"Open Well-Tempered Clavier" Project Complete; Score and Recording Online

rDouglass writes Open source music notation software MuseScore, and pianist Kimiko Ishizaka, have completed the Open Well-Tempered Clavier project and released a new studio recording and digital score online, under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0, public domain) license. Their previous project, the Open Goldberg Variations (2012), has shown its cultural significance by greatly enhancing the Wikipedia.org article on J.S. Bach's work, and by making great progress in supplying musical scores that are accessible to the visually impaired and the blind. The recording has also received very positive early reviews by music critics. Over 900 fans of J.S. Bach financed this project on Kickstarter.com, where a total of $44,083 was raised.

Comments

Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Unfortunately, this recording is on piano rather than one of Bach's preferred instruments. Hint: look at the title of the piece. Or, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, looking at the title of the piece doesn't help me, since a "clavier" is any keyboard instrument (including the piano). In German, "Klavier" means only the piano.

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you might project some intentions here. Bach used a clavichord most of the time but that does not automatically mean that he liked it the most. The clavichord was practical enough to be used at a writing table where one might also transcribe the music. IIRC that use of the instrument is pretty much proven for his work on the cantatas.
A modern day equivalent would be the use of an E-piano instead of let's say a Boesendorfer Model 290 while composing and arranging: the grand piano might be great for a concert hall but certainly not for your average bedroom. (And also I would not recommend putting a metal case laptop on top of it on a regular basis :-)

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[afidel]

I had the exact same thought when I went to the site. I went to Bach's childhood home and they have a number of his harpsichords including at least two in playable condition and I was lucky enough to be there on a day when they were actually playing one of them! It's a very different sound from a modern piano, though through stylized play the artist on this recording has made a modern piano sound as close as I've heard to the actual instrument that the piece was written for.

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[rDouglass]

Instruments have developed since Bach's time. It's nice to play on period instruments, but it's also nice to play on modern instruments. The equivalent of the Bösendorfer 280 on which this recording was made never existed in Bach's lifetime. Would he have liked it? Who knows, but I like it!

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[Half-pint HAL]

Indeed. You have to look at the history of music and know that the first pianos were made before the book was published. (Bartolomeo Cristofori's pianos appeared at the turn of the century, c 1700; book 1 was published in 1722.) Bach didn't back pianos until later on (Wikipedia says 1747, and I have no reason to doubt that). But it is widely held that The Well-Tempered Clavier was pivotal to the popularisation of the piano, even though it would originally have been performed mostly on harpsichord (due to the quietness of the clavichord).

Personally, I would have preferred a period-instrument version, with perhaps the piano version as a stretch goal, but there's nothing all that inappropriate in using a piano, all told.

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[RabidReindeer]

A harpsichord is quite different than a piano. A piano (pianoforte) operates by the action of key-driven hammers striking the strings. A harpsichord operates by having the keys drive a plucking mechanism instead, like picking a guitar. It makes for a very different tonal quality.

The more important issue here, however is that this is the well-tempered Clavier. Or, more accurately, the even-tempered Clavier. Earlier instruments were tuned more precisely to the key that they would be played in. Bach was showing off a new technology where instead of precise tuning, the tuning was warped just enough that you could play in any key without retuning.

So a modern piano would actually be more faithful to the sound Bach was intending than an authentic Bach-era instrument that wasn't even-tempered.

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[rivaldufus]

I'd probably argue that the sonatas (and other keyboard works) of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven really popularized the fortepiano. Mendelssohn had to help revive Bach from obscurity - so J.S. wasn't that popular. Of course, the mainstream composers knew J.S. Bach, but C.P.E. kind of eclipsed his own father for a while... partially due to be a bridge to the classical style away from Baroque. The WTC was very successful in pushing well temperament tuning, for sure - so I suppose that could be part of its enduring legacy....

It's really hard to say, at any rate. People were, to a degree, using some music on both... Beethoven suggested that the Pathetique sonata could be played on either.

I agree with you on the period instrument goal. Having played on harpsichords, clavichords, and modern pianos, I can't help but feel that piano removes some of the subtlety you get on a good harpsichord or especially on a clavichord. The touch is so different and even the fingering was quite different from modern keyboard playing. If J.S. wrote the WTC with a fortepiano in mind, he would have written quite a bit of it differently.

I suppose a piano version is certainly better than no version, though.

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[Half-pint HAL]

What is starting to bug me about this project is that the Kickstarter sold it as about making the music of Bach free, and the soloist responsible was given secondary importance, but when you go to download the music from the artist's page, the download page claims it was 'er fans wot dun it. Sure, clearly part of the deal for her was the opportunity to make more of a name for herself in a space where there are very few household names, but she's claiming that the backers and downloaders who came thanks to the "open" project are "her fans", selling herself in the name of people who are perhaps indifferent to her.

But that's also part of the "whither piano" question -- this was a vehicle for her to show her mastery, and she's a pianist, and the grand piano gives her much more opportunity to put her individual stamp on the piece than she would have had with a harpsichord. Again, it's about her. (Although it is a fantastic recording, and one I will no doubt listen to a lot.)

She might yet get stung by unexpected contractual glitches in the international market though -- it has happened before that recording artists have released material for free, only for collections agencies in certain countries to declare that their contract with the artist (pre-dating the release) gives them exclusive rights to collect royalties on the artist's recordings, making the free release a breach of contract. Messy.

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[homm2]

I like what Glenn Gould had to say about this. Late in his life, Bach reviewed a "Silbermann" piano, which may not have shared much in common with a modern grand piano, but was still an evolutionary step in that direction. In the end, the instrument met Bach's complete approval. Gould makes a number of other really good points.

Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano

[digsbo]

Oh my ears are plenty good. As a player of wind instruments and piano I'm well acquainted with the natural tendency for solo wind players to revert to pure "just tuning", which is the natural tuning that comes from octave displacement of the ratios between notes in the harmonic overtone series, as well as the other tunings.

You can tune a piano or clavier or harpsichord to whatever tuning you want, just by changing string tension. Of course older instruments in some cases lacked full chromatic keys, or even had multiple keys for the same note tuned for different scales in older tunings. But the quality of sound modern instruments produce, and the obvious dynamic range of a piano, are superior.

Whether a C# is the twelfth root of two higher than a C is irrelevant to instrument quality.

Re:Can it be used for commercial use?

[rDouglass]

The license is included in the download, and it is CC0 - public domain. Use it as you please.

Link to musescore home page

[guerby]

http://musescore.org/ Curiously missing in the article

Great performance!!

[Joey Vegetables]

I've listened to only a little so far, but it sounds extremely promising, with the phrasing, tempo, and ornamentation all being superb. Ms. Ishizaka also does an outstanding job of using the dynamic range of the piano in harmony with the music. This is perhaps among the hardest and most subjective elements of interpreting Bach's keyboard work, since, as other commenters here have noted, most of it predates the widespread adoption of the piano, and was written without its greater dynamic range and expressiveness in mind. So far, this is becoming my favorite recording of this work.

Temperament and copyright

[orgelspieler]

I don't see anything on the Kickstarter or description on the website about the temperament of the Bösendorfer on which this was recorded. I hope that they did not use a standard equal-tempered piano. That would be missing out on a great opportunity.

Also, I noticed the following on the back cover of the CD: "(C) 2015 Navona Records ... Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws." Yet at the top it says that they hope you share the music. What gives?