Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Should Bach be played on a piano or harpsichord? (Opinions)

Good evening.

Bach should be played on fill in the space

Bach should be played on harmonica

This assumes the piano is "better" than the harpsichord. They are just different instruments and to suggest the piano is superior is akin to saying the oboe is superior to the clarinet - or vice versa. They are both wind instruments but make different sounds and require a different technique to play them and that last phrase applies to both the wind instruments mentioned and to the piano and harpsichord.

I am always aware when playing Bach on the piano - which I enjoy, it works - I am realising the music using an instrument Bach did not know. I am a step away from Bach's natural sound world. With the harpsichord I am on his home territory.

I never understood this question and the debate around it. As others have said the music transcends whatever vessel is used to express it.

Should Bach be played? Yes and often.

I would also like to add that Sir Thomas Beecham said "The sound of a harpsichord – two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm"

As sophial pointed out earlier.

I forgot to read the thread.

Which doesn't make it one of Bach's works specifically for harpsichord, which was what I was saying. I thought that was fairly clear - my mistake, I guess.

It's unclear what instrument it was meant for, like in the case of Art of the Fugue.

Even harpsichords were very different from one another. The modern piano is the most standardized keyboard instrument that has ever existed. Everything else was very diverse.

I wouldn't be surprised - but it wouldn't have been the instrument we call a "piano", but an early (and probably somewhat primitive) fortepiano. At any rate, he didn't write any music specifically for it.

Ten thumbs up!

I ask because the technique required to play is very different between a piano and a harpsichord. I could learn a piece on the piano, but Being that a harpsichord has no dynamic variation, I could also learn the same piece on a keyboard or simply turn off the touch response on my digital and play it that way, and it would still be acceptable.

I don't think it's quite that simple. Playing Baroque music on a harpsichord involves using other "expressive" techniques that we don't usually use when playing Baroque music on a piano (or touch-sensitive keyboard) because we have a wide dynamic range. Playing in a "true" Baroque style without dynamics involves slightly delaying voices (what we would call agogic accents), spreading (or arpeggiating) chords and some asynchronization. If you know those techniques and how to employ them, you could probably reproduce, on your keyboard, something resembling Baroque performance.

Regards,

Yes, all true, but all of that comes from the performer's side. The capacity of the instrument is what I'm referring to. Simply put, a harpsichord, digital piano, keyboard and a acoustic piano are all adequate to perform Bach. As opposed to say, playing Beethoven or Chopin, who can be played on a piano, but cannot properly be played on a keyboard or harpsichord.

The capacity of the instrument is the least issue: we can play the Bach Partitas, for instance, on a 4 manual church organ, with zillions of stops to play around with. And we can do this well or badly. To realise Bach, indeed any composer, on any instrument, is a question of finding out/knowing how to express the music using the capacity of the instrument.

Bruce is right, whether a harpsichord or a keyboard with no touch sensitivity, the real issue is "how do I realise my concept of this music (preferably reasonably consistent with what we know of the composers' wishes. Another can of worms) using the qualities of this particular instrument.

Thus we will use dynamic shading to a greater or lesser extent on a piano. Probably not the pedal to any great extent. We use phrasing, articulation and rhythmic flexibility, in quite subtle ways, on a harpsichord or keyboard without touch sensitivity. (By the way, I have yet to find a harpsichord voice on a digital keyboard which resembles the sound of a harpsichord in any sense of the word "resembles", but software harpsichords can come close.)

If we ignore the qualities of any instrument, simply just playing the notes, we end up with dull results even we are unhappy with, let alone any audience.

It took me years to assimilate a style of playing appropriate to the harpsichord (let alone the different baroque styles) and this was coming from a position of a passion for baroque music, specialist teaching and a harpsichord at home.

I think it is appropriate to add some expression to Bach's keyboard works but it is possible to go to far in this regard, witness the Czerny edition of the c minor fugue book I wtc there is a staccato dot placed above virtually every note.

Have you seen the Busoni edition of the WTC, Bk I?

Look what he suggests for a couple of measures of Prelude 21!



Regards,

I haven't seen that one. Looks like more of an arrangement than an edition.

No, it's in his "edition" of the WTC, Bk I. Here's what he suggests for the C minor Fugue :



Notice that he has both 'tenuto' marks and staccato marks over some of the eighth-notes. Perhaps those are meant to be accent marks (?). Then, he has staccato marks in some sixteenth-note phrases while others are marked quasi staccato.

Regards,

This doesn't look that bad