Continue from Part 1

Facsimiles of Keyboard Music

Thomas Braatz wrote (February 5, 2003):
I have placed a number of facsimiles mainly from the Inventions and Sinfonias on the BCML under Photos (the Photo and File section of the BRML would not open for me):

Go to: http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/BachCantatas/lst
Click on Facsimiles, then select Full Size

These facsimiles are found in the NBA V/3 and V5 volumes.

They may be of interest to those who have been following the discussion of ‘desynchronization’ or ‘vertical rhythmic non-alignment’ or simply ‘rough edges.’ I do not, at this time, wish to give my interpretation of what I see here, but would rather be interested in the opinions of others regarding what they think can be read into or out of these original scores (with the exception of the last one written by a rather young W. F. Bach, who is obviously struggling a bit and perhaps receiving direct guidance from his father as he writes out the music.)

The original draft by J. S. Bach should speak for itself as here his musical ideas are literally flowing directly onto the paper.

Another example shows an early version of Invention 1, where Bach later inserted the triplet figures after first having completed the composition.

Happy hunting!

radio show on inventions and sinfonias

Jim Morrison wrote (February 26, 2003):
I forget who brought up the BBC classical radio shows but thanks to whoever who did that because I just came across a nice, though cetainly elementary, show on the inventions and sinfonias. I also listened to the last of the show on the Goldberg variations and there's a passage on the quodlibet in which the pianist plays one of the tunes that is used in the quodlibet and then another, seperating the tunes for those of us that can't play keyboard ourselves.

link at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/discover.shtml

How about that Norah Jones! ;-)

But seriously, some favorite recordings of the inventions for me are by van Asperen, Gould, Leonhardt, Jaccottet.

Donald Satz wrote (February 26, 2003):
[To Jim Morrison] I agree with Jim's preferences and would add Suzuki and Peter Serkin to the list.

Angela Hewitt yet again?
Bach's Inventions exciting & challenging

Francine Renee Hall wrote (March 17, 2003):
dear Bach lovers, I sent my cantata message to the wrong group! So sorry! Anyway, I want to thank Peter Bright for recommending the Angela Hewitt Toccatas Hyperion CD. It's incredible. Her performance gave me goosebumps! She's an expensive hobby but well worth it. I also just received her Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue coupled with Bach's Two- and Three-Part Inventions. It's good and Hewitt does the best she can with it. I just think the material itself is not that exciting or challenging.

Peter Bright wrote (March 17, 2003):
[To Francine Renee Hall] Thanks Francine - I'm pleased you agree with my rating of Hewitt's toccatas disc. It's a masterpiece.

Donald Satz wrote (March 17, 2003):
[To Francine Renee Hall] It could be that the material in the Inventions is much better than you think. I find Hewitt's Inventions the least rewarding Bach performance of hers on record.

Peter Bright wrote (March 17, 2003):
[To Donald Satz] I'm going to sit on the fence here and say that I agree both with Francine and Don. As I've said before, I think Angela Hewitt's Inventions disc is her weakest effort (although it has received very good reviews from critics and listeners alike - check Gramophone, Amazon, etc.). But I also agree with Francine about the material. While some Bach purists hate the idea that some of his work was relatively uninteresting, this is how I feel about most of the two and three part inventions. I have the recordings of Gould and Koroliov on piano, and Leonhardt on harpsichord. Koroliov's is the best of these, as far as I am concerned, but I find that this music does not have much to offer the listener. The pieces may represent wonderful and important works for the keyboard player but they do not reward me as a listener very much.

Bradley Lehman wrote (March 17, 2003):
[To Francine Renee Hall] The inventions/sinfonias are indeed exciting and challenging and extremely rewarding, if one plays them with an appropriate amount of melodic rubato: having each of the voices bend in rhythm expressively, and not always having to line up perfectly with one another...great independence.

he only player on recordings whom I've heard bending anything appreciably at all is Wolfgang Rübsam, on piano(!). His expression is beautifully done. But even then, he is bending all the lines TOGETHER most of the time, rather than independently; they still line up with notes struck simultaneously as they look on the page. A good start, anyway, and well worth hearing.

There are some harpsichordists who desynchronize the notes slightly in these pieces, but it doesn't seem to be much beyond normal default harpsichord touch...that is, it seems to be part of generic playing technique (the dynamics of softening loud simultaneous attacks), rather than part of the interpretation of truly independent lines. And the notes are almost always arpeggiated bottom to top, rather than a more interesting mixture of unpredictable sequence (sometimes letting the high notes come out first). That's why I said "appreciable" bending in the above paragraph, an amount of bending that suggest the lines really are independent melodic entities. Everybody still sounds "geometric" (to borrow a term from Richard Taruskin)...the music could stand more doses of Furtwängler!

Peter Bright wrote (March 17, 2003):
[To Bradley Lehman] Just read your post, Brad, after sending mine. From your comments, I still wonder whether the inventions offer more pleasure for the person playing than to the one listening. I am fascinated with Bach's teaching methods and creations, but, in the case of the inventions (and only in this case), I find little to grip me. Perhaps I should try to get my hands on the Rübsam.

Marcus Song wrote (March 18, 2003):
Bradley Lehman wrote:
< The inventions/sinfonias are indeed exciting and challenging and extremely rewarding, if one plays them with an appropriate amount of melodic rubato: having each of the voices bend in rhythm expressively, and not always having to line up perfectly with one another...great independence. >
I am curious about which invention/sinfonia you play with the above mentioned melodic rubato. I find that some pieces favor a more straight-forward metered approach such as Sinf.#8,12 and Inv.#10,12, and the ubiquitous Inv.#8, :-) while I tend to play Inv.#2,9,11 and Sinf.#4,11 with more rythmic freedom, because a constant semiquaver "motoring" feels unnatural for these more introspective pieces in the minor key.

Time to move on, and back to recordings

Bradley Lehman wrote (November 11, 2003):
Stephen Benson wrote:
Kirk McElhearn wrote:
<< the tone on some of these lists has become so much different than the friendly bantering of yore. >>
< I pity the newcomer to BachRecordings who thinks he has made a wrong turn and wandered onto the set of the Jerry Springer Show.
Could I respectfully suggest that list members adhere to the following guiding principle:
"The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress."
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824) >
Steve, I agree.

Who (anyone) has favorite recordings of Bach's inventions and sinfonias, and why are those your favorites? For touch, tempo, and flexibility I especially like Rübsam's on piano....

And, I'd like to know especially: are there any available recordings of them in temperaments spicier than the typically bland well-temperaments? I expected Blandine Verlet's to be spicy, but it sounds to me like a well-temperament according to the samples at: Amazon.com
...and that CD appears not to have made the rounds in North America!

Related question: given that some of Verlet's Bach recordings on Astree have been notably spicy with meantone temps on the Colmar Ruckers...anybody know why Verlet doesn't show up anymore on the Astree/Auvidis/Naive web site, and why her discs are apparently out of print, showing up as remainders? Has she really been canned by the label, or is that merely what it looks like? [Do record-buyers really hate wild temperament that much, or is it something entirely different from that?]

Leila Baraseh wrote (November 12, 2003):
[To Bradley Lehman]
I can't say I have a favorite recording - I've only heard two, Gilbert and Leonhardt (Sony) and neither of them blew me away. When you pointed out the fact that the works are so obviously mean-tone-friendly (which I had completely failed to notice) I too got very excited about the possibility of a wackily-tempered recording, and thought Verlet was a good bet, so I'm very disappointed to hear there's no joy there.

As far as Verlet and Astree go, I haven't been able to find any news about her being let loose (and I searched around on the web for quite awhile), but I did notice that her Couperin "Barricades Mysterieuses" discs (were these compiled as a sort of greatest hits from her complete series?) are being re-released on Tete-a-Tete, which could be a hopeful sign, or could mean nothing at all.

(Incidentally, I know you were wondering awhile back whether her Astree Partitas were ever sold in the US. At www.cduniverse.com they claim that the discs have been back-ordered for awhile, which I assume means they sold them at one time. I haven't ever seen them on any other US sites, though - glad I got lucky and won them on ebay!)

The maligned sinfonias and inventions (was:Re: Religious Affiliation)

Juozas Rimas wrote (May 26, 2004):
Stephen Benson wrote:
< the oft-maligned Inventions and Sinfonias. On Saturday I acquired Wolfgang Rübsam's Naxos recording, hardly expecting to be moved by yet another version of what I previously had thought of as mildly interesting pedagogic exercises. >
sigh... who on earth has spread the nonsense about sinfonias and inventions being maligned mildly interesting exercises? They're wonderful music. The little preludes too! Perhaps teachers of music are to blame (the teachers who torture little kids with sinfonias and inventions, forcing them to hammer the pieces hundreds of times - it's harmful to overdose anything). Then the kids complain to their parents, parents complain to their friends etc and we have the malignancy :)

The 2 Part Inventions

Anne Smith wrote (December 3, 2004):
I have a question about the 2 Part Inventions. It may be a stupid question. Please bear with me.

I have been using a tattered old copy of the Inventions for many years. I treated myself to a new Urtext (Bärenreiter) edition of the Clavier-Büchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

This morning I began with the E minor 2 Part Invention (BWV 778). The first thing I noticed was that I appeared to be making fingering mistakes so I got out my old copy. It wasn't that I was making fingering errors. Some of the notes were different.

As a 2 Part Invention Bar 12 reads on the 2^nd beat of the left hand - a dotted eighth note E and a sixteenth note D. As Praeambulum 3 the E and D are reversed.

As a 2 Part Invention Bar 18 reads on the 1st beat of the right hand - eighth note B and eighth note A. Praeambulum 3 has a quarter note A. In the left hand the 2 Part has sixteenth rest followed by 3 sixteenth notes.
Praembulum 3 has eighth rest followed by 2 sixteenth notes.

These are small details. I expect to find more discrepancies as I proceed. Question - is this an editorial decision or did Bach make the changes?

Thanks.

Thomas Braatz wrote (December 3, 2004):
Anne Smith wrote:
>>I treated myself to a new Urtext (Bärenreiter)edition of the Clavier-Büchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
This morning I began with the E minor 2 Part Invention (BWV 778). The first thing I noticed was that I appeared to be making fingering mistakes so I got out my old copy. It wasn't that I was making fingering errors. Some of the notes were different.<<
BWV 778 was not copied or even edited by J. S. Bach. The copyist here is W. F. Bach. In a number of instances, W. F. forgot to add the necessary sharps. In other cases, some notes can be read as either one note or another and trills and mordents extremely difficult to read (are they intended or not based upon this copy.)

Bradley Lehman wrote (December 3, 2004):
Anne Smith wrote:
< I have been using a tattered old copy of the Inventions for many years. I treated myself to a new Urtext (Bärenreiter) edition of the Clavier-Büchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
This morning I began with the E minor 2 Part Invention (BWV 778). The first thing I noticed was that I appeared to be making fingering mistakes so I got out my old copy. It wasn't that I was making fingering errors. Some of the notes were different.
As a 2 Part Invention Bar 12 reads on the 2^nd beat of the left hand - a dotted eighth note E and a sixteenth note D. As Praeambulum 3 the E and D are reversed. >
The Henle has dotted eighth D, sixteenth E there; and no remark about that spot in its critical notes.

< As a 2 Part Invention Bar 18 reads on the 1st beat of the right hand - eighth note B and eighth note A. Praeambulum 3 has a quarter note A. In the left hand the 2 Part has sixteenth rest followed by 3 sixteenth notes. Praembulum 3 has eighth rest followed by 2 sixteenth notes. >
Bar 20? B, A in the right hand, and rest-G-F#-E in the left.

By comparison, the old 1891 Busoni edition (Schirmer) indicates both conflicting readings of the left hand, there. The one with an eighth rest and two sixteenths is in smaller type.

Anne Smith wrote (December 3, 2004):
[To Thomas Braatz & Bradley Lehman] Thank you to Thomas and Bradley. I guess I'll go with my ancient old copy.

< Bar 20? B, A in the right hand, and rest-G-F#-E in the left. >
Yes, I should have typed Bar 20.

Bradley Lehman wrote (December 3, 2004):
Anne Smith wrote:
< Thank you to Thomas and Bradley. I guess I'll go with my ancient old copy. >
If you don't already have the Henle, I'd urge you to pick one up (and for all the Bach solo pieces). Your earlier question indicated that your old copy of whatever-it-is has a wrong reading in bar 12 of BWV 778.

Inventions/Sinfonias: http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_detail.html?sku=HE.64

Good accurate edition, easy to read from, and not terribly expensive. I'm not always happy with the fingerings they suggest, but I ignore them most of the time anyway. (They're primarily piano fingerings recommended in there, not harpsichord or clavichord fingerings.)

Anne Smith wrote (December 3, 2004):
< If you don't already have the Henle, I'd urge you to pick one up (and for all the Bach solo pieces). Your earlier question indicated that your old copy of whatever-it-is has a wrong reading in bar 12 of BWV 778. >
Yes. I bought the last copy of this book in our music store for two students (sisters). It is exellent. Sisters have gone off to university and hopefully one of them took the book with her. One of the reasons I went with the Urtext I bought was because it had no fingering. I thought it would be neater to write in my own fingering without having to cross out the old.

I'll put the Henle on my next order.

Thanks again,

Inventions & Sinfonias BWV 772-801: Details
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