Concerts and Lecture,
March 13-15 2007,
Chico Bach Festival, Chico CA


Concert 1: Suites, Concerto, and Caprices

Bradley Lehman, harpsichord and pedal harpsichord
Chico Bach Festival
Chico, California, USA
Tuesday, March 13, 2007: 2:00 p.m.

Concerto in G major, BWV 973 (arranged by Bach from a violin concerto by Vivaldi)
Allegro - Largo - Allegro

Capriccio in E major honoring Johann Christoph Bach of Ohrdruf, BWV 993

Flats suite (assembled from various suites by Bach):

Praeludium in Bb major, from Partita BWV 825

Allemande in F major, from English Suite BWV 809

Courante (I) in F major, from "Praeludium et Partita del tuono terzo" BWV 833

Courante (II) in C minor, from French Suite BWV 813
(longer version of this Courante from Anna Magdalena Bach's notebook, c1725-30)

Sarabande in G minor, from English Suite BWV 808

Menuets I and II in E-flat major and E-flat minor, from Suite BWV 819

Rondeaux in C minor, from Partita BWV 826

Aria in C minor, from Pastorella BWV 590

Gigue in F minor, from Suite BWV 823

Capriccio in C minor, from Partita BWV 826

-- Intermission --

Sharps suite (assembled from various suites by Bach):

Allemande in A major, from English Suite BWV 806

Courante in D major, from Partita BWV 828

Sarabande (I) in E major, from French Suite BWV 817

Sarabande (II) in E minor, from Partita BWV 830

Gavotte en rondeau, in E major, from Suite BWV 1006a

Bourrees I and II in B minor, from Ouverture BWV 831

Passepieds I and II in B minor and B major, from Ouverture BWV 831

Burlesca in A minor, from Partita BWV 827

Gigue in A major, from Suite BWV 832

Capriccio in Bb major, BWV 992, on the absence of his beloved brother

- Adagio "Ist eine Schmeichelung der Freunde, um denselben von seiner Reise abzuhalten" (A coaxing of his friends, to dissuade him from his journey)

- "Ist eine Vorstellung unterschiedlicher Casuum, die ihm in der Fremde könnten vorfallen" (A description of the calamities that could befall him in foreign parts)

- Adagiosissimo "Ist ein allgemeines Lamento der Freunde" (A general lament of the friends)

- "Allhier kommen die Freunde (weil sie doch sehen, daß es anders niche sein kann) und nehmen Abschied" (The friends, seeing that it cannot be otherwise, bid farewell)

- Aria di Postiglione (Aria of the postal driver -- hey, you've got mail!)

- Fuga all' imitatione di Posta (Fugue in imitation of the postman's horn)

Program notes

According to a later church official in Leipzig, recounting a local legend, Bach had been both modest and forthright about his own style of organ-playing. "There is nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right notes at the right time, and the instrument plays itself." Whether Bach actually played that simply or not, the method is attractive and it works well in practice. Prepare the notes carefully, and then react to them with a free and easy manner of delivery, a natural flow.

I have tried to pattern my harpsichord and organ technique along that line of strategy: merely playing the notes at what seems to be "the right time" in reaction to the tensions and resolutions caused by the music and the temperament, letting my phrasing and articulation be governed by melodic/contrapuntal listening. I cultivate a quiet, unostentatious approach to the instrument and the compositions: seeking to let the music reveal itself in its sound, with very little extra assistance from the performer.

Indeed "the instrument plays itself"...if it has been set up correctly (via tuning and voicing) and approached with an adequate technique. The tuning and the contrapuntal writing already have plenty of interest in the multi-layered sound produced, without too-imaginative intervention from the performer's will. At least for my own work, I do not think a performance should draw undue attention to itself: but it should merely reveal the composition, reacting flexibly to its moods, starting from a basic position of relaxed muscles and alert attention.

I am influenced also by the naturally paced dysfluencies in human speech--letting the different thoughts have various bits of space as they end and begin. Music works the same way as speech, putting forth rhetorical points. Notes as syllables are grouped into meaningful units of words, phrases, and ideas, with a natural hierarchy to them. The especially important points tend to have additional space around them, with a more dramatic and noticeable presentation. Infants know how to use this, to get their needs and wishes met. So do cats. It is basic communication. The goal is direct clarity of intent.

Musical time is a liquid. Notes on a page do not have any specific length or accent until they are played within the flow of a piece of music. They describe little semi-determinate particles of sound at some relative positions within a field of possibilities. When a performance converts them to organized groups of sounds, they get stretched or compressed slightly, according to the way the music around them is going. As with the syllables of speech, context determines their precise pronunciation (articulation and accent), and the proper amount of time they deserve within larger thoughts. Phrasing--to hit all the right notes at "the right time"--is therefore to be decided in the moment, at least somewhat, by the composition's tensions, resolutions, surprises, and inevitabilities: as the music speaks.

There is no way to notate these speech-like nuances adequately, but that basic process of reactive flexibility is natural. Natural shapes tend to be irregular. Unpredictable. Like this "high-falutin'" bunch of yakking, right here. Slight dysfluencies of flow help listeners to "get" the music immediately without having to think about it. Time flows around obstacles. The most important thing to do while playing is to listen to the composition. Then, in response to its well-organized yet free thoughts, one may let the music go where it will in the given occasion, having its own living intention.

Alfred Cortot reported playing Debussy's preludes to the composer's widow and daughter, and then asking: "Is that the way your papa played?" Eight-year-old Chouchou replied: "No, Papa listened more." Children know this stuff, can sense it, and it's worth remembering. All the above is just a long-winded way to say: think about what you're doing, and practice, but in the end it's just about listening carefully and then going with the way you feel it should go. My four-year-old has things in good perspective. "No, just a minute, Daddy. I'll go do that but first I want to plaaaaaaayyyy!"

Bach's first biographer, Forkel, wrote:

"Nobody could install the quill-plectrums of his harpsichord to his satisfaction; he always did it himself. He also tuned both his harpsichord and clavichord himself, and was so practiced in the operation that it never cost him above a quarter of an hour. But then, when he played from his fancy, all the 24 keys were in his power; he did with them what he pleased. He connected the most remote as easily and as naturally together as the nearest; the hearer believed he had only modulated within the compass of a single key. He knew nothing of harshness in modulation; even his transitions in the chromatic style were as soft and flowing as if he had wholly confined himself to the diatonic scale. (...)"

"In the modulation of his instrumental works, every advance is a new thought, a constantly progressive life and motion within the circle of the keys chosen and those nearest related to them. Of the harmony which he already has he retains the greatest part; but at every advance he mixes something related to it; and, in this manner, he proceeds to the end of a piece so softly, so gently and gradually, that no leap or harsh transition is to be felt; and yet no bar (I might even say, no part of a bar) is like another. With him, every transition was required to have a connection with the preceding idea and to appear to be a necessary consequence of it. He knew not, or rather he disdained, those sudden sallies by which many composers attempt to surprise their hearers. Even in his chromatics the advances are so soft and tender that we scarcely perceive their distances, though these are often very great: we fancy that he has not deviated a step from his diatonic scale. Thus he knew how to combine everything in the whole extent of the dominion of sound which could by any means be connected together.

"From the manner in which Johann Sebastian Bach treated harmony and modulation, his melody necessarily assumed a peculiar form. In the union of several concurrent melodies which are all to be flowing and expressive, no single one can be so prominent as to attract to itself alone the attention of the hearer. This prominency the melodies must, as it were, divide among them; so that sometimes the one, sometimes the other may shine in particular, though its brilliancy seems to be diminished by the equally singing concomitant parts, because the attention of the hearer is shared by them. I say, seems to be diminished; for, in fact, it is not diminished, but rather increased when the hearer has practice enough to survey and to comprehend the whole at once. (...)"

"When he was asked by someone, as frequently happened, for a very easy clavier piece, he used to say: 'I will see what I can do.' In such cases, he usually chose an easy theme, but, in thoroughly working it out, always found so much of importance to say upon it that the piece could not turn out easy after all. If complaints were made that it was still too difficult, he smiled, and said: 'Only practice it diligently, it will go very well; you have five just as healthy fingers on each hand as I.' Was this caprice? No, it was the real spirit of the art.

"This true spirit is what led him to the great and sublime as the highest object of the art. We owe it to this spirit that Bach's works do not merely please and delight, like what is merely agreeable in art, but irresistibly carry us away with them; that they do not merely surprise us for a moment, but produce effects that become stronger the oftener we hear the works, and the better we become acquainted with them; that the boundless treasure of ideas heaped up in them, even when we have a thousand times considered them, still leaves us something new, which excites our admiration, and often our astonishment; lastly, that even he who is no connoisseur, who knows no more than the musical alphabet, can hardly refrain from admiration when they are well played to him and when he opens his ear and heart to them without prejudice."

So: what are these suites, caprices, and concerto?

To assemble these "flat" and "sharp" composite suites, I have drawn selections from various suites that Bach wrote from as early as about age 20 (no children or schoolteaching duties taking up all his time yet!), or into his 30s to 50s. Some of them were published (the partitas), while others were only in various manuscripts during his lifetime. Bach himself apparently treated these dance forms -- and the occasional character-piece -- very freely: filling them up with his own sense of play.

The modern expectation of insisting on a whole single suite (like in a recording or a typical concert) is, I believe, an anachronism: a modern demand for "completeness". But why? Instead, I believe the priority (or at least mine!) is to have a good time and to explore what the instrument can do, given a bit of imagination and enterprise. 17th and 18th century French composers such as the Couperins, Chambonnieres, and Rameau didn't demand that people play every single piece in their suites; but rather expected performers to choose pleasantries to suit occasions. What might Bach himself or one of his students do, on some occasion to play a bunch of music to please oneself and any sympathetic listeners? I like to believe that he played whatever he was in the mood to play. Rehashing that Forkel again: "When he played from his fancy, all the 24 keys were in his power; he did with them what he pleased. He connected the most remote as easily and as naturally together as the nearest; the hearer believed he had only modulated within the compass of a single key."

So, that's my apology for not playing any complete suites today. I've just picked a bunch of movements that I feel are beautiful and full of variety, for this overview of Bach's suite-writing techniques. And, I've put them together in a way that seems (to me) to flow decently from key to key, exploring the different colors and moods brought out by the tuning and registrations. Have a good time!

One thing we do get here today is a performance of all three of Bach's pieces that he labelled "Capriccio". That is certainly a rarity, and maybe a "first" anywhere, to get all three of these in the same concert and using the same unequal tuning throughout. Their keys are in stark contrast. The two "big brother" capriccii from Bach's youth are in E major (traveling around into the highest sharps, and further into the double-sharps...!), and B-flat major (but sinking deeper into four and five flats in the lamenting section). And the third one, which Bach published as the last movement of his C minor partita (1727), has its share of exotic harmonies contrasting with the expected G major dominant area. It is mostly a fugue, while fitting into a structure that has an optional repeat of each half.

Johann Christoph Bach of Ohrdruf, the big brother of the E major capriccio (which is really a long-winded fugue in everything but name), was the one who took young Johann Sebastian (age 9) in as a boarder and student when their parents died. He also took in Johann Jacob, the one who was probably the big brother of the B-flat capriccio (in the melodrama style of Johann Kuhnau's set of Biblical Sonatas for keyboard).

Imagine it from Christoph's and his wife Johanna Dorothea's point of view: four months into their marriage they suddenly had to take in the two youngest brothers -- Jacob at 13 and Sebastian at 9. Instant household, making ends meet, and four months pregnant with their first baby to be born that same summer. Christoph had been a Pachelbel student, and now he was in charge of the music at a small-town but prestigious church that happened to have two organs.

During these several years, young Sebastian surely went along to church services and many practice sessions -- perhaps as the bellows-pumper among his duties! Outside his schoolwork and home chores, he had plenty of opportunity to try out musical ideas "under his brother's guidance" at these organs, plus any practice keyboard(s) they had at home. This was the same household where, according to legend, Sebastian would make copies of his brother's music manuscripts, working secretly at night and without permission. It was a good place to learn the daily craftsmanship of a working professional keyboardist (playing, improvising, tuning, maintenance, teaching): the jobs that Sebastian himself would have soon, at various other towns.

Both of these capriccii happen to include hand-stretches that practically require some use of pedals. It is not clear if they were written principally for organ, pedal harpsichord, pedal clavichord, or whatever-you've-got...or maybe having a sibling or friend stick a third hand into the keyboard to help play some of the notes. I hesitate to read too much into the E major capriccio's dedication to this brother (and household, presumably)...but still, this piece is one of the most aggressively sharp-oriented pieces that Johann Sebastian ever wrote for keyboards. Is this a tribute to the environment where young Sebastian first learned to listen very carefully as a hands-on keyboard tuner, getting things to work out smoothly? And is the sharpness maybe about somebody in the household having a sharp or difficult personality, as viewed by a boy growing into his teen years? The piece is awkward both to play and to read, with all kinds of difficulties to be worked out. Autobiographical?

The G major concerto, BWV 973, is less problematic than all this. It comes from Bach's working years in his early 30s, at Weimar. He and his cousin J G Walther were both there as performers and teachers, employed by the nobility. The young prince there, Johann Ernst, liked to buy and collect new Italian concertos from his travels, and to try them out at home. Both Bach and Walther arranged several dozen of these concertos, each, for harpsichord and/or organ. It was an excellent exercise to reduce violin-solo parts and orchestral accompaniments down to playability by one keyboardist, for everybody's enjoyment. This one is arranged from Antonio Vivaldi's Op 7 #8, first published 1716-17. There is also a legend about Bach's pastime to sit down at pedal harpsichords to have a bash through full orchestral scores, not bothering to write out an arrangement first. That is indeed fun, to see what can be thought up to sound exciting and powerful. Accordingly, I add some ad lib pedal parts myself when pedals are available, re-arranging the piece a bit at tasteful whim: focusing more on the energy of the music than merely the literal notes in Bach's arrangement. Wasn't that Bach's point as transcriber and teacher, to encourage his followers to go and think likewise, creatively in the music hands-on (and feet-on)?

As for Johann Kuhnau, and the way his work fired Sebastian's creativity: it is not only the modelling of that little B-flat capriccio, having little scenes and descriptions. Kuhnau was not only an organist and music director in a bigger city (Leipzig), but also a lawyer, novelist, linguist, and theorist. He was definitely someone to look up to, and to try to emulate or surpass. Sebastian came back to this later. When at age 37 he applied to take over Kuhnau's job in Leipzig (which position he did win, and kept for the rest of his life), he made a point of surpassing Kuhnau with even greater skill and comprehensiveness. Kuhnau had written a series of keyboard suites demonstrating most of the keys, but not all of them. Bach, in the words on his title page of the Well-tempered clavier -- which was probably submitted as part of his audition material for that job -- directly parodied the words in Kuhnau's earlier publication. Give the man the job, and he will surpass the revered incumbent Kuhnau by handling all the "ut re mi" and "re mi fa" keys (i.e. all the major and minor scales), not only most of them. And that's where (I believe) Bach also wrote down the recipe of his tuning system, to accomplish all this harmonic magic...on that same title page.

The tuning

I believe that Bach's elegant diagram at the top of his Well-Tempered Clavier title page defines a specific set of sounds for every musical scale and for all harmonies. Every major scale and minor scale sounds different from every other. This allows music to project a subtly different mood or character in each melodic and harmonic context, with a pleasing range of expression as it goes along. It builds drama into the music.

The resulting tuning sounds almost like the equal temperament we have been accustomed to, but it has much more personality and color, a "three-dimensionality" to the sound. A harpsichord and organ tuner who follows Bach's recipe exactly, making the intervals very slightly compromised on purpose (as his drawing indicates), ends up with a keyboard tuned beautifully for music in all keys. This carefully balanced result was apparently Bach's preferred system, and it solves all the practical problems in his music and the music of his sons. Indeed, it turns out to be an excellent tuning solution to play all music, both before and after Bach's.

My article presenting this method is published in the February and May 2005 issues of Early Music (Oxford University Press), with follow-up articles in The Diapason (May 2005), Clavichord International (November 2005), and BBC Music Magazine (August 2006). Further details are also in the booklet essays for my two CD releases, from January 2006. Apparently this research has sparked other creative efforts as well: a short piece of fiction by Jeffrey Eugenides is in the October 10th 2005 issue of The New Yorker magazine, citing this discovery and reproducing the recipe. John Marks, in the February 2007 issue of Stereophile, compares it with recent research solving the calculation errors of Amelia Earhart's navigator.

Many professional keyboard specialists have been using this temperament regularly in concert work, beginning as early as a May 2004 broadcast by Robert Hill on Swiss radio. It is also becoming popular as a piano-tuning method. This was the orchestral continuo temperament for the autumn 2004 tour by The English Concert; and for the summer 2005 season at the Glyndebourne Festival (England), in productions of operas by Handel and Rossini. The Netherlands Bach Society used it on the continuo keyboards for their concert series of Bach's St Matthew Passion, during the Lenten season 2006. The BBC has featured the discovery in two programs, with interviews and musical examples by Bradley Lehman and Richard Egarr. At least seven harpsichordists have recorded Bach CDs using this temperament, including the complete Goldberg Variations (Egarr), Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook (Elizabeth Anderson), Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (Peter Watchorn), the concertos for two to four harpsichords (Henstra, Belder, van Delft, van Laar), and my own "Playing from Bach's fancy".

CDs available:
In Thee is Gladness - cover art A Joy Forever - cover art Playing from Bach's fancy - cover art

Biography

Bradley Lehman's harpsichord and organ repertoire spans most of the solo keyboard literature from 1500 to 1775, plus Renaissance and Baroque ensemble music and some modern works. His interests include historical styles, unequal temperaments, a "gestural" manner of performance, composition, transcriptions, and thoroughbass improvisation. Six of his hymns are published in Hymnal: A Worship Book. In addition to his concert performances in North America, Germany, and Costa Rica, he has served several congregations as organist and music leader.

Lehman is a graduate of Goshen College and the University of Michigan, with degrees in harpsichord performance, the other early keyboards, historical musicology, church music, and mathematics. His keyboard teachers have included Leonard Kilmer, James Goldsworthy, Marvin Blickenstaff, Kathryn Sherer, Philip Clemens, Edward Parmentier, James Kibbie, and Penelope Crawford. His doctorate is in harpsichord, 1994. In 2004 he discovered what he believes to be J. S. Bach's own temperament for harpsichords and organs, encoded graphically on the title page of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Lehman's article about this finding is published in the February and May 2005 issues of Early Music (Oxford University Press), with further clarifications and elaborations at the web site <www.larips.com>.

His CD "In Thee is Gladness," of trumpet and organ music played with Martin Hodel (a member of the Minnesota Orchestra), was released in January 2005. His harpsichord and organ recordings, "Playing From Bach's Fancy" and "A Joy Forever", were released in January 2006. "A Joy Forever" is a 3-CD set demonstrating the expressive tonal palette and the tuning of Goshen College's organ, the Taylor & Boody Opus 41. "Playing From Bach's Fancy" presents harpsichord solo music by J. S. Bach and his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, plus 20 minutes of bonus material played on the Goshen organ.


Concert 2: Preludes and Fugues

Bradley Lehman, harpsichord and pedal harpsichord
Chico Bach Festival
Chico, California, USA
Thursday, March 15, 2007: 2:00 p.m.

Prelude and fugue in C major, WTC 1

Six-part Ricercar from the Musical Offering (C minor), BWV 1079

Fugue in A major, BWV 949

Prelude and fugue in B minor, WTC 1

Prelude and fughetta in G major, BWV 902 (early version of G major fugue, WTC 2)

Prelude and fugue in Ab major, WTC 2

Prelude and fugue in B major, WTC 2

-- Intermission --

Prelude and fugue in F major, WTC 2

Fugue "Jesus Christus, unser Heiland" (F minor), BWV 689

Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in Eb major, BWV 998

Prelude and fugue in C# minor, WTC 1

Contrapunctus 10 of the "Art of Fugue" (D minor), BWV 1080

Prelude and fugue in Bb major, WTC 2

"Chicken and cuckoo" fugue from Sonata in D major, BWV 963

Program notes

This concert program is partly inspired by Joseph Kerman's excellent 2005 book, The Art of Fugue. The book is a set of sixteen essays on various keyboard fugues by Bach, 1715-1750. Six of those fugues are included in the present program: C major, C# minor, Bb major, B major, Jesus Christus unser Heiland, and Contrapunctus 10 of Die Kunst der Fuge (the Art of Fugue).

Kerman's perceptive analyses have helped me to appreciate these compositions from angles I had not considered before, both as player and listener. And in my response, I am eager to play these to explore them yet further: because I believe the tuning system offers important resources that were not available to Kerman when he wrote the book. There are specific moods that go with these keys and scales, and I suspect that those influenced Bach as he wrote the music.

I am especially fond of the following bits from the Afterword of Kerman's book, as to the difficult task of analysis and commentary:

The correlation of aesthetic effects with data analyzed from the scores themselves was, I believe, the bottom line in Riemann's method, as it is in mine, though given his other concerns he might not have wanted to put it that way. This was the payoff line for Riemann because it was here that he engaged with the work of art as art, as a variety of human experience rather than a text to analyze.

The analytical plays in to the aesthetic. One premise for a musical criticism that distances itself from the impressionistic is that specific passages, progressions, notes, and harmonies in the score provoke our experience of music. The important clarifying phrase here is "rather than the musical flow in general," for a lot of writing about Bach fugues enthuses about the manipulation of the subjects and answers, analyzes the episodes, and then seems to take it for granted that the piece will run along on its own, or at any rate without further commentary. No account is taken of the varied, subtle, essential ways in which the matter is deployed in time.

(...)

Another premise for criticism is that music's character is somehow accessible to words. No one believes that the technical information put forth by critics and analysts can explain music's affective quality, only that it can offer support for assertions--verbal constructions--that they make about quality. And almost everything about the project has always been fragile. Skeptics will not believe that aesthetic effects are more than subjective "impressions." While "data" can presumably be verified objectively, one self-appointed authority selects particular data from the mass available in any situation and unilaterally affirms its salience. And it hardly needs saying (though perhaps it does, once in a while) that response to music depends on more than just the score: on performance, tradition, audience psychology, ideology, and so on.

(...)

A third and deeper premise is that music's grip on our inner life is tied up with our other feelings, not predicated, as used to be argued, on some special "aesthetic emotion." This premise is not too fragile. It will seem self-evident to many. Talk mediates, differentiates, elucidates, and consoles; we use words, however imprecisely, to talk about love and death because talk, it seems, we must. We also use and surely must use words to talk about music.

In my own main paper about tuning and temperament, written in 2004, some of my conclusions were as follows with regard to words and analysis:

A tacit assumption in music history and criticism is that most of music's meaning is available to us in words. Program notes for recordings and concerts tell us what we "should" be listening for and noticing. We study the culture in and around the compositions, any extra-musical subjects and associations, names, personalities and influences. Dramatic works have meaning in their plots and poetry. Again, it's the words. Bach's meaning may be largely elsewhere, however, as his vocal works and organ chorales reveal. The associated words and imagery are primarily the scaffolding for the building of additional commentary in sound.

Bach's instrumental works are invested with meaning as well, through his inventively irregular structures and his blending of arts. David Yearsley in Bach and the meanings of counterpoint (2002) and Laurence Dreyfus in Bach and the patterns of invention (1996) have provided exemplary essays of analytical depth: exploring the cross-fertilization of ideas and influences, showing Bach to be in absolute control of his materials. However, the dimension of Bach's specific intonation has been (necessarily) lacking from such presentations, simply because it was not yet known. I have proposed here that Bach's rich meaning resides also--inextricably--in that subtly irregular intonation: with evidence not only in notes (and our aesthetic appraisal of them) but also in a gestural design he drew on paper. The correct tuning of his intervals according to his expectations reveals this lost layer of his art, perhaps making the spiritual content of his music more easily perceptible and measurable (showing his craftsmanship of Affekt to be both specific and objective). We return to Bach's music so often already because the sound of it moves us; and now even the sound itself is showng to be different from our modern expectations. It too is a blend of arts in an uncommon way. There is nothing ordinary or average about it. ["Bach's extraordinary temperament: Our Rosetta Stone", pp 225-6]

And, Edward Aldwell (1938-2006) and Carl Schachter have offered the following excellent reminder about the style of preludes and fugues:

The "prelude and fugue" -- like so much else in keyboard music -- grows out of a tradition of improvisation. In a period when the separation of composer and performer was far less definite than nowadays, improvisation was one of the principal ways a musician could show his mastery, and all of the great composers of keyboard music were notable improvisers. The improvisatory element is a presence even in those pieces that seem most elaborately wrought and furthest from spontaneous creation. In Bach's pieces, the fluency, freedom, and naturalness of the musical discourse and the idiomatic play of keyboard figuration breathe an improvisatory life into even the most complex and "learned" writing. [Booklet notes to Aldwell's recording of WTC book 2, 1989]

According to a later church official in Leipzig, recounting a local legend, Bach had been both modest and forthright about his own style of organ-playing. "There is nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right notes at the right time, and the instrument plays itself." Whether Bach actually played that simply or not, the method is attractive and it works well in practice. Prepare the notes carefully, and then react to them with a free and easy manner of delivery, a natural flow. This also presumes that the instrument has been set up appropriately, i.e. tuned and voiced, to begin with: and which makes the task of play considerably easier! See Tuesday's program notes for more about this....

All of that said, it remains simply to play the music, to hear the effects it can make -- treating the tuning style as an essential part of the interpretation, reacting to its tensions and relaxations. We needn't try too hard to force any analysis into further words. My performance goal is simply to play each piece, indeed treating it as "play" rather than hard work(!); and to make it sound like probing or sometimes whimsical thought, i.e. improvisation, as it goes along. There are hundreds of details that I "decide not to decide" until performance moment, and it's different every time. Listen to what the instrument is doing, and play.

My further notes here are simply a bit of house-keeping about the texture and/or provenance of each piece. Let's take the compositions in chronological order, more or less.

The piece imitating the chicken and cuckoo isn't definitely dateable, but it is one of Bach's early pieces when he was (maybe) still a teenager. He was learning by imitating Böhm, Poglietti, Froberger, and other masters of keyboard composition.

The fugue in A major (BWV 949) is from sometime in Bach's 20s, before 1715. It is long and sticks closely to the same set of related keys. Its rather dull and conventional subject is considerably dressed up by all the free material that happens against it...which suggests an argument for fugal performance practice. When playing fugues, some performers (especially pianists, I dare say) insist on emphasizing subject entrances all the way through, "Oh listen here, we again have the notes we were already expecting!", like laying out the dissected skeleton of a dead cat. Isn't it more interesting to keep the cat alive, and watch the way its skeleton is incidentally moved by connecting tissues and the cat's will? Or, like Elmer Fudd, to realize only after it's gone by: "Hey, that was the wabbit!"

In the Well-tempered clavier book 1, assembled 1722-3 from some earlier pieces, Bach gave his first complete demonstration of the sounds and moods available through all 24 major and minor keys. The C major prelude is one of his simplest and most famous compositions...and coupled with one of his densest and most "learned" fugues, as the first item in the book. By contrast, the B minor and C# minor pieces are long and profoundly chromatic, each setting up an overwhelming intensity. I have chosen them not only for their beauty, but also because they remind me so much of the music that Bach wrote later as Kyrie I and Kyrie II of the B Minor Mass.

The Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat (BWV 998) is from sometime after Bach was at least 50, in 1735 or later. It is not clear whether this is for lute -- where it's almost impossibly awkward -- or more likely for "lute-keyboard" (Lautenwerck, a gut-strung instrument that Bach owned two of). This gorgeous little suite is often heard in guitar transcriptions today, perhaps more than being played on keyboards.

"Jesus Christus, unser Heiland" is one of the chorale preludes in Bach's "German Organ Mass", Clavierübung III, published 1739. It is an especially dense and chromatic fugue, and its tune rings out at half speed near the end, preparing the congregation to sing. I have recorded it on organ, but also enjoy the different details that harpsichord and clavichord performances bring out.

Having already written a complete set of preludes and fugues demonstrating all keys, back in his 30s, Bach as an older man had to try to outdo himself later with another set -- both pedagogically and artistically. Book 2 was assembled in approximately 1742, again using a mixture of fresh compositions and reworkings from as far back as the 1720s (the early version of the G major fugue here). The A-flat fugue is one of those reworkings, being originally about half as long and in F major. Its prelude alternates rich chords with a two-part invention texture. The A-flat prelude and fugue both wander into the extraordinary territory of B-double-flat major, near their ends!

The B and B-flat major pieces in WTC 2, some of Kerman's very favorites, have become my favorites too in the way they bring out an archaic and noble fugal style, almost like 16th- or 17th-century music...but coupled with ultra-modern preludes that celebrate fingers simply having fun.

The F major fugue is one of Bach's freest and most improvisatory, with long sections not following typical "rules" of fugue; and it breaks into chords and then faster runs toward the end. Its prelude is apparently an extraordinary study of harpsichord resonance, with an effect both beautiful and spooky. Almost all of it is in steadily flowing notes, with one voice per hand...but with individual notes being held much longer to make glowing chords, after the melody has already moved beyond them. As Aldwell suggested in both his writing and playing, it is a candidate for Bach's Most Beautiful Prelude.

Bach worked on the Art of Fugue on and off during his last decade, the 1740s. This Contrapunctus 10 is the part that got printed twice in the posthumous publication (1751-2), perhaps by mistake: the two versions there are given with and without the opening section of 22 bars. It is one of the most major-oriented movements in the collection, with its counterpoint moving in parallel thirds and sixths.

The six-part Ricercar of the Musical Offering (1747) is the latest and most concentrated piece here. It exists both in open-score format and a draft on two staves, for keyboard. Bach used some of his richest sonorities in this valedictory composition, moving into some of the warmest-sounding keys of E-flat, A-flat, and D-flat major as it progresses. Most of the last half-hour of the St Matthew Passion also explores these deep-flat major keys, too, from the perspective of the organ continuo parts. I suggest that this was not some on-paper game to Bach, counting up flats and investing them with symbolic meaning for treasure-hunters. Rather, these keys make directly sensuous effects vital to the music's character: with Bach in profound control of his musical materials.

The tuning

I believe that Bach's elegant diagram at the top of his Well-Tempered Clavier title page defines a specific set of sounds for every musical scale and for all harmonies. Every major scale and minor scale sounds different from every other. This allows music to project a subtly different mood or character in each melodic and harmonic context, with a pleasing range of expression as it goes along. It builds drama into the music.

The resulting tuning sounds almost like the equal temperament we have been accustomed to, but it has much more personality and color, a "three-dimensionality" to the sound. A harpsichord and organ tuner who follows Bach's recipe exactly, making the intervals very slightly compromised on purpose (as his drawing indicates), ends up with a keyboard tuned beautifully for music in all keys. This carefully balanced result was apparently Bach's preferred system, and it solves all the practical problems in his music and the music of his sons. Indeed, it turns out to be an excellent tuning solution to play all music, both before and after Bach's.

My article presenting this method is published in the February and May 2005 issues of Early Music (Oxford University Press), with follow-up articles in The Diapason (May 2005), Clavichord International (November 2005), and BBC Music Magazine (August 2006). Further details are also in the booklet essays for my two CD releases, from January 2006. Apparently this research has sparked other creative efforts as well: a short piece of fiction by Jeffrey Eugenides is in the October 10th 2005 issue of The New Yorker magazine, citing this discovery and reproducing the recipe. John Marks, in the February 2007 issue of Stereophile, compares it with recent research solving the calculation errors of Amelia Earhart's navigator.

Many professional keyboard specialists have been using this temperament regularly in concert work, beginning as early as a May 2004 broadcast by Robert Hill on Swiss radio. It is also becoming popular as a piano-tuning method. This was the orchestral continuo temperament for the autumn 2004 tour by The English Concert; and for the summer 2005 season at the Glyndebourne Festival (England), in productions of operas by Handel and Rossini. The Netherlands Bach Society used it on the continuo keyboards for their concert series of Bach's St Matthew Passion, during the Lenten season 2006. The BBC has featured the discovery in two programs, with interviews and musical examples by Bradley Lehman and Richard Egarr. At least seven harpsichordists have recorded Bach CDs using this temperament, including the complete Goldberg Variations (Egarr), Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook (Elizabeth Anderson), Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (Peter Watchorn), the concertos for two to four harpsichords (Henstra, Belder, van Delft, van Laar), and my own "Playing from Bach's fancy".

CDs available:
In Thee is Gladness - cover art A Joy Forever - cover art Playing from Bach's fancy - cover art

Biography

Bradley Lehman's harpsichord and organ repertoire spans most of the solo keyboard literature from 1500 to 1775, plus Renaissance and Baroque ensemble music and some modern works. His interests include historical styles, unequal temperaments, a "gestural" manner of performance, composition, transcriptions, and thoroughbass improvisation. Six of his hymns are published in Hymnal: A Worship Book. In addition to his concert performances in North America, Germany, and Costa Rica, he has served several congregations as organist and music leader.

Lehman is a graduate of Goshen College and the University of Michigan, with degrees in harpsichord performance, the other early keyboards, historical musicology, church music, and mathematics. His keyboard teachers have included Leonard Kilmer, James Goldsworthy, Marvin Blickenstaff, Kathryn Sherer, Philip Clemens, Edward Parmentier, James Kibbie, and Penelope Crawford. His doctorate is in harpsichord, 1994. In 2004 he discovered what he believes to be J. S. Bach's own temperament for harpsichords and organs, encoded graphically on the title page of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Lehman's article about this finding is published in the February and May 2005 issues of Early Music (Oxford University Press), with further clarifications and elaborations at the web site <www.larips.com>.

His CD "In Thee is Gladness," of trumpet and organ music played with Martin Hodel (a member of the Minnesota Orchestra), was released in January 2005. His harpsichord and organ recordings, "Playing From Bach's Fancy" and "A Joy Forever", were released in January 2006. "A Joy Forever" is a 3-CD set demonstrating the expressive tonal palette and the tuning of Goshen College's organ, the Taylor & Boody Opus 41. "Playing From Bach's Fancy" presents harpsichord solo music by J. S. Bach and his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, plus 20 minutes of bonus material played on the Goshen organ.


Lecture-Demonstration of tuning history and issues:
"Solving the 'Bach Code'"

Bradley Lehman, harpsichords
Chico Bach Festival
Chico, California, USA
Wednesday, March 14, 2007: 1:00 p.m.

Musical examples by Bach may include:
  • Selections from the two concert repertoires above
  • Chorale prelude "Ach Gott und Herr" BWV 714, F# minor (with B minor signature)
  • A minor Fantasia BWV 922
  • E major prelude and fugue, WTC 2
  • Ab major prelude and fugue, WTC 2, plus the earlier version of this fugue in F major, BWV 901
  • F# minor prelude and fugue, WTC 1
  • Eb minor prelude and D# minor fugue, WTC 1
  • French Suites, BWV 812-817
  • Inventions and Sinfonias, BWV 772-801
  • Four Duetti, BWV 802-805
  • Three-part Ricercar of the Musical Offering
Plus, after 2:00 p.m., a separate and more technical demonstration of the listening skills and techniques for tuning harpsichords by ear.

Program notes

  • Overhead-projector slides describing the temperaments of the demonstration
  • A shortened version of the article "Bach's Art of Temperament"