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Open Well-Tempered Clavier: a Kickstarter Campaign For Open Source Bach
rDouglass writes "The Open Goldberg Variations team has launched a new project to make an open source, public domain version of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. The work is significant because of its enormous influence on musicians and composers throughout history. A new studio recording, a new digital MuseScore score (with support for MusicXML and MIDI), as well as all source materials (multitrack WAV, lossless FLAC) will be provided as libre and gratis downloads. New to the project are publisher GRIN Verlag, as well as record label PARMA Recordings. GRIN and PARMA will produce and distribute the physical score and double CD, even though the digital versions are to be widely available and in the public domain. Their enthusiasm for the project runs counter to the general publishing and music industry's fear of digital file sharing, and shows growing momentum for finding new models to make free music commercially sustainable."
I believe you meant "libre et gratuit". :p
Why "open source" for a musical recording, why not just "public domain"?
It's because "open source" sounds cool?
The 4-CD set by Andras Schiff was the first recording I ever had to save and scrimp for, when I was still back in high school, and it's been worth every penny. I had heard one track and was told the rest was great, and it is. I'm a drummer, but listening to this recording a couple hundred times is probably responsible for any melodic and harmonic sense I may have developed at that time. I haven't heard the version referenced in TFA, but it's hard to make this music sound bad. Highly recommended in principle.
There also exists public domain recording by musopen.org, which will probably pale in comparison, but nonetheless it's great that these efforts exist.
A piano is a tremendously wonderful instrument for piano music. But this (Well-Tempered Clavier) is not piano music! You can make a decent-sounding performance of clavier music on the piano, just like you can transcribe a vocal for violin, but you lose a lot of the specific things the composer --- especially a master of the instrument like Bach --- put into the work. Basically, all intricate and fast-moving detail in a piece gets mushed up and lost on the piano, which is designed for a smoother, more "blended" sound than the clearly articulated single notes of pre-piano predecessors. Please, if you want an open cultural reference to Bach's keyboard music, play it on appropriate kinds of keyboard!
It'd be great to see a similar project for Kreutzer's violin studies...
Starving Music Student here. I trained as a performer. IU. Got graduate school funding at Cinci, Cleveland, Julliard, and Eastman. Basically the best music schools in the nation. I chose academics rather than performance, however, because of arthritis that would cripple me by age 50. But, if you were looking for a good representative of a very compentent collegiate musician, that's me. (I've also won an audition for professional 52 week symphony orchestras, but didn't take the gig because I went into academia instead -- and those are jobs with hundreds of applicants per vacency, and that's only because thousands of wannabes don't even bother sending a tape to actually win an audition)
I wouldn't dream of making a recording of key pieces in the repertory of my instrument. (Viola/Violin) Nobody would want to hear it. I sure wouldn't do something like the WTK (If I were a pianist) or the Cello Suites/Violin Sonatas and Partitas. Sure, I've performed them all more than once, and can teach them all, but I wouldn't dare put a microphone in front of me. And, I wouldn't dio it for 500 bucks. I wouldn't even take that for just one of the suites/sonatas/partitas. (It takes a long time to prepare something to that level, even though I know them quite intimately) I don't even leave my house to play at a gig for less than 150 bucks. That's a crappy wedding or a funeral. If you want me to go to a rehearsal, it's at least a hundred more. (Still cheaper than most tradesmen though)
You have obviously not rented a recording studio. Even a crappy one is expensive. Try gettting access to a really great piano for free too. Even if we have your utopia of cheapo student playing in a recital hall at their university with a crappy microphone, the student workers recording the WTK getting work/study wages, with the many hours that this would take, would cost more than 500 bucks.
TL;DR -- Starving Music Student=not good enough for people with an ear. Recording studios are expensive. It's impressive how cheaply they can do this already!
Get off my lawn.
Why would this J. S. Bach guy write any more music if people are just going to steal it?
But we all believe in Bach !
Correction, I believe it's called a fortepiano, not a piano-forte.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortepiano
Table-ized A.I.
Companies like Peters that do sell good accurate scores of Bach are so behind the times they literally cannot see the forest because the trees are still being cut down. It is entirely possible for them to distribute decent editions for sale in e-pub and the technology to put scores on e-ink could be made usable with essentially e-reader technology that is score sized instead of pocket book. I would gladly pay for a decent music e-ink reader that would work on my music stand. The information age is slogging along and eventually the real potential of digital music notation will happen. But unfortunately we still have those who have their heads up their assets in the music publishing industry.
Werner was a stickler for accurate notation and much of what is there on the historic digital archive, especially the Bach section, is very accurate. Unfortunately since his death others have corrupted what he started and some of the archive is not good or even accurate notation, however most of the Bach is excellent and done by people who understand the importance of accuracy in music notation. Many of the scores adhere to original source where ever possible. Which can be very difficult as in the time of the great champions of Bach's music during the late classical era much of Bach's sheet music had fallen into oblivion.
For instance a friend of Felix Mendelssohn actually found music scores by Bach being used by a butcher to wrap meats! So the digitizing for all time of all our great heritage of written music is as important as project Gutenberg. Werner understood this as many others do and either the existing music publishing houses will get on board or they will be a footnote in the history of written music.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
is that audiences are not interested in an academic reference recording of Bach but in the richly varied interpretations of artists each with their own gifts --- using arrangements of their own choice, instruments of their own choice, in a venue of their own choice.
It is like trying to capture Shakespeare in a bottle.
Uncork the thing and what you will get is a performance wholly typical of the acting style and staging of the year the play was recorded.
Thank you for explaining that.
No problem. Had to go AC, since I'm not about to post crap under a name that colleagues might one day find. (I'm amazed by all the coders who put things under their name)
In hindsight, I'd record the 5th Cello Suite. I have a lot of interesting ideas about it that I've been playing with for a decade. It would piss a lot of people off though.
I'm clearly not short on ego, but, just like an athlete, I do know my limitations well, hence why I would not record staples. Most good performers need to have the guts to stand in front of a group of people with the belief that what we are about to do is significant and that the audience needs to hear it. That attitude is great in live performance. It can carry an audience. Recordings don't work like that. Things have to be good on sound alone. (It's like the recent study that everyone, including the authors, misunderstood about how piano competition winners can be determined by sight alone -- forgetting the fact that they all sound good at that level. The Slashdot discussion of that was hilarious...it was as bad as me having an opinion about string theory)
Also, we don't expect our live audiences to be a discerning as the audience of a recording with headphones, multiple listens, etc... In live performances too, those who have the ability to listen at a high level are usually friends, or at the very least, are hoping for you to do well, and don't judge on screwups and just joke around with you afterwards. Normally, at that level, no one would phrase something the same way anyway, so it tends to be pretty respectful when someone tries something out differently even if it doesn't always work out perfectly. With recordings, we are all bitches, in part out of resentment that we aren't good enough to make recordings and we can hear so much more and listen again.
Shockingly few have the ability to hear well -- I think of my sister, raised in the same house as me and out professional opera singer and a professional pianist parents. She thinks collections like "100 Greatest Classics" are a really good deal, whereas I tend to think only one or two of those recordings would even be worth hearing. I guess that's why I hate nearly all boxed sets -- there's a great set of the RCA Living Stereo series that is full of just legendary performances which doesn't suck, but that's about it.
I liked the OpenGoldberg recording. Very solid (although that also means it was a little bit boring) and representative of what has become the standard interpretation. I hope the WTK will be even better!
Or variations upon a ground bass in dactyls. I have already written several over the years just to see how long one can avoid using harmonic repetition. If you get to five variations you are doing well, provided you avoid iambs in pentameter in the ground otherwise you will wind up sounding far too much like Thomas Tallis or a bad limerick being recited by a drunken Irishman!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Where do I get a cantankerous clavier?
Table-ized A.I.
What's your take on The Piano Guys?
It seems they aren't afraid to explore classical (sic) music in a more modern rendering. I'm running into more and more people who enjoy. Quite surprised how they are making some of the "greats" get more exposure.
I enjoy modern takes on old sources. Remixing has always had a long tradition in the "art music" world up until the 19th century when the cult of the author/copmposer was born and originality became the end all and be all. Mozart, for example, made a charming update on Handel's Messiah which offers a very different sort of experience that provides insights into the source. Heck, if we go back just 550 years or so, nearly all music contained a nugget from earlier works, such as using a chant melody as a cantus firmus. Things like instrumental settings of In Nomine were still going on through the end of the 17th century. In the English world, nearly everybody in the 17th century made their own arrangements of Dowland's "Flow my tears." It goes on and on.
Sometimes, the remixes are valubale in themselves and will last; others provide moments of insight for a specific moment of time, but offer little of lasting substance and will quickly vanish. A good example of the former is Emerson Lake and Palmer's Pictures at an Exhibition which is astonishing. They made something new from the old that will last. It stands on its own perfectly. By contrast, think of Enigma and their use of plainchant. I enjoyed it at the time for the glorious weirdness of juxtaposition and the contrasting values of free-flowing chant/speech rhythms with the eternal insistance of dance beats. That will probably not last. In that case, it feels as if the mixture didn't coalesce and remained two different things. However, at the time, it fit a very specific social need as we explored ideas of the mystical and the mundane, sacred and profane, and man and machine, while we integrated the connected world into our lives, as the nature of humanity seemed on the brink of seismic change. (But since we've figured out that integration, we just get on with life, recognizing that we really haven't changed much)
It seems to me like The Piano Guys are more in that second category. They are excellent at what they do and provide a great deal of fun. (part of which might be down to the sacrilege in our culture of modifying the classics) I don't think in 20 years we'll find it so interesting. There have always been modern remixes of the classics and very little of it is thought of as good today. If you can find some of the great Classical Disco fusions from the 70s and early 80s, I think you'll understand what I mean about loss of relevance.
In essence, that's the difference between servicable art and great art. The great stuff has something to say that is self-contained and can, therefore, be continuously used and appreciated, albeit reinterpreted by each generation. Most things spoke very well for their time, and are perhaps not going to last. Think of popular music. Some of the number ones from the 90s are still very good, others aren't. We enjoyed them equally well back then.
Disclaimer: Yes, I know that this binary model is flawed as most binary models are. Thousands of examples can be presented that would destroy this simple conceptual framework. I do feel it is useful, even with that caveat, when considering aesthetics beyond a "I like it/I don't like it." It's not worth someone taking the time to trash this binary opposition. We all know it has problems. (I think I've been in academia too long...)