Hans Bischoff's edition of WTC (printed in 1963, pages yellowed but still in good shape) and in this one the Fugue has the eighth with the dot and the 2 34th. I personally like the original version better. Your ritardando and pause in bar 23 of the Prelude was like... wow, an eye-opener, so unique and yet organic! Everyone plays the Prelude a bit differently, but most pianists just walk past this place not giving it much significance. Your style reminds me of Horowitz's, who often emphasized in his playing rather unusual and not so obvious little details that no one else did, showing us little hidden gems. That quality and, of course, his incredible technique and musicality made him my idol for a long time... until I heard you, Cole! Thank you for another flawless and fantastic performance!
Thank you, you are too kind! Quite an honor to be compared to Horowitz of course, although the sort of magic he could create is something you don't hear too often anywhere and I'm not sure I'm really quite in the same league. He was definitely an influence on me as well, although I had to be very careful not to imitate him. That was very difficult at one point in my development, as I am sure it has been for many pianists who have come under his influence. I really should do a video on Vladimir Horowitz at some point, as that is a big topic! The Gounod Ave Maria is lovely of course, although I've always kind of felt that the original is even more amazing, as it makes its effect without recourse to a true "melody." Even though the Gounod is beautiful, it kind of standardizes the original by transforming the arpeggios into accompaniment. Still wonderful of course in its own way. And you are quite right, just about every standard edition of the WTC, with the exception of the Alfred edition and the Bärenreiter edition, has the dot and 32nds. It's really quite interesting that way as well, although to me, I find the original rhythm is a bit more noble and uncomplicated.
@@TheIndependentPianist A video about Horowitz would be wonderful! I'm glad he influenced you - don't we want to learn from the best? Being influenced is different from copying (which, I think is impossible to do anyway), and you certainly are an extraordinary and distinctive pianist. I agree with your point about Ave Maria - it's almost another piece of music when you have the melody overlay and Bach's original becomes an accompaniment. By the way, there are 9 versions of Ave Maria, among them a very beautiful one by Vladimir Vavilov - could be another topic for a video!
Another wonderful addition to your channel, Cole. Bach's BWV 846, particularly the Prelude, is so well known as a piano piece learned early on, and also as the basis of the accompaniment for Charles Gounod's setting of 'Ave Maria'. The fugue is truly sublime and is a masterpiece of contrapuntal composition. You argue all your points so wonderfully eloquently in your introductory commentary and you rightly expose the "stubborn pedantry" for the nonsense it is that would only ever allow 'authentic' performances of Bach's music. I'm pretty sure that if Bach could have had access to a modern piano . . . he'd 'out-pedal' the best of you. What gave me such joy in your performance of this Prelude and Fugue was your articulation. You have such an instinctive rapport with the mechanical potential of the piano that you made this music explore every nuance that can be coaxed out of the strings, making for a truly exquisite and stunning interpretation. As Aditya puts it in these comments: "you blended the notes so effortlessly and skilfully" making the elegant beauty of the music just sing out of the piano. I was fascinated to hear the earlier version of the Prelude (BWV 846A) as found in the 'Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach' - I have never heard that performed before: thank you. I was pleased to see you ‘correct’ what Joseph terms in these comments the “rhythmic discrepancy” in the fugue subject . . . but did you know that some earlier editions of the Prelude contain an extra bar between bars 22 and 23 known as the "Schwencke measure", a measure allegedly added in an attempt to ‘correct’ what he or someone else erroneously deemed a ‘faulty’ progression (though it may be accidentally corrupted manuscript(s) associated with Schwencke), even though this sort of progression was standard in the music of Bach's time? Such controversy over something so beautiful! Once again, you have made my Friday perfect!
Thank you Graham for your kind and insightful comments! I do agree, Bach would no doubt out-pedal all of us if he had grown up with a modern piano! I have seen the addition from the two Schwencke manuscripts that you mention. It is a rather philistine addition of a C-minor chord in between the two diminished 7th chords of mm. 22 and 23. A totally unnecessary correction of that (only slightly) unusual progression. Thank you for pointing that out!
I love your way of playing Bach ! I would 100% buy your CD if you would record the whole Well-Tempered Klavier. You take more liberties than what people usually do and I think you're right. The strict respect of the score that came up in the XIXth century has nothing to do in the music of Bach were the lack of indication is more an invitation to take liberties. I think the music has to be put alive everytime depending on the codes and feelings of the moment as you do it here. By the way the quality of your content really makes me think that if you take the time to look around, you can find marvellous stuff on the web, like your channel. Hidden between all the stupid content, there is high quality knowledge to find. Thank you a lot for all your teaching and sharing ! Greats from France
Great explanation and analysis, and fascinating performance of the WFB version, which I had not heard before. I consider WTC to be more about the tuning than the timbre-have you tried playing it in a well temperament? Once you do, you won't want to go back. Also, I had been wondering about that rhythmic discrepancy in the fugue subject, after hearing Landowska play it that way. Thanks for addressing that!
Yes, I was wondering if anyone would mention the temperament. After recording the video I realized that was the one thing I hadn't addressed! I've certainly played on instruments in various tuning systems, although I don't actually have a very strong opinion about them. I'll need to look into that some more. Do you have specific ideas on the best temperament for WTC? I've never found any definite research on what was the specific tuning that Bach preferred, although it seems that he did have one. Landowska was the first one I encountered who played the fugue that way as well-it seems she was the first one to notice this in the autograph. She was much more opinionated about this than I am. I definitely prefer the original, although there isn't anything too offensive about the revision. It just seems a little out of character for a Bach fugue subject, especially such an open and serene one. Thanks for the comment Joseph! Hope you are doing well.
Very interesting explanation, especially about the use of the pedal. The longer coda to the prelude is I think superior to the WFB version. But please, the final consonant in Bach's name is not a 'k' but a 'ch' as in Scots 'loch'. I know it is not a soundi n English, but...
A more general question that inheres, probably worthy of its own video some day, is the various valid approaches to using the sustain pedal for highly chromatic passages in any music. I could imagine that the smearing-out effect, or palette-mixing aspect, would render it dangerous in certain settings. I wonder if there are heuristics like "If you pass to the tritone within a measure, release the pedal", even if of course much can't be generalized so specifically. (An additional problem is that permitting long chromatic sequences to hover might work nicely on one piano but not another, or with one set of acoustics but not another.) It would seem your mid-video remarks are key about contrapuntal textures. Gould certainly took this view. I can't really imagine how one would pedal more than 10% of Bach's WTC I A minor fugal masterpiece, if that -- and that only for certain short passages that remain largely in one or two chords. It would seem the harmonic velocity must play a role here: If the chords are altering at breakneck Bachian speed, the pedal becomes more problematic -- unless one is going to start playing the pedal almost the way one plays notes, pointillistically, which I have been tempted to do but seems rather against the larger spirit of the pedal. (I suppose a dance-type feel of playing/releasing the pedal every two beats makes sense in quite a few of Bach's dance pieces.) E.g. people maybe need to be disabused of the notion that the pedal should not ever be used to sustain a sequence of notes that would form an invalid or screeching harmony if played all at once vertically -- though I admit my piano skill only progressed to the level of vaguely apprehending this can't be true, even if I'm not sure when the practical limits of dissonance are reached. (I played jazz professionally for years and used my ear.) If the counterpoint is truly vigorous (and chromatic), I do not know what case can be made for pedaling whatsoever, except perhaps to briefly punctuate the beginning and ending of the largest phrases.
You really raise a topic with enormous possibilities for discussion! There is unfortunately no formula to determine how much one can pedal in chromatic passages, or indeed in any passage involving step-wise motion. Not only is the unique piano and acoustic an important consideration, but even more one has to consider the range and dynamic of the various voices involved. In higher registers, it is possible to get away with much longer pedals. Harmonic velocity does play a large part in determining pedaling, but you might be surprised at how much pedaling you can get away with, even in music with fairly rapid harmonic changes. Of course another thing to keep in mind is that the damper can be depressed to various degrees (1/2, 3/4, 1/4 etc). For example, if you only slightly depress the pedal, just barely raising the dampers off of the strings, it is possible to have far longer pedals that combine different harmonies with comparative ease. Sometimes composers have experimented with special effects where multiple harmonies are intentionally combined to create a dissonant effect of some kind-this was in fact a major use of the pedal in the early days of the piano. Just look at the few pedal marks of Haydn, Beethoven, Clementi and others of that era. It is certainly true that the "blending" of dissonant harmonies on the pedal, assisted by half-pedaling, is far more possible than most pianists realize. This can even be the case in counterpoint, but it very much depends on the individual case. The counterpoint in Bach's WTC is so vocal and disciplined in nature, that too much pedal might spoil this clarity, but at the same time, no pedal at all can sometimes rob the music of resonance and glow. There is this advantage to using pedal "invisibly," it adds the resonance of all the unsounded strings as well, which can make a quite noticeable difference. Anyway, we could talk about this for ages! Perhaps I should make a video about pedaling at some point.
@@TheIndependentPianist I do prefer a universe that the pianist has a large modicum of freedom here, not least because there are so many other ambient variables beyond the control of the composer... Tempo would also be relevant of course, in relation to a note's natural rate of decay when sustained. Genre, atmospherics, time period, humidity in the room that day etc. the variables are almost infinite. It's important that Gould helped other pianists better understand the importance of the space between notes, and that a clipped dry sound can produce enormous energy from its ~staccato pointillism. There is a paradox that the space between the notes can imbue them with more energy. But like you say the pedal can brighten or make manifest chromatic contrasts.
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I realized that I misspoke at one point in the video, when I said something to the effect that harpsichords don't have dampers-they of course do have dampers! I meant to talk about the way that harpsichordists will use very marked finger over-holding in legato passages to give the impression that the dampers are raised, or that the instrument doesn't have dampers. Because of the short lived nature of the harpsichord sound, they can do way more of this kind of finger pedaling than pianists can, and it gives a similar effect to the piano pedal.
Here from the reddit post, I'm glad that I found such a good channel early in its development.
Thank you! Glad to have you here!
This Prelude was the first piece of classical music I learned to play with any level of competence. The contrapuntal and adding the pedal is truly intoxicating to play as well as enjoy listening. When you mentioned the swirling tones of the harpsichord creating that effect it brought to mind the Brandenburg concertos ... the “champagne” level, if you will, of musical intoxication 😊
Its one of the earliest pieces that I learnt on piano. Really simple yet so pleasing and melodious. Thank you for such a charming performance. Your pedal skills were really amazing. Also you blended the notes so effortlessly and skillfully that I literally started swaying to the tune. It lifted my mood up. Loved it👍👍😊
Thank you! I'm very glad it could brighten your day.
@@TheIndependentPianist well, actually thank you
Genuinely informative preamble! And great performance.
Congratulations on 400 subscribers!
Thank you!
Thank you for the great, very interesting and informative analyses! The Prelude in C Major is probably one the most recognizable pieces of music ever, partly because of the "Ave Maria" that Gounod superimposed on it, as Graham indicated, played on weddings and funerals. I have my Hans Bischoff's edition of WTC (printed in 1963, pages yellowed but still in good shape) and in this one the Fugue has the eighth with the dot and the 2 34th. I personally like the original version better. Your ritardando and pause in bar 23 of the Prelude was like... wow, an eye-opener, so unique and yet organic! Everyone plays the Prelude a bit differently, but most pianists just walk past this place not giving it much significance. Your style reminds me of Horowitz's, who often emphasized in his playing rather unusual and not so obvious little details that no one else did, showing us little hidden gems. That quality and, of course, his incredible technique and musicality made him my idol for a long time... until I heard you, Cole! Thank you for another flawless and fantastic performance!
Thank you, you are too kind! Quite an honor to be compared to Horowitz of course, although the sort of magic he could create is something you don't hear too often anywhere and I'm not sure I'm really quite in the same league. He was definitely an influence on me as well, although I had to be very careful not to imitate him. That was very difficult at one point in my development, as I am sure it has been for many pianists who have come under his influence. I really should do a video on Vladimir Horowitz at some point, as that is a big topic!
The Gounod Ave Maria is lovely of course, although I've always kind of felt that the original is even more amazing, as it makes its effect without recourse to a true "melody." Even though the Gounod is beautiful, it kind of standardizes the original by transforming the arpeggios into accompaniment. Still wonderful of course in its own way.
And you are quite right, just about every standard edition of the WTC, with the exception of the Alfred edition and the Bärenreiter edition, has the dot and 32nds. It's really quite interesting that way as well, although to me, I find the original rhythm is a bit more noble and uncomplicated.
@@TheIndependentPianist A video about Horowitz would be wonderful! I'm glad he influenced you - don't we want to learn from the best? Being influenced is different from copying (which, I think is impossible to do anyway), and you certainly are an extraordinary and distinctive pianist.
I agree with your point about Ave Maria - it's almost another piece of music when you have the melody overlay and Bach's original becomes an accompaniment. By the way, there are 9 versions of Ave Maria, among them a very beautiful one by Vladimir Vavilov - could be another topic for a video!
Another wonderful addition to your channel, Cole. Bach's BWV 846, particularly the Prelude, is so well known as a piano piece learned early on, and also as the basis of the accompaniment for Charles Gounod's setting of 'Ave Maria'. The fugue is truly sublime and is a masterpiece of contrapuntal composition. You argue all your points so wonderfully eloquently in your introductory commentary and you rightly expose the "stubborn pedantry" for the nonsense it is that would only ever allow 'authentic' performances of Bach's music. I'm pretty sure that if Bach could have had access to a modern piano . . . he'd 'out-pedal' the best of you.
What gave me such joy in your performance of this Prelude and Fugue was your articulation. You have such an instinctive rapport with the mechanical potential of the piano that you made this music explore every nuance that can be coaxed out of the strings, making for a truly exquisite and stunning interpretation. As Aditya puts it in these comments: "you blended the notes so effortlessly and skilfully" making the elegant beauty of the music just sing out of the piano.
I was fascinated to hear the earlier version of the Prelude (BWV 846A) as found in the 'Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach' - I have never heard that performed before: thank you. I was pleased to see you ‘correct’ what Joseph terms in these comments the “rhythmic discrepancy” in the fugue subject . . . but did you know that some earlier editions of the Prelude contain an extra bar between bars 22 and 23 known as the "Schwencke measure", a measure allegedly added in an attempt to ‘correct’ what he or someone else erroneously deemed a ‘faulty’ progression (though it may be accidentally corrupted manuscript(s) associated with Schwencke), even though this sort of progression was standard in the music of Bach's time? Such controversy over something so beautiful!
Once again, you have made my Friday perfect!
Thank you Graham for your kind and insightful comments! I do agree, Bach would no doubt out-pedal all of us if he had grown up with a modern piano! I have seen the addition from the two Schwencke manuscripts that you mention. It is a rather philistine addition of a C-minor chord in between the two diminished 7th chords of mm. 22 and 23. A totally unnecessary correction of that (only slightly) unusual progression. Thank you for pointing that out!
I love your way of playing Bach ! I would 100% buy your CD if you would record the whole Well-Tempered Klavier. You take more liberties than what people usually do and I think you're right. The strict respect of the score that came up in the XIXth century has nothing to do in the music of Bach were the lack of indication is more an invitation to take liberties. I think the music has to be put alive everytime depending on the codes and feelings of the moment as you do it here.
By the way the quality of your content really makes me think that if you take the time to look around, you can find marvellous stuff on the web, like your channel. Hidden between all the stupid content, there is high quality knowledge to find.
Thank you a lot for all your teaching and sharing !
Greats from France
Nice video! I'm glad to have found your channel :)
Really Interesting how it looked in Wilhelm Friedmann's book. I am for using pedal when playing Bach too.
It is pretty fascinating how he fleshed it out in its final version isn't it? That is an example of a really subtle touch and fine artistry.
Great explanation and analysis, and fascinating performance of the WFB version, which I had not heard before. I consider WTC to be more about the tuning than the timbre-have you tried playing it in a well temperament? Once you do, you won't want to go back.
Also, I had been wondering about that rhythmic discrepancy in the fugue subject, after hearing Landowska play it that way. Thanks for addressing that!
Yes, I was wondering if anyone would mention the temperament. After recording the video I realized that was the one thing I hadn't addressed! I've certainly played on instruments in various tuning systems, although I don't actually have a very strong opinion about them. I'll need to look into that some more.
Do you have specific ideas on the best temperament for WTC? I've never found any definite research on what was the specific tuning that Bach preferred, although it seems that he did have one.
Landowska was the first one I encountered who played the fugue that way as well-it seems she was the first one to notice this in the autograph. She was much more opinionated about this than I am. I definitely prefer the original, although there isn't anything too offensive about the revision. It just seems a little out of character for a Bach fugue subject, especially such an open and serene one.
Thanks for the comment Joseph! Hope you are doing well.
Very interesting explanation, especially about the use of the pedal. The longer coda to the prelude is I think superior to the WFB version.
But please, the final consonant in Bach's name is not a 'k' but a 'ch' as in Scots 'loch'. I know it is not a soundi n English, but...
Give me an opinion please, about playing prelude instead baroq become romantic?
A more general question that inheres, probably worthy of its own video some day, is the various valid approaches to using the sustain pedal for highly chromatic passages in any music.
I could imagine that the smearing-out effect, or palette-mixing aspect, would render it dangerous in certain settings. I wonder if there are heuristics like "If you pass to the tritone within a measure, release the pedal", even if of course much can't be generalized so specifically. (An additional problem is that permitting long chromatic sequences to hover might work nicely on one piano but not another, or with one set of acoustics but not another.)
It would seem your mid-video remarks are key about contrapuntal textures. Gould certainly took this view. I can't really imagine how one would pedal more than 10% of Bach's WTC I A minor fugal masterpiece, if that -- and that only for certain short passages that remain largely in one or two chords. It would seem the harmonic velocity must play a role here: If the chords are altering at breakneck Bachian speed, the pedal becomes more problematic -- unless one is going to start playing the pedal almost the way one plays notes, pointillistically, which I have been tempted to do but seems rather against the larger spirit of the pedal. (I suppose a dance-type feel of playing/releasing the pedal every two beats makes sense in quite a few of Bach's dance pieces.)
E.g. people maybe need to be disabused of the notion that the pedal should not ever be used to sustain a sequence of notes that would form an invalid or screeching harmony if played all at once vertically -- though I admit my piano skill only progressed to the level of vaguely apprehending this can't be true, even if I'm not sure when the practical limits of dissonance are reached. (I played jazz professionally for years and used my ear.)
If the counterpoint is truly vigorous (and chromatic), I do not know what case can be made for pedaling whatsoever, except perhaps to briefly punctuate the beginning and ending of the largest phrases.
You really raise a topic with enormous possibilities for discussion! There is unfortunately no formula to determine how much one can pedal in chromatic passages, or indeed in any passage involving step-wise motion. Not only is the unique piano and acoustic an important consideration, but even more one has to consider the range and dynamic of the various voices involved. In higher registers, it is possible to get away with much longer pedals. Harmonic velocity does play a large part in determining pedaling, but you might be surprised at how much pedaling you can get away with, even in music with fairly rapid harmonic changes.
Of course another thing to keep in mind is that the damper can be depressed to various degrees (1/2, 3/4, 1/4 etc). For example, if you only slightly depress the pedal, just barely raising the dampers off of the strings, it is possible to have far longer pedals that combine different harmonies with comparative ease. Sometimes composers have experimented with special effects where multiple harmonies are intentionally combined to create a dissonant effect of some kind-this was in fact a major use of the pedal in the early days of the piano. Just look at the few pedal marks of Haydn, Beethoven, Clementi and others of that era.
It is certainly true that the "blending" of dissonant harmonies on the pedal, assisted by half-pedaling, is far more possible than most pianists realize. This can even be the case in counterpoint, but it very much depends on the individual case. The counterpoint in Bach's WTC is so vocal and disciplined in nature, that too much pedal might spoil this clarity, but at the same time, no pedal at all can sometimes rob the music of resonance and glow. There is this advantage to using pedal "invisibly," it adds the resonance of all the unsounded strings as well, which can make a quite noticeable difference.
Anyway, we could talk about this for ages! Perhaps I should make a video about pedaling at some point.
@@TheIndependentPianist
I do prefer a universe that the pianist has a large modicum of freedom here, not least because there are so many other ambient variables beyond the control of the composer...
Tempo would also be relevant of course, in relation to a note's natural rate of decay when sustained. Genre, atmospherics, time period, humidity in the room that day etc. the variables are almost infinite.
It's important that Gould helped other pianists better understand the importance of the space between notes, and that a clipped dry sound can produce enormous energy from its ~staccato pointillism. There is a paradox that the space between the notes can imbue them with more energy. But like you say the pedal can brighten or make manifest chromatic contrasts.