Bravo!

Many, many years have passed since I seriously tried learning to play the piano, and what I did learn never exceeded a pretty primitive level. But that was when, as a child, I first heard the music of J.S. Bach, and that fascination stuck. You may recall that I considered Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier a leading candidate for my "desert island top ten" (Top Ten?). Plus my previous remembrances of my aspiring classical-pianist-roommate Michael, whose piano (Cello and Beyond) in our front room inspired me to wander through the pages of his collection of those Preludes & Fugues (which explore every major and minor key), slowly picking out the notes (but only when I was comfortably alone in the house!).

David Stabler is the classical music critic for The Oregonian (and he is one critic I always look forward to reading). Today's Sunday edition carries an article by Stabler, describing his year-long project to learn each of the 48 preludes and fugues that make up the Well-Tempered Clavier, after his years of absence from professional piano performance. You can follow his progress on his blog, which is also a terrific source of information about all manner of Things Classical.

Stabler has a great description of a Bach fugue:

I love how fugues start with the grain of an idea and a second strand joins in and then a third, and it gets bigger and begins rolling, gaining momentum, adding density, largeness -- always largeness with Bach -- until it's unstoppable. Listening to a fugue is something else entirely, like trying to track simultaneous conversations at a cocktail party. Bits and pieces drift in and out of earshot.

While we are at it, let's listen to the ubiquitous C Major Prelude No. 1 from Book 1, this performance attributed to the ever-controversial late Glenn Gould (something that is so wonderful about the Preludes & Fugues is how strikingly varied they can sound in the hands of different interpreters):



You can download the score here, in Adobe PDF form.

Probably should be doing the associated Fugue as well, but this post could go on forever, as there is so much to hear and compare and savor. Maybe I will do more along these lines in a future post on the Preludes & Fugues. In the meantime, do check out David Stabler.