November 23, 2005 -- informal practice session by Bradley Lehman with a play-through of Ba
November 23, 2005 -- informal practice session by Bradley Lehman with a play-through of Bach's six-voiced Ricercar of the Musical Offering. Taylor & Boody organ opus 41 at the Rieth Recital Hall, Goshen College, Goshen Indiana USA.
Since the hall had some open time and there were some compositions I wanted to hear later for my own reference, I took along the videocamera for an informal recording. This is the 16-minute "take" of the Ricercar a6, these first 10 minutes being my main attempt at the piece. There are a few clinks and a dodgy page turn I'd fix if this were a serious recording session. At the end I went over some of the sections again to have a cleaner try at them...those six minutes are uploaded separately as an "appendix" video.
More often I play this piece on harpsichord and clavichord, but I wanted to have a reference recording on organ (in this tuning, which I believe was Bach's own) for my own further study. Here it is, for any who might find it interesting. The registration here is simple 8+4, for clarity.
Disclaimer: condenser microphone on a cheap video camera, not the greatest sound! We used real mikes on the CD recording of this instrument, earlier in 2005. See http://www.larips.com for details.
A better photograph of the organ, and notes about the acoustic of its hall:
http://tinyurl.com/36f7wn
This performance also answers a 1985 article by Mark Lindley asserting that this Ricercar almost has to be done in equal temperament. It doesn't, but merely requires temperaments like this that treat the A-flat and D-flat major areas more smoothly than Lindley's do. Equal temperament merely renders it less interesting, less beautiful, and less dynamic: like a long and relatively aimless piece.
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Added: 11 months ago
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AUDIO ONLY. Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale prelude "O Mensch, bewein' dein Suende gross"
AUDIO ONLY. Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale prelude "O Mensch, bewein' dein Suende gross" BWV 622, from Orgelbuechlein. It is performed here on a Taylor & Boody organ at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, in 2005. This is the first full-sized organ to use the Bach temperament from Bradley Lehman's research of 2004. The full-length CD set "A Joy Forever" (3 discs) is available at http://www.larips.com , along with details about the tuning and the instrument. Direct ordering info: http://www.gcmusiccenter.org/php/music.store/index.php
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Added: 1 year ago
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AUDIO ONLY. Fluegelhorn and organ performance of "Throned Upon the Awful Tree" - a new hym
AUDIO ONLY. Fluegelhorn and organ performance of "Throned Upon the Awful Tree" - a new hymn-tune setting by Bradley Lehman, for the classic Lenten text. Martin Hodel (of the Minnesota Orchestra), flugelhorn; Bradley Lehman, organ. Hodel improvises the ornamentation in the third stanza. Recorded at a Beckerath organ in Emden, Germany, 1997. The full-length CD "In Thee is Gladness" is available at http://www.larips.com . Direct ordering info: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html
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Added: 1 year ago
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PART 1 OF 2. Five preludes from book 1 of Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" are performed on
PART 1 OF 2. Five preludes from book 1 of Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" are performed on harpsichord, twice each. Part 1 of the video presentation has the preludes in B major, C major, and E major. Part 2 has the preludes in F minor and E-flat minor.
The first performance of each pair is in equal temperament, and the second is in the "Bach/Lehman 1722" which I believe to have been Bach's own practice for this book of music. (Details: see http://www.larips.com )
The performances are by Bradley Lehman, May 31 2005. Same instrument, same camera, same day, trying to play as similarly as possible. All of the equal-temperament "takes" were recorded first, then the instrument retuned, and then all of the Bach-temperament takes.
My own impression, hearing these 2 1/2 years later and editing them together into this presentation: the Bach temperament sounds enough like equal to fool just about anybody, and yet...it brings both more intensity and more relaxation to the music. In any event, it encourages me as a player to bend the music more freely and naturally, investing it with more nuances, in reaction to the sound. It makes me listen more closely to melody and counterpoint, the way the musical lines interact with one another. Tonality "locks in" with a subtly different character and mood for every key (scale).
Equal temperament, by contrast, goes on and on with a relatively bland inoffensiveness...being less than inspiring, and encouraging "run-on" uninflected performances. The performer has to work harder to make something special of the music. Why not tune instead with a subtle inequality, and let the intonation itself do part of the interpretive work?
Better-miked versions of most of these pieces are on my CD "Playing from Bach's fancy", recorded a few weeks before these videos. Details:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html
There are also (as of autumn 2007) two complete recordings of the Well-Tempered Clavier book 1 by other harpsichordists using this same Bach tuning: Peter Watchorn and Richard Egarr.
Enjoy!
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Added: 8 months ago
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Informal rehearsal at home January 2005, demonstrating the tuning from Lehman's research o
Informal rehearsal at home January 2005, demonstrating the tuning from Lehman's research on the Well-Tempered Clavier.
A better-miked version is available on CD (recorded March 2005), along with other details and much more repertoire, at http://www.larips.com .
The harpsichord shown and heard here -- sorry about the poor lighting! -- is in Flemish style, built several years ago by Anne Acker.
A tuning demonstration is now available, too, showing how to set this up. Check my other videos.
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Added: 1 year ago
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Harpsichord performances of several short compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach: Fugue in
Harpsichord performances of several short compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach: Fugue in C major, Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor, and Sinfonia in E major. (The C major Prelude is available as a separate video....)
The captions give a brief analysis of the compositions and the books they are in: Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" (book 1) and his set of 15 inventions and 15 sinfonias.
The performances are by Bradley Lehman, 2005, demonstrating the musical characters inherent in his tuning method derived from the title page of Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier". Details of that are at http://www.larips.com
All of this music is available also in better-miked performances on the CD "Playing from Bach's fancy",
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html
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Added: 8 months ago
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AUDIO ONLY. Harpsichord solo performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Modulation Canon, from
AUDIO ONLY. Harpsichord solo performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Modulation Canon, from the Musical Offering.
Each time the piece repeats, it has changed key so it is a step higher in pitch.... The unequal tuning also helps it to sound increasingly intense during this process.
The full-length CD "Playing from Bach's Fancy" is available at http://www.larips.com , along with further information about this tuning method.
Direct ordering info: http://www.gcmusiccenter.org/php/music.store/index.php
December 2007 I have scanned my written-out performance score of this piece, showing the enharmonic modulations. It is near the bottom of the CD's advertisement page, here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html
An extended version of this video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsgdZFIdmeo
(including a scrolling score, captions, and a second performance on organ)
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Added: 1 year ago
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Harpsichord tuning demonstration: in late 17th century style, useful into the early 18th c
Harpsichord tuning demonstration: in late 17th century style, useful into the early 18th century as well.
A regular system ("meantone") is set up first, with approximately 1/5th to 1/6th comma tempering...i.e. with all the major 3rds slightly wider than pure, and all the 5ths slightly narrow. The whole line of notes is:
Eb-Bb-F-C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#.
Then, to make the instrument more playable in keys of two or more sharps/flats, a simple modification is made to the several notes at each end of the sequence. The sharps are each raised in pitch, and the flats are each lowered, until they roughly meet one another (and can therefore be respelled as one another in music).
Two short pieces by Henry Purcell demonstrate the flexibility and color of this tuning: a Saraband in G minor, and a Hornpipe in D major.
Additional resources like this are available at http://www.larips.com
Dr Bradley Lehman
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Added: 10 months ago
Views: 2,416
Part 1 of 2. The contrasting 24 keys of Bach's "Well-tempered clavier", played in circle-
Part 1 of 2. The contrasting 24 keys of Bach's "Well-tempered clavier", played in circle-of-fifths sequence to hear the gradual modulation.
Part 2 presents the same recordings, but in chromatic sequence (as printed in the book): which brings out much more contrast of character from each piece to the next.
Part 2 is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoKaDrYS1sw
The question asked of each prelude/fugue is: IF we were try to retune the instrument per composition, exactly which notes are required in each one, and where should they be? And, what happens when the composition asks for two differently-spelled notes sharing the same key lever, such as D# and Eb? [Coming from the meantone-oriented systems of the 17th century, the D# should be tuned MUCH LOWER than the Eb.]
Peter Williams has asserted in print (_The Life of Bach_, 2007, p336): "For all one knows to the contrary, the intention in the Well-tempered Clavier could have been for the player to tune for each key as it was studied, something not requiring great skill. That no individual piece in WTC modulates very far means that no key needs to be tuned except for the piece concerned, even if theorists, who have no thought of playing all twenty-four in sequence, do not say so."
Well...that assertion collapses immediately when we study the music closely, listing all the required notes within each prelude/fugue. There are only a few preludes/fugues in the book that stay within 12 notes. Most use 13, 14, or 15 with these enharmonic overlaps. On a standard 12-key-per-octave keyboard, tuning compromises MUST be made to handle these dual-function notes. That is a major point of my research. The music itself constrains any proposed temperament to a small range of compromises in which this enharmonic swapping works passably, playing these compositions that go beyond 12 notes.
Bach's drawing on the title page (see http://www.larips.com) then provides the final necessary 10% of detail within that already-narrow range, showing exactly where and how those compromises should be made. The drawing shows what a skillful tuning procedure entails, adjusting which intervals and which relationships, so this one practical temperament can be left in place to play the entire book. (Furthermore, retuning-per-composition isn't feasible anyway on a fretted clavichord, but only on harpsichords.)
The recorded excerpts are from Peter Watchorn's 2-CD set, released 2006, used by kind permission of Dr Watchorn and Musica Omnia.
Another related video explains why F# and Gb are not the same note:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnzGDx-JJ1o
Bradley Lehman, http://www.larips.com
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Added: 1 month ago
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