Bach's Fugues and Concertos Explained

What is the well-tempered clavier? You may have heard of the well-tempered clavier of Johann Sebastian Bach, and it is an amazing body of work. Well, what is it? Many of you may have heard the preludes and fugues of Bach, which is the R, I should say, the well -tempered clavier. For example, the very first prelude is in C major and sounds like this.

That may be familiar to a lot of you. So what is the well-tempered clavier? We're going to talk about that today. It's a remarkable body of work by Johann Sebastian Bach. Now, to understand what the well -tempered clavier is, first you have to understand what is meant by well -tempered. Well, you see, a long time ago keyboard instruments were actually tuned in different keys depending upon the piece that you were playing on them. That's right. So if you were playing a piece in G major, the keyboard would be tuned in G major, and it would sound absolutely pure and perfect in G major. However, if you played in other keys, it would be less perfect. D major would be very close, A major pretty good, but if you went to E flat or some distantly related key, it would sound horrendous. Little by little, tuning got better, and they figured out how to make tunings that were not perfect in any one key but could accommodate many keys. Eventually, it got to the point where it was a well -tempered, the temperament, which is the system used to set the tuning of the whole instrument, was made such that it was usable in all keys. Now, here's an interesting fact for you, and we'll get back to the well -tempered clavier in a minute, but I wanted to mention that although Bach wrote the well -tempered clavier, which is a body of work of preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys, in fact, it wasn't a perfect tuning system like we have today, which is a perfect compromise of tuning, which you can read about in another blog of mine, Why a Piano is Never in Tune, but it's equally out of tune in all keys. This was not the case during Bach's life, but it was close enough that he was able to write in all the keys. So what he did was he wrote preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys. You heard the first prelude in C major, then there's one in C minor. The C minor prelude starts like this.

And then the fugue, which is a counterpoint with a certain form that we can discuss later in a future video, in the C minor starts off like this.

So he wrote preludes and fugues in every one of the major and minor keys, so that would give you 12 major and 12 minor for a total of 24, but he didn't stop there. He wrote two complete books of preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys for a body of work of 48 preludes and fugues. It's an amazing collection of music that if you're not familiar with, you should listen to more of them. They're all stupendous writing. And this is just a brief introduction for you. I encourage all of you to get familiar with all of the preludes and fugues, or as many as you can. There's a great body of work there. Each one has something unique to say. Now, it's possible that the differences in tuning at that time inspired different music, because not all the keys sounded the same back then as they do today, other than the pitch and the sonority of the instrument. Now if you know the Welterbrück Lavier, you know that these are monumental works.

Bach decided to write to celebrate tuning technology in no small part. The fact that it was possible that instruments could be tuned in such a way that it's possible to play in all the keys. Before that, instruments had to be tuned for specific keys. He decided to write all preludes and fugues in every single major and minor key.

But there's 48 preludes and fugues, because he did it twice. There's two books of preludes and fugues. Now the fugues are masters of counterpoint. The preludes are beautiful little gems in their own right. Now the parallel here is the four -part writing in Bach chorales is, I dare say, the basis for the writing of not only the preludes and fugues, but really all of Western music, one could argue. Now I had the good fortune of studying four -part harmony with my father for the time I was a young child and really mastered the art of voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. And it stays with me to this day to understand the structure of music I'm studying as well as for composing or arranging. Now to see the relationship between the Bach chorales, which are the pure four -voice writing, which is piano, alto, tenor, and bass, and what he did in the preludes and fugues, I'm going to just show you a little glimpse. I chose at random a chorale, something I could find easily, and then I'm going to take a couple of Bach preludes and show you that they're not that different. So here's a chorale I found, and let's see what we've got here.

Now naturally, none of the preludes are just in four voices, but they're still based upon the same structure of harmony, voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. So the famous C major prelude from the very first one of Book One, what would happen if it were to be played as a, more like a four -voice chorale? Because you know the prelude, of course.

So if I were to play it with some passing tones and other non -chord tones, listen how it really is not so different from a Bach chorale.

Now you may be thinking, well of course that prelude is obvious, but what about another prelude that maybe is not as obvious, like the C minor prelude, also from Book One? Well, in there really is the fundamental structure of a chorale.

So you can hear the derivation from the harmonies.

If you look at the music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich, there's this same foundation of the essential elements of a Bach chorale. It's all just embellishment of one sort or another. Did you ever realize that? How everything back then has just grown like a whole garden of possibilities or a forest from this original seeds of inspiration of the masters going back centuries. It's really remarkable how the language of music has grown and you can hear how the Bach chorale transcends into more complex music. And we can go further, whether it's Beethoven, you know, a second movement of one of his sonatas like the Opus 10 No. 1, for example, which is this beautiful movement.

It's essentially a chorale. It's broken up, but it's the same basic structure.

It's remarkable, isn't it? I want you to think about your music, whatever music you're playing, whether it's 21st century or 15th century even, how these same elements have been in music all along, exemplified beautifully in Bach chorales.

Now this is a great question and there are many different ideas about this. Now a little bit of a primer on this, why would there even be issues about whether you should use the pedal or not playing Bach? Well Bach lived from 1685 to 1750 and the piano was, the very earliest pianos were invented just around 1600, I mean, pardon me, 1700.

While Bach got a chance to try some of these early instruments, he never really wrote for the piano. As a matter of fact, he never wrote for any specific keyboard instrument other than the organ.

All his other works are written for clavier, for keyboard, and it was up to the performer what keyboard, but none of the keyboards had pedals any time during Bach's life. So there are many purists who feel you absolutely should not use the pedal because Bach didn't have one.

Other people feel, well, hey, if Bach was alive today, he probably would love to use the pedal to enhance the sound. So there's different schools of thought. I'm going to let you be the judge today.

First thing I want to point out is that there's some music that absolutely necessitates the pedal. Why? Because music is written sometimes where there are notes to be held where you run out of fingers and you have to move your hands to another part of the keyboard, so the only way to hold those notes that are written to be held is to sustain them on the pedal. For example, if I were to play the beginning, one of the themes of the Chopin G -Writer Blonde without the pedal, this is what it would sound like.

Now I was doing my darndest to connect everything I could possibly connect with my hands, but there's no way, it's physically impossible to hold all the notes.

When you listen to how it sounds by utilizing the pedal, it's almost like you have extra hands.

It gives it a fullness and a richness.

So what about Bach? You can certainly play Bach without the pedal and get very good results. In fact, when I studied with Ruth Slanczynska, she insisted upon using no pedal in Bach, and it works great. For example, the beginning of the 5th French Suite. Now since the beginning of the 5th French Suite has a big repeat, I'm going to play it through the first time using no pedal at all, and then the second time I'm going to use little touches of pedal. Now why would you use pedal and how would you use pedal in Bach? You don't use it to connect notes that you can't hold with your fingers because there's nothing written that depends upon the pedal in that manner as you heard in the Chopin where you absolutely need a pedal to hold notes that you run out of fingers for.

So instead you use it to add color and you'll notice that even in this fast music, there are little touches of pedal to enhance the tone of key notes, but the important thing is you must practice Bach using no pedal at all. In fact, I recommend practicing all of your music without any pedal until you can play as connected as possible, finding the best fingering that accomplishes this first. Then it becomes obvious where the pedal can be utilized.

So listen to the beginning of the Bach 5th French Suite. First time through, no pedal. The second time through, little touches of pedal just for color.

I hope you could hear a difference.

I would love for you to leave comments on this video and I want to kind of take a viewer poll as to which one you like better.

And this is not a philosophical kind of question I'm asking. I really want you to know how do you like the sound of the one that is pedal versus not pedal and if you have a preference for the way it sounds, regardless of your belief about whether you should use pedal or not, try to be honest about it. I'm interested in your viewpoint.

Boy, is this a valuable technique. You have no idea. I'm going to show you right in front of you, demonstrate how this works and how it can be unbelievably valuable for your practice. I'll explain in a minute. First let's have some music. I'm going to play this really fast movement from the Bach 5th French Suite. The second movement, the carante, goes really fast. I'm going to play it and then I'm going to solidify it with this extreme slow practice right in front of you and I'll explain how valuable this is for you for a number of reasons. But first let's have some music with this Bach.

We have a piece and you can play it but maybe it's getting rusty. You could play it and then it's not as solid as it once was and you wonder what can you do to re -solidify it or you have a piece that maybe you've gotten to a certain level and you just can't quite get it really secure.

So take a piece like this that's really fast. You find a really slow tempo where you look at the score, you use the metronome, get your foot off the pedal.

Now what's so interesting about this is when you play fast and there are things that maybe go by and maybe are a little blurry but at this slow speed any little imperfection is like blown up like putting your playing under a microscope and as a result you can really solidify your playing.

Now here's the amazing thing about this technique.

Obviously if you get it solid you'd want to go notch by notch with the metronome getting it up to speed but if all you do is play it slowly like that you will gain so much just from that. Not that strategic metronome speeds is something you shouldn't do. Obviously that's a great technique.

Just going through like that even a piece you know really intimately well and can play well you will always learn new things about your score when you play things that slowly. You're going to see things and you're going to feel things and understand things.

Did you ever take a word and you say it over, over, over, over and the word doesn't even sound like a word anymore and then eventually you really understand that word on a new level? Well that's what happens when you play slowly like this a piece that your fingers kind of go on automatic pilot you must be deliberate at those slow speeds and you end up learning it so much more securely.

So try this with pieces that you want to get on a higher level or pieces you've had on a high level and you want to reinforce them.

There's no better way by the way before a performance when you already have a piece in shape and you're playing it over and over again and then some days it's better than others you wonder what can you do? Extreme slow practice to the rescue. It's going to solidify you're playing like you can't believe. Try it for yourself. Why is Bach's Italian concerto referred to as a concerto? This is a really good question. A concerto is generally a solo instrument or group of soloists along with a larger ensemble and almost every concerto you can think of meets this definition. Yet Bach's Italian concerto is a solo keyboard work so how could this possibly be considered a concerto? So the reason for this is that it's written with the Italian style of a concerto grosso and the way Bach achieves this is by doing something he rarely did in any of his keyboard He wrote in dynamics in the entire three movements every single note.

The right hand and the left hand either they're both forte, they're both piano or one or the other is forte and this is what achieves the feeling of a concerto of the large group and the small group and I'll demonstrate by playing the beginning of the Italian concerto which is the whole orchestra, at least the feeling of the whole orchestra along with the soloist and then it changes up after a number of bars and you'll hear a change of color like it's going to the solo group. Listen to it and you'll see what I'm talking about.

So did you hear that change of orchestration right there? The entire concerto was built upon the juxtaposition of the sound of a solo group against the entire group and it gives the feeling of an Italian concerto.

It's so fascinating to realize two things about Bach. One is that there's a tremendous amount of his music that we'll never know because he was undiscovered until hundreds of years after his death and many of his scores ended up there's old wives tales of it ended up being wrapping fish. I don't know if that's true but we do know that there was vast amounts of music that he wrote that we never have gotten to hear and probably never will. The other thing about Bach is that he lived in Leipzig, Germany and did very little traveling He wrote a magnificent Italian concerto, a set of beautiful English suites, French suites, all different styles of music. How is this possible? After all there was no recording back then. Well being in a major city, anytime any artists from other places would come to visit he made a point of listening to many different styles of music and genius that he was he could assimilate those styles and write some of the greatest Italian, French and English music as well as his native German music. The ultimate musical form, the fugue. Now even if you haven't heard of what a fugue is, you've heard them many times from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to Handel's Messiah.

The fugue is actually a technical type of form that can be utilized within compositions or there's whole pieces written that are fugal. Now what is this all about? Well it's an amazing type of composition that is based upon counterpoint, the interweaving of separate lines. Rather than just have a chord and melody, imagine having more than one melody at the same time. Is this possible? Well we all are familiar with for example with a round or for example You get the idea. This is technically called a canon. I'm bringing this up so you can get a little idea of what a fugue is about. A fugue is a bit more complex than a simple canon or a round such as this. But before we get into what a fugue is I'm going to start with something just a little bit simpler and then you'll understand and appreciate what goes into writing a fugue.

Well first of all the grand master of writing counterpoint and fugues is Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach as a matter of fact, I'm going to get into his Well -Tempered Clavier in a minute, but he could craft such unbelievable compositions of counterpoint of interweaving lines that it's a mathematical wonder that he could create. But it's the joy of the music and the emotional content that is most important. That's what I'm going to demonstrate for you here today. So we're going to first talk about a simpler form than a fugue which is called an invention. An invention is simply two different lines. One line played by one instrument and another solo line played with another instrument. One isn't melody, one isn't harmony. They're both melodies that interweave with one another. Bach wrote a whole bunch of inventions and to understand what an invention is and what counterpoint is about I want to show you the beginning of his first invention in C major. It starts off with what's called the subject and this is the seeds for the whole composition. And it starts off with a simple note here.

It doesn't seem like much does it? That's it. That's it. And right after that happens it's repeated in an octave lower.

So what happens with the other part is that you have a counter subject. So after this is done you have...

So you put them together.

And so the entire thing is built upon the subject and the counter subject. I'm going to play just the first section of this invention for you so you can hear how the lines interweave a bit.

So that's just the beginning of Bach's first invention in C major. And you can see already it's a very different type of music. And there's an utter perfection about how these musical lines, even though they're independent lines that could be sung by different people or played on different instruments or in the sense of the keyboard played with different hands, where they intersect and the notes come together the harmonies are lush and beautiful. Well that's just what is an invention. And there are many things that can be done with the subject and the counter subject. What kind of things can be done with them? Well they can be played slower or faster. That's referred to as augmentation and diminution.

They could also be played backwards. They could be played upside down as well. And to demonstrate all this I'm going to show you one of Bach's Preludes and Fugues in C sharp minor from Book I.

And this is really important by the way. Bach wrote, this is unbelievable, he lived from 1685 to 1750 or dates around that. Nobody's 100 % sure. But what he did was he wrote Preludes and Fugues in every one of the major and minor keys. And this is a whole book of them right here. But that wasn't enough for Bach. He wrote two complete books.

So you have all your 12 major keys, all your 12 minor keys, times two for 48 Preludes and Fugues. Can you believe it? It's just one of the milestones of the musical literature. And I'm going to show you, now I'm kind of switching it up. We started off with two part inventions. Now we're going, vroom, to a five part fugue. Five voices? Can you believe this? Typically you have at least three voices in a fugue. And you have the subject, counter subject, and the initial statements of these are called the exposition where you have an answer. So for example, now the subject of the C sharp minor fugue from Book I is incredibly simple. This is all it is.

That's it.

Then the, of course, that is then restated a fifth higher. This is the way fugues work. So that same subject thing comes back a fifth higher, five notes higher.

And what's going on, just like in the invention, you have a counter subject. The counter subject in this case is this.

And once again, it could be inverted.

Or it could be played backwards.

So you have all these. It could be backwards, upside down. It could be faster. It could be slower. But the entire work is built upon these seeds, the subject and counter subject. I'm going to play you just the first section of this so you get a feel what a prelude, what a fugue sounds like to get a feel for the music. And listen for how this subject, this simple subject, keeps coming back again and again and with the counterpoint of the counter subject.

Now, could you imagine? That was five voices there. There are actually five separate lines going on. Can you believe this? The writing, the mastery to be able to make a piece of music that holds together. Now, here's the interesting thing about this is that fugues are rarely pieces all by themselves. They're parts of pieces. And even Bach wrote preludes and fugues. So they're two movements.

And the only way to really appreciate what a fugue is, is in context.

Just like if you really wanted to appreciate a great motion picture, you wouldn't watch just one or two scenes of it. You'd watch the whole picture because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

So what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to play a complete work of Bach that ends with an absolutely stupendous fugue. I'm going to go downstairs on my grand piano for this so you can really get the full experience. Bach wrote several tacatas and they're emotionally charged works. And his E minor is one of my favorites. I'm going to play you the whole tacata. It's not that long, but it ends with a brilliant fugue. And listen to the fugue subject. This is the subject you're going to hear at the end of this tacata after I go downstairs and play this for you.

So that's the fugue subject. And this is a three-voice fugue, meaning there are three separate lines going on at the same time. And the emotional content and how this affects you is unbelievable. And you know, I'm a firm believer in listening to music to really understand it. So in this video here, I could go deep into the, get deep into the weeds and show you the subject. And you know, at a certain point later on in fugues, you have what's called a stretto, where the statement of the subject is interrupted before it can even finish again and again and creates this chaotic madness of emotional tension. And we could go through and analyze it very methodically. But you know, I learned a lot from my father.

My father Morton Estrin I've talked about so much because he was my teacher, my piano teacher, my theory teacher, my harmony teacher, sight singing, everything. And you know, aside from his private piano teaching, he gave many classes. He was a professor at Hofstra University. He also gave classes in our home. He had a big studio. And one of the things I used to love was attending his classes.

And whenever he would have a class about music, oftentimes people would ask when they would play musical examples and play recordings of music and people coming from other teachers would ask, what should I listen for? And this is really a question that if you go to conservatory, you'll understand where that question comes from.

Because I remember in music conservatory, whenever we had any kind of theory, harmony, dictation, everything was like, if we listen to music, listen for where does it, where does the development start? Where's the stretto? Listen for this, listen for that. And you know what my father always said? If somebody asked him, what do I listen for? You listen to enjoy. That's right. Because you will understand in an intuitive way what makes a fugue great by listening to a masterfully composed composition. So I hope you enjoy this performance of Bach's Toccata in E minor.

So that is just one example of how a fugue at the end of a Toccata can build such tremendous emotion. So it's not all just about the mathematics. You have to have a certain awe that somebody could craft a composition that has such intricacy and these lines all coming together and forming this magnificent piece of music out of all these separate lines that somehow weave in and out of one another in ways that you can't even imagine and you can't believe what's actually going on. So I hope this has enlightened you enough that you'll take an active interest in listening to more fugues. And if you're interested, there are a lot of good videos out there on YouTube that, you know, get into the analysis part of it. And, you know, I welcome your questions. If you want a part two where I get really deep into the analyzing a fugue and tell you all the statements of the subject and the retrograde, the inversion, the diminution, the augmentation and how it's all crafted and where the derivation of all the notes come from. I'm happy to do that for you. Just let me know in the comments. And by the way, you're always welcome to email me here at LivingPianos.com. After all, we are your online piano resource. And I hope you enjoy this. There's tons of premium content on my Patreon channel. Thanks all of you subscribers. We'll see you next time here at LivingPianos.com. Thanks again. I'm Robert Estrin.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/bachs-fugues-and-concertos-explained-the-complete-practice-blueprint/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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