CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Richard Egarr

Weill Recital Hall
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Richard Egarr, Harpsichord

BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I

Program Notes:

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, BWV 846–869

The early 1720s were years of profound change and reassessment for Bach. At the beginning of this decade, he was positioned as court Capellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. In a letter Bach wrote in 1730, he recalls, “there I had a gracious prince, who both loved and knew music, and in his service I intended to spend the rest of my life.” The possibilities for music making were first-rate—the professional core group of instrumentalists and a few singers were of the finest caliber. Also, the demands of his office were not exhausting, leaving him time to pursue other interests. He had four young children, and the two older boys, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp, aged nine and five, respectively, were already showing musical promise—three others had died as infants.

When Bach left with the Prince in late May 1720 for a summer visit to Carlsbad, his life was comfortable and in good order. It is impossible for us to imagine the shock and bewilderment for Bach, only 35 years old, arriving back in Cöthen sometime during the second week of July to find his wife, Maria Barbara, dead and buried. There is no record of what killed her, but its speed allowed no warning or preparation in advance for Bach. This personal bombshell can only have made Bach look at his life and priorities. In the next two years, further changes may have added to Bach’s view of conditions in Cöthen. From the summer of 1721, Bach became involved with a young soprano employed at the court, Anna Magdalena. They married on December 3rd that year. Eight days later, Prince Leopold married a less-than-musically-interested, 19 year-old princess, Friederica. After this, Bach noticed a definite change in courtly musical attitudes. The following year, 1722, saw money problems in the court, a decline in Leopold’s health, religious feuds, and trouble with his children’s schooling. All this, plus Anna Magdalena’s pregnancy, began to draw Bach’s attention to more secure and generous employment possibilities. The attractions of the position of Cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig, only 40 miles away, must have been more than interesting to Bach. After a long and drawn-out audition process, Bach, his 21 year-old wife, and family (including the new arrival, Christiana), settled for good in Leipzig.

The emotional whirlwind of Bach’s life during these years had a deep effect on the focus of his activity. Suddenly the family became the focus of his attentions, both in reality and musically. On January 22nd of that fateful year, 1720, Bach created the Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann, an amazing little book for his nine-year-old son to enjoy and learn his keyboard craft. Too little attention is given to the contents of this volume, which has invaluable information about keyboard approach in both fingerings and ornamentation. Following three pages of simple, preliminary review of musical notational marking, there is a feast of musical treasures, including the earlier versions of what later became Aufrichtige Anleitung, or “Inventions and Sinfonias” (1723), and preludes that ultimately found their home in Das wohltemperirte Clavier ( “The Well-Tempered Clavier”), Book I. The other “family” book, the Clavier-Büchlein for Anna Magdalena, from 1722, produced early versions of the first five French Suites and the Partitas in A and E Minor.

Although not directly dedicated to Wilhelm Friedemann, the first volume of Das wohltemperirte Clavier would be the natural follow-up volume for his now prodigiously gifted 12-year-old. The title of this work alone continues to raise discussion and sets temperatures at a high level in musicological circles, as it throws up two very specific questions: What is the meaning of wohltemperirte, and which Clavier should we use for this music? Quite honestly, I see little problem. The concept and tuning of an ‘equal’ tempered system were fully understood and known well before Bach’s time. Bach clearly called his book well-tempered, not equal-tempered. The search as to which “unequal” system Bach had in mind was something of a holy grail until harpsichordist Bradley Lehman determined the significance of the decoration that adorns the work’s title page. His conclusions have circulated around the internet and are hugely debated, resulting in the seemingly inevitable opposing camps of believers and nonbelievers. I am a believer. The tuning system’s simplicity and brilliance lends an amazing yet perfectly balanced set of colors to each of the keys within the cycle—the world’s first musical cycle to climb steadily through all the keys, major and minor.

The word Clavier itself is nonspecific. It can refer to almost any keyboard instrument. There are certainly many preludes that exhibit very clavichord-friendly qualities, and any of the fugues would be perfectly acceptable on the organ. Conversely, organ renderings of certain preludes are not out of the question, and the gentler fugues have a transparency on the harpsichord that would be difficult to realize on the organ. It seems, therefore, that the message of the music is the most important matter. I prefer to present this musical collection on the harpsichord. Although not as intrinsically expressive as the organ or clavichord, it forces the player to listen and express to the best of their ability.

This magical book of preludes and fugues represents the final stage in the refocusing of Bach’s life on his family and future, and particularly on his role as a teacher. Both with his sons and other pupils, seeking a basic knowledge of signs, scripting, and musical grammar learned by copying music, Bach utilized practical examples for furthering both musical and physical technique. Carl Philipp tells us that “in composition, he started his pupils right in with what was practical,” having them “begin their studies by learning pure four-part thorough bass … In teaching fugues he began with two-part ones, and so on … As for the invention of ideas, he required this from the very beginning.” Fascinating accounts of this teaching process comes from Heinrich Gerber (born 1702), who studied in Leipzig from 1724 to 1727. These reports were related to Heinrich’s son Ernst, and published by him in Leipzig in 1790. We learn that “Bach accepted him with particular kindness … At the first lesson he set his Inventions before him … there followed a series of suites, then The Well-Tempered Clavier.”

There are many analyses and technical descriptions of Book 1, but I prefer to focus on the personal nature of this music, which is a varied and wide-ranging emotional world through which the player and listener are taken on a journey. The distance is immense, from the calm harmonic purity and textural simplicity of the first prelude, to the craggy, bleak brooding world of the final, chromatically charged and unstable fugue. This work is unmistakably intended as a single journey. In this respect it connects with Bach’s later single great cycle, the Goldberg Variations, though the journeys serve very different purposes and take entirely different roads. Based around one tonality, the “Goldbergs” exhaustively explore a path within a single country, the traveler ending up where he began—although somehow totally changed. The Well-Tempered Clavier is a much more comprehensive road, long-reaching and covering all possible landscapes—and ending with little sense of resolution. Perhaps its only resolution is beginning the journey again for further diversion and instruction.

Ernst Gerber, the son of Bach’s pupil Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber, commented clearly on the special nature of The Well-Tempered Clavier for Bach as a hands-on teacher, and its conception and presentation as a single work:

“This work, Bach played altogether three times through to [Heinrich Nicolaus] with his unmatchable art, and my father counted these among his happiest hours, when Bach, under the pretext of not feeling in the mood to teach, sat himself at one of his fine instruments and thus turned the hours into minutes.”

Composed between the 1710 and 1722, Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier received its first complete Carnegie Hall performance in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on February 1, 1959, with 16-year-old Sheila Minzer, piano. The first performance at Carnegie Hall of any prelude or fugue from Book I took place in the Carnegie Lyceum (now Zankel Hall) on March 9, 1899, with eight-year-old Vladimir Shaievitch, piano, who played the Prelude in D Minor, BWV 851.


—Richard Egarr

© 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Richard Egarr, Harpsichord
Richard Egarr, acclaimed Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, is one of the most versatile musicians performing today. He has worked with all types of keyboards, and has performed repertoire ranging from 15-century organ intabulations through Dussek, and Chopin on early piano, to Berg and Peter Maxwell Davies on the modern piano. He is in great demand as a soloist, chamber musician, and conductor.

Mr. Egarr trained as a choirboy at York Minster and Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, England, and later was an organ scholar at Clare College in Cambridge. His study with Gustav Leonhardt further inspired his work in the field of historical performance.

As a conductor, Mr. Egarr has directed a wide range of repertoire, from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion to John Taverner’s Ikon of Light. Richard has directed many oratorios and operas, including Handel’s Esther, Acis and Galatea, Alcina and L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and Messiah, as well as Haydn’s The Creation, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and Dido and Aeneas, Telemann’s St. Matthew Passion, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor and St. Matthew Passion. In addition to his busy performing schedule with the Academy of Ancient Music, he worked last season with Tafelmusik Toronto, Portland Baroque, the Flemish Radio Orchestra, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. This season Mr. Egarr collaborates with the Residentie Orchestra, The Hague, Brabant Orchestra, Flemish Radio Orchestra and Choir, Collegium Vocale Ghent, and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.

Mr. Egarr has given many solo performances throughout Europe and Japan. He has appeared as a soloist with AAM, the English Concert, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Orchestra of the 18th Century, Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra, and the Netherlands Wind Ensemble.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Egarr collaborates with violinist Andrew Manze, performing music from the Stylus Phantasticus to Mozart and Schubert. They have toured extensively throughout Europe, North America, and the Far East.

Mr. Egarr’s solo output comprises works by Frescobaldi, Gibbons, Couperin, Purcell, Froberger, Mozart, and J. S. Bach. He has an impressive list of award-winning recordings with violinist Andrew Manze, including sonatas by Bach, Biber, Rebel, Pandolfi, Corelli, Handel, Mozart, and Schubert. With the Academy of Ancient Music, he has recorded the complete Bach harpsichord concertos, and an entire set of Handel discs including the Concerti Grossi, Op. 3; the Organ Concertos, Opp.4 and 7; and the Sonatas, Opp.1 and 5.