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AUG 19, 2001 A Way to Hear Bach Intimately, if Barely By BERNARD D. SHERMAN |
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Fifty years ago, pianists and harpsichordists traded insults like "purist" and "inauthentic." Now famous pianists practice Bach on the harpsichord, and harpsichordists admit to liking Bach on the piano. With tensions eased, do we really want to consider claims for yet another Baroque keyboard instrument?
Enter the clavichord, largely overlooked so far in period Bach playing. Clavichordists will tell you that theirs is the most responsive keyboard instrument ever invented. It's the one that "least resembles a machine," to quote the American period-instrument pioneer Ralph Kirkpatrick, whose recordings of "The Well-Tempered Clavier" on clavichord have just been reissued.
A piano key throws a hammer at the string; a harpsichord key plucks it. But a clavichord key — or rather, the metal "tangent" implanted in it — touches the string directly. A clavichord's key stays in contact with the string even after striking it, so that the finger can vary a tone already sounded. What results is "an enormous range of nuance," according to the American keyboardist Richard Troeger, who is featured in new Bach releases on clavichord. Neither a piano nor a harpsichord lets a player add vibrato to a note, but a clavichord can.
Bach's first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, on the strength of interviews with the composer's sons, reported that the clavichord was Bach's favorite keyboard instrument. The harpsichord, Forkel wrote, "had not enough soul" for Bach, while the clavichord let him "express his most refined thoughts" with its "variety in the gradation of tone."1 Scholars (and, not surprisingly, harpsichordists) dismissed Forkel's report for much of the 20th century, but they are now coming to think that it was probably accurate.
Many musicians argue that the choice of instrument doesn't matter in Bach's keyboard music, but they might take note of the clavichord in any case. The instrument has an appealing sound, sweeter than that of the more muscular harpsichord. And it is better at projecting Bach's counterpoint, partly because the instrument lets the player subtly shape inner voices and bass lines so that the ear doesn't lose them in complex textures.
So why the neglect of the clavichord? For one thing, it is hard to play. No other keyboard requires such minute control of the fingers. Once a note is struck on a piano or harpsichord, the finger need only release it at the right instant. But a clavichord note needs continuous nurturing throughout its life. If the player's attention flags for a split second, the note still under a finger can go out of tune or in various ways turn ugly.
And the real disincentive for performers is the clavichord's notoriously soft voice. While it may be an antidote to ear-damaging rock concerts, the clavichord's low decibel level probably challenges 21st-century ears more than it did 18th-century ones. Hearing loss and tinnitus have become epidemic in recent decades. Besides, modern background noises can mask the clavichord's sound, and huge modern concert halls engulf it.
True, recent scholarship shows that the clavichords Bach knew were not quite as feeble as those built in the early-20th-century revival of the instrument. The leader of that revival, Arnold Dolmetsch, compared the tone of his instruments with the humming of bees. But the best clavichords now being made or restored can create a stunning forte.
Stunning, that is, within the instrument's quiet context. Even the loudest clavichords are too soft for most concert halls. In a paradox common with period instruments, the perfect medium for clavichordists is that least historical one, the CD. The Troeger release and the Kirkpatrick reissue let us hear extraordinary Bach playing that would barely be audible from the stage of Carnegie Hall, and they show that the challenging little instrument seems to attract probing, responsive players.
Kirkpatrick's 1959 recording of Book 1 of "The Well-Tempered Clavier" (Archiv 289 463 601-2; two CD's) uses a humming-of-bees instrument made by Dolmetsch. Once your ears adjust to the soft volume, familiar preludes and fugues seem more eventful than usual. Kirkpatrick understands the hierarchy of levels in these pieces, from ornaments to long-range harmonic tensions. At first hearing, his Book 1 sounds rather "straight": when a passage is driving toward a goal, he never interrupts it in midsentence. But on closer listening, it reveals evocative shapings and half-tints.
Kirkpatrick recorded Book 2 (Archiv 289 463 623-2; two CD's) eight years later on an even softer clavichord with a less homogenous sound. Its upper register, which uses steel strings, sounds dulcet; its lower one, strung in brass, has a metallic buzz. But the instrument's limitations sometimes seem to inspire Kirkpatrick. The difficult D major Fugue, for example, is magical: structural command melds with heartfelt nuance. In some pieces, Kirkpatrick bends the tempo more overtly than he did in Book 1, sometimes to breathtaking effect, as in the opening prelude.
Kirkpatrick's virtuosity is usually infectious; but combined with his belief that Bach's time signatures imply nothing about tempo [click here for my argument to the contrary], it occasionally leads him to an overly hasty tempo. For example, he rushes a couple of pieces in the relatively weighty 3/2 meter, such as the F-major prelude and B-flat Minor fugue in Book 2. (The C#-Major Prelude, in 4/4, is also rushed.) Scholarly questions aside, on occasion a little more repose wouldn't hurt. But such problems are rare. Kirkpatrick's tempos "feel right" more often than most performer's.
Kirkpatrick's two volumes remain, after 34 years, the only complete "Well-Tempered Clavier" on clavichord2. But not for long: Mr. Troeger is in the process of recording all of Bach's major solo keyboard works on the instrument (except for a few works that Bach specifically designated for harpsichord). Many of them have never been recorded on the clavichord.
THE three releases so far have been memorable not only for Mr. Troeger's mastery of his instrument but also for his interpretations. In the inventions, sinfonias and preludes (Lyrichord 8047), his sensitive molding serves both the structure and the expression. In the toccatas (Lyrichord 8041), he uses the colors of the clavichord to give shape and variety to long fugues or sequences while also conveying a sense of improvisation. In the partitas (Lyrichord 8038; two CD's), he responds unerringly to the character and emotion of the different movements while projecting more of the contrapuntal interest than most performers. All three recordings stand with the best available on any instrument.
The orchestrally conceived opening of the Fourth Partita substantiates Mr. Troeger's claim that his instrument can sound "grand and robust" as well as lyrical. Indeed, the clavichord by no means reduces the stature of major works; on the contrary, by revealing so much detail to the ear, Mr. Troeger often conveys more of the music's stature than typical performances.
Mr. Troeger has since made clavichord recordings of Book 2 of "The Well-Tempered Clavier," "The Art of Fugue," the English and French Suites, various other suites, fantasias and fugues, and transcriptions of Bach's solo violin works. A student of Bach's recalled that the composer often played the solo violin works on the clavichord, but Mr. Troeger is the first to record them this way. Unfortunately, his record label, Lyrichord, is having trouble with its distributor, so the release of all these recordings has been delayed.
Charles Rosen once suggested that the best keyboard instrument for a Bach fugue is the one that draws the least attention to itself. A drawback of the clavichord in Bach is that it still sounds exotic to our ears. The cure would be for the instrument to become as familiar as its larger keyboard brethren, and these recordings should help. Their attractions lie, ultimately, not in letting us hear how Bach's music sounds on an instrument he apparently favored, but in letting us hear how the music sounds in the hands of masterly performers.
Return to Bernard D. Sherman's home page
Click here for a lengthy article I wrote on harpsichord recordings of the Well-Tempered Clavier
Endnotes:
1. Here's what Forkel wrote: "[Bach] liked best to play upon the clavichord: the harpsichord, though certainly susceptible of a very great variety of expression, had not enough soul for him; and the piano in his lifetime was too much in its infancy and still much too coarse to satisfy him. He therefore considered the clavichord the best instrument for study, and in general, for private musical entertainment. He found it the most convenient for the expression of his most refined thoughts, and did not believe it possible to produce from any harpsichord or pianoforte such a variety in the gradations of tones as on this instrument, which is, indeed, poor in tone, but on a small scale extremely flexible."
There is corroborating evidence
that Bach preferred the clavichord in at least some music. One Bach student--Agricola--reported
that Bach liked to play his solo violin music on the clavichord. Agricola is
specific in mentioning which instrument Bach used (something unusual for his
time) - not just the "clavier" but the clavichord. Back
to text
2. Colin Tilney did record Book 1 on a fine historic German clavichord for the Hyperion label. This ruminative, highly nuanced performance is out of print. Back to text