LaripS.com, © Bradley Lehman, 2005-22, all rights reserved.
All musical/historical analysis here on the LaripS.com web site is the personal opinion of the author,
as a researcher of historical temperaments and a performer of Bach's music.

LaripS recordings - complete catalog

LaripS 1001: "In Thee is Gladness" - The Hodel-Lehman Duo.

(Released in January 2005)

This CD includes music by Buxtehude, Brahms, Bach, Viviani, Baldassare, Pachelbel, Cellier, Bernstein, Starer, and Lehman. The recording was made at two churches in north Germany. The performers are Martin Hodel, trumpet, and Bradley Lehman, organ. [Samples on YouTube]

$15.00 plus $3.00 (within USA) for shipping, or $5.00 (outside USA): please send payment by PayPal, and e-mailed instructions/inquiries, to bpl@umich.edu .

LaripS 1002: "A Joy Forever" / LaripS 1003: "Playing from Bach's Fancy": Organ and harpsichord recordings by Bradley Lehman.

(Released January 4th 2006 and available through the Goshen College Music Center, phone: (574)535-7361.) [Samples on YouTube]

$15.00 for "Playing from Bach's Fancy" (harpsichord); $30.00 for "A Joy Forever" (organ; 3CD set). Add $3.00 (within USA) for shipping, or $5.00 (outside USA): please send payment by PayPal, and e-mailed instructions/inquiries, to bpl@umich.edu .

These CDs present music played in what I believe to be Bach's tuning, as described elsewhere on this web site. They are a co-production with Goshen College Central Recording, for promotion of their music department and facilities. (I am an alumnus of this academic program, and was the harpsichord tuner on staff there for six years.)

The organ set includes music by Bach, Brahms, Pachelbel, Sorge, Fischer, Erbach, Zachow, Böhm, Walther, and others. It demonstrates the new two-manual Taylor & Boody Opus 41 at Goshen College, with representative music in all keys.

It includes the complete Ariadne musica (1702/15) by JKF Fischer, a set of 20 preludes and fugues plus five ricercars, a book that directly inspired Bach's composition of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The goal here is to hear these pieces in a way that young Bach may have played through them for his own study.

The harpsichord set includes Bach sinfonias, preludes and fugues, and selections by other members of the Bach family: music that visits all the keys. The harpsichord is a Franco/Flemish double by Knight Vernon [photo 1, photo 2] modeled on 17th century Ruckers instruments.

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Press release for LaripS 1002 and 1003

This is to announce two new CD sets released January 4th 2006, recorded in March 2005. I am the performer and producer of both of these sets.

They use the specific keyboard tuning that I believe was Bach's own, which evidence I have explained at
http://www.larips.com
and in various publications during 2005 (Early Music, The Diapason, Clavichord International, BBC Radio 3 broadcast, et al).
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/articles.html

The organ set "A Joy Forever: Opus 41 at Goshen College" demonstrates the new two-manual pipe organ at Goshen College (Indiana), built by Taylor & Boody Organbuilders (Virginia). The music is by Bach, Brahms, Walther, Fischer, Erbach, Zachow, and some others. It includes a complete recording of Fischer's Ariadne musica with its twenty preludes and fugues, and five ricercars: a book that inspired Bach's composition of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The details of this set are at
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1002.html
3 CDs, $30.00 USD plus shipping. Total time slightly over 3 hours.

The single disc "Playing From Bach's Fancy" has nearly an hour of harpsichord music by JS Bach and WF Bach, and 20 minutes on the organ. Preludes, fugues, sinfonias, polonaises, duetti, chorale preludes, excerpts from the Musical Offering and Art of Fugue, and several other tidbits. The harpsichord is a Franco/Flemish style double by Knight Vernon, and owned by Goshen College. The album details are at
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html
1 CD, $15.00 USD plus shipping. Total time 77 minutes.

The Taylor & Boody organ Opus 41 used in these recordings:
http://www.taylorandboody.com/opuses/opus_41.htm
http://gcmusiccenter.org/the-basics/facilities/rieth-recital-hall/opus-41-pipe-organ/
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/tb41.html

Goshen College's press release about the two recordings:
http://www.goshen.edu/news/pressarchive/01-13-06-organ-cd.html
Ordering information:
Goshen College music office, (574)535-7361

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The trumpet + organ album "In Thee is Gladness" from January 2005 (recorded 1997) is also still available:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html
My colleague on that, Dr Martin Hodel, is a member of the Minnesota Orchestra, and teaches trumpet and music theory at St Olaf College. We recorded this album on two equal-tempered organs in northern Germany. It includes a variety of compositions by Buxtehude, Brahms, Bach, Viviani, Baldassare, Pachelbel, Cellier, Bernstein, Starer, and Lehman. 1 CD, $15.00 USD plus shipping, ordered by e-mail inquiry to hodel@stolaf.edu .

Enjoy the music,

Bradley Lehman
Dayton VA
17 January 2006
LaripS.com

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What guided the repertoire choices for these two albums?

• Ariadne musica by Fischer is not otherwise available (to my knowledge) in any other complete recording! Joseph Payne's recording for Naxos omits the five ricercars and it splits the book across three different organs. Those little ricercars are interesting and beautiful in their own right, and as a foil to the chromatic adventure of the rest of the book. This was therefore a chance to enrich the repertoire, especially as Fischer's book is so important to the back story before Bach's composition of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
• I wanted to include some of the most startling examples by Bach where the tuning makes an immediately palpable difference. Some of this can be perceived best as a negative case: that is, in direct comparison against the same pieces recorded by other people in other unequal and equal temperaments. The Bach temperament gives (I believe) not only an absence of the previously pesky problems, but reveals additional beauties that had been hidden.
• Part of the project is simply to demonstrate the range of sounds available in the new Goshen College organ: giving the instrument itself an expressive workout. It also demonstrates that the instrument and its tuning can play music on both sides of Bach's, far in both chronological directions. I explored that point yet more fully in the 10/30/05 organ recital at that instrument, after the recording was already completed: playing some older compositions (17th century and earlier), and playing/improvising/composing new music to take direct advantage of the instrument's available resources.
• Part of the demonstration in these albums is that all the major and minor keys work well, and have interestingly expressive differences. The repertoire as a whole is to illustrate this range of flexibility and color.
• Some of the music is direct illustration for the Early Music article, the Clavichord International article, and this web site. [Outlines/Download] Especially in the harpsichord album I have focused on compositions that figure directly into my arguments about enharmonic handling, in both articles. These short compositions by Bach use more than twelve differently-spelled notes at once on a twelve-note keyboard. To appreciate that point, the listener is invited to try these pieces hands-on at keyboards in various temperaments, and to make comparisons with other recordings.
• The C major prelude and fugue obviously had to be included, as the first item in Bach's book about tuning. The other Well-Tempered Clavier excerpts in both albums (B major, Eb major, F minor, F# minor, Bb minor) distill some of the most crucial spots where other unequal temperaments fail. These compositions have therefore fared rather badly in other recordings, in my opinion, and this was a chance to hear them making suaver effects.
• Some of the music is an assortment of Cinderellas. The compositions are lovely, but have been draped in shabby tunings for so long that they haven't received serious appreciation of their virtues.
• Some of the music is the everyday church-organist type of repertoire: fairly simple arrangements of church tunes, or suitable ideas for prelude/offertory/postlude music. That, after all, is an organ's most basic and regular function, along with the accompaniment of singing. I wish we had included some congregational singing too, but that can come on later occasions!
• Some of the music is chosen for the simplest and most elegant reason: I feel it is beautiful music that I wanted to share, and I enjoy playing it. It was fun!
• Another goal is that each disc should be a pleasing and edifying program when listened to straight through, for enjoyment. Each disc should sound musically convincing as a whole, before going on to the next one. (In some sense, each CD is a meta-composition using pieces by other composers....) This calls for variety and balance of style, character, keys, tone colors, and volume. As a listener and CD collector myself, I find that I'm often bored by albums that take a compleatist approach to repertoire (all 13 of a composer's nocturnes on the same disc presented in canonical sequence, thank you very much...Zzzzzzz). Therefore, as a performer and producer thinking within the role of composer, I prefer to "mix it up" in the same way I do for live concerts or church services. Part of the fun is to keep the listener guessing what sort of music might come next, if not looking at the playlist, and then seeing later how it fits into the program as a whole.

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