The Art of Fugue

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Re: 'hidden homophony' I haven't read the leonhardt, but I would agree that Bach is more harmony-driven than counterpoint-driven - at least compared to renaissance composers, where the thinking was more or less contrapuntal (the shape of individual voices, then relations between different voices) resulting in rather more simple harmonies. After all, the practice of partimento (which Bach used to teach his students) first gives you a bassline which implies certain harmonies, and you 'realize' it by filling in the harmonies with contrapuntal lines - sort of like connecting dots with lines.

Anyways I like the van Asperen, the ornamentation does not distract me.

Edit: for those unfamiliar with partimento, here's an example with bwv 639 - what is ostensibly a contrapuntal trio with three independent voices can be arrived at by starting with the bass line and filling in the harmony with increasing elaboration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIhxGSZg3o8

It is difficult to listen, and probably compose,  contrapuntal lines without harmonic implications. I wonder if it is because of natural human instinct or because we were born and raised in the post-Medieval music paradigm. Musicians in the free-jazz movement tried non-harmonic music lines. But you can "hear" chord-progressions from most of their works.
I like Asperen, but I am not crazy about his AoF.

P.s. Even if melodies don't have 3rd or 7th note at all, relative to the bass note, probably modern listners will hear a harmony and harmonic progression.

[milk]

I think part of my disaffection with the Asperen is that I don't find that way of ornamenting the music meaningful, expressive. It just kind of leaves me a bit cold. Piling them on like Asperen does doesn't help in any way, it just seems pointless to me. Worse than pointless, it makes the texture thicker, I become less sensitive to how the voices are interacting, which seems a move in the wrong direction. When it comes to harpsichord I want agogics! I want lashings of lovely rubato drawing my attention to phrases, giving the music a sexy curvaceous contour, I don't want spiky little wobbly trilly shards of wire wool flying all over the shop, shrapnel. Anyway I listened to Mateo Messori play a handful of pieces from it today and this is what I felt. Messori good, Asperen less good.

The more complicated fugues seem to come off worst to me, the thing just fills up with lots of notes. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of difference between the timbres of the registers, and that makes things sound too solid, 2D - I mean not enough relief.

In the arch-ornamenter, Francois Couperin, the music is rarely as complex as one of the later pieces in AoF, if ever. Much of it is not much more than homophony! And even there it benefits from an instrument with non uniform timbres and a performer who will use them. Listening as I type to Leonhardt playing Francois Couperin on DHM - the performance is better than the music! Anyway, unlike Asperen, Leonhardt had the good sense not to let Francois Couperin influence his way of playing Bachian counterpoint.

How do you feel about Vartolo? I haven't listened to it in a while. And how does Rubsam do on the Lautenwerk? I'd like to get a playlist of a few revelatory performances that are radically different from each other. Hill is another that must be good.
There was a performer that didn't on fortepiano...I forgot his name. There must be something good on clavichord too.

[Mandryka]

How do you feel about Vartolo? I haven't listened to it in a while. And how does Rubsam do on the Lautenwerk? I'd like to get a playlist of a few revelatory performances that are radically different from each other. Hill is another that must be good.
There was a performer that didn't on fortepiano...I forgot his name. There must be something good on clavichord too.

The last time I listened to this music, apart from yesterday, it was Walter Riemer on piano. I thought it was excellent and that he probably is the foremost Bach pianist of all time.

[Mandryka]

Re: 'hidden homophony' I haven't read the leonhardt, but I would agree that Bach is more harmony-driven than counterpoint-driven - at least compared to renaissance composers, where the thinking was more or less contrapuntal (the shape of individual voices, then relations between different voices) resulting in rather more simple harmonies. After all, the practice of partimento (which Bach used to teach his students) first gives you a bassline which implies certain harmonies, and you 'realize' it by filling in the harmonies with contrapuntal lines - sort of like connecting dots with lines.

Anyways I like the van Asperen, the ornamentation does not distract me.

Edit: for those unfamiliar with partimento, here's an example with bwv 639 - what is ostensibly a contrapuntal trio with three independent voices can be arrived at by starting with the bass line and filling in the harmony with increasing elaboration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIhxGSZg3o8

Asperen says this

One may go a step further by observing  that figuration in style luthe and hidden homophony, so typical of these French masters, can often be recognized in the Contrapuncti.

Which suggests to me that whatever hidden homophony is, it's found in Art of Fugue but not in, for example, the inventions and symphonias, where, as far as I remember, Asperen doesn't adopt the French Lute style. He does a bit in the French Suites though!

[staxomega]

The last time I listened to this music, apart from yesterday, it was Walter Riemer on piano. I thought it was excellent and that he probably is the foremost Bach pianist of all time.

This is a very satisfying performance as far as fortepiano/piano goes. One of the few on piano I'd listen to on a regular basis.

It made my list of best ever fortepiano recordings: https://www.talkclassical.com/65468-your-favorite-fortepiano-recordings-post1805298.html#post1805298

[Mandryka]

This is a very satisfying performance as far as fortepiano/piano goes. One of the few on piano I'd listen to on a regular basis.

It made my list of best ever fortepiano recordings: https://www.talkclassical.com/65468-your-favorite-fortepiano-recordings-post1805298.html#post1805298

How about Khouri's Chopin nocturnes or late Beethoven sonatas?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Essentially there are two questions. 1) if a composer, ie. Bach, intended "specific" harmonic progressions for contrapuntal lines or not, and 2) whether the harmonies modern listners hear/perceive from contrapuntal lines are identical to those intended by composers or not, if they were intended at all.

[staxomega]

How about Khouri's Chopin nocturnes or late Beethoven sonatas?

I haven't heard any of them, I will see about correcting that.

[Mandryka]

I haven't heard any of them, I will see about correcting that.

Be prepared for a shock!

[milk]

Sergio Vartolo sometimes plays with extreme rubato. It's highly emotional and dramatic, and also effective.

[milk]

Well darn it, Van Asperen wasn't listenable tonight for me. Fickle am I and impressionable. Yes, too much constant embellishing suddenly sounds like an involuntary tick.
I do like Lepinat, Hill, Vartolo and, surprisingly, Rubsam.
I tried putting on Ziao-Mei, and found her also unlistenable because of the constant dynamic changes.
One thing I found surprising: a new live recording of Nikolayeva from '93. I'm not sure I love it (she also plays with volume - as most pianists do) but she was an artist and she's interesting. There's a journey here.

[Mandryka]

Well darn it, Van Asperen wasn't listenable tonight for me. Fickle am I and impressionable. Yes, to much constant embellishing suddenly sounds like an involuntary tick.
I do like Lepinat, Hill, Vartolo and, surprisingly, Rubsam.
I tried putting on Ziao-Mei, and found her also unlistenable because of the constant dynamic changes.
One thing I found surprising: a new live recording of Nikolayeva from '93. I'm not sure I love it (she also plays with volume - as most pianists do) but she was an artist and she's interesting. There's a journey here.

Did you think that the new Nikolayeva is different in an interesting way from her other recordings of AoF? I like what she does, and when it came out I tried it in a couple of pieces, but sensed it was much the same as the others. But I didn't give it much thought.

[milk]

Did you think that the new Nikolayeva is different in an interesting way from her other recordings of AoF? I like what she does, and when it came out I tried it in a couple of pieces, but sensed it was much the same as the others. But I didn't give it much thought.

I don't know the other well enough and I have to constantly reassess - or maybe I should say I have to take the journey again and see if it leads me somewhere. I was surprised by some of the articulation I heard on the live one and I don't remember her doing that sort of thing on the earlier recording.
AOF has always been a challenge for me, I have to admit. It can sound severe and it doesn't have the variety of different dances or the change in mood a prelude brings. But it constantly brings new rewards I think. I'm still interested in new ways of seeing it. 

[Mandryka]

Sergio Vartolo sometimes plays with extreme rubato. It's highly emotional and dramatic, and also effective.

Yes this is one of the great harpsichord AoFs I think, I'd forgotten how special it is. A really good sense of how to articulate the music, sometimes lyrical and sometimes short phrases. So everything appears full of life and full of a sort of richness, a complexity,  which makes me want to hear the performance again as soon as it's finished.

[Selig]

Does anyone know whether Leonhardt's notes for his 2nd AoF (DHM) have been translated into English? That is now my preferred version, but I think it's a pity we don't get to hear him play the fuga a 3 soggetti. Maybe he explains his reasoning for this?

[prémont]

Does anyone know whether Leonhardt's notes for his 2nd AoF (DHM) have been translated into English? That is now my preferred version, but I think it's a pity we don't get to hear him play the fuga a 3 soggetti. Maybe he explains his reasoning for this?

Because he didn't consider the piece as something which was intended to be part of AoF. He is certainly not alone with this view. BTW in his 1952 recording he included the unfinished fugue, so he obviously changed his view at some point. Interestingly many recordings of the AoF include the unfinished fugue as a kind of appendix, and then it is up to the listener to decide, whether it is part of the work or just a "bonus" track.

[Mandryka]

George E Lewis in his paper  "Too Many Notes" (Leonardo Music Journal 10) says that the art critic Robert L Douglas

sought to formalize an African-American aesthetic, synthesizing visual and musical elements
of what the painter Jeff Donaldson... has called "Trans-African" culture. The aspect of
Douglas's theory that I wish to highlight here is the notion of "multidominant elements,"
which I will henceforth call "multidominance." According to Douglas, the aesthetics of
multidominance, involving "the multiple use of colors in intense degrees, or the multiple use
of textures, design patterns, or shapes" ... are found quite routinely in musical and visual
works of Africa and its diaspora. By way of introduction to his theory, Douglas recalls from his
art-student days that interviews with "most African-American artists with Eurocentric art
training will reveal that they received similar instructions, such as 'tone down your colors, too
many colors'" ... Apparently, these "helpful" pedagogical interventions were presented as
somehow universal and transcendent, rather than as emanating from a particular culturally or
historically situated worldview, or as based in networks of political or social power. Douglas,
in observing that "such culturally narrow aesthetic views would have separated us altogether
from our rich African heritage if we had accepted them without question," goes on to
compare this aspect of Eurocentric art training to Eurocentric music training, which in his
view does not equip its students to hear music with multidominant rhythmic and melodic
elements as anything but "noise," "frenzy" or perhaps "chaos".

Reading it I couldn't help be reminded of discussions we've had here about the equality of voices in some of Bach's music. This is multi-dominance. Or at least it could be in an instrumental setting, or with a suitably imaginative organist on some of those wonderful colourful Bachian organs, Naumburg  maybe.

And it explains why your average European/white american classical music listener finds, for example, Rubsam in his latest incarnation "noise," "frenzy" or perhaps "chaos" I remember San Atone said he sounded drunk.

San Antone -- you're too white, man. Or rather, you were back when you said that!

[Mandryka]

A noble and serious reading by Roberta Gary, which seems to sometimes verge on the stately. The organ at Springfield Illinois is very attractive, and rarely recorded in old music. Rübsam used it for his Walcha recordings.

[prémont]

A noble and serious reading by Roberta Gary, which seems to sometimes verge on the stately. The organ at Springfield Illinois is very attractive, and rarely recorded in old music.

Yes, a very serious interpretation worthy of your time. As far as I know it can only be had as download from Presto, which is where I got it some years ago.

[Mandryka]

Samuel Kummer, AOF, anyone? It's on the Hildebrandt organ. This is new. Sorry, I'm exhausted and too lazy to find the image of it. It's reviewed over on musicweb this week.

It is a fabulous organ and well recorded. Kummer uses pedal. His reading is inspired by a theological interpretation of the music, which links it to the OT David story. Kommer plays fast, always fast. His approach becomes predictable - like it's not worth hearing the whole fugue once you've heard the start. There are no surprises!  And as a result I think this performance trivialises the music. Nevertheless there are a couple of interesting things in there: cpt in stylo fancese (which he thinks is a musical representation of the coronation of King David, and sounds like it), cpt 11 (which is like a battering ram, a Shostakovich scherzo!) The real curiosity of the CD is the intensely bombastic Fuga a 3 soggetti, which Kommer felt impelled to augment, and which lasts 10 minutes, ultimately becoming too overbearing for me. The closing fugue is predictably weighty, too weighty for me to get past the first 2 minutes.

The booklet seems scholarly after a fashion.


https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/46/000142064.pdf