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At my piano lesson this week, I played the first two and a half pages of the Toccata from J S Bach’s 6th Partita, BWV 830 in E minor. I have not played any Bach to my teacher before; indeed, I have not played any Bach seriously since I was about 14, when I learnt the Prelude & Fugue in D minor BWV 851 from the WTC as part of my Grade 8 repertoire. I’m not sure why Bach dropped off my pianistic radar – it’s not as if I don’t like his music, because I love it, and, if it was up to me, I would programme a whole three hours of continuous Bach for the Radio 3 Breakfast show. To me, there is nothing more enjoyable than waking up to a steaming mug of Redbush tea, a grey Burmese cat purring by my head, and a Bach Cantata or one of the Brandenburgs, or any of the keyboard music playing quietly on the radio at my bedside. Sadly, Rob Cowan, the most regular presenter of the show, favours lively orchestral music to open the show at 7am, and when I switch from argumental John Humphries on Radio 4, I often find my ears assaulted by Viennese ‘oom-pah’ music or some fussy, overblown Wagner.  (By the way, I am sure I am not alone in finding John Humphries’ recent malapropism “Peasants and phartridges” hilarious; the best part was hearing James Naughtie snorting audibly on the radio and then the pair of them dissolving into silent giggles – a case of what a friend of mine calls “laughing in church”. A great radio moment.)

Part of my revisiting of the music of Bach came about because I have recently taught two of his keyboard pieces to a couple of my older students. I did one of the Small Preludes with a student in the summer term, encouraging her to overcome her timidity and play it with a sweeping grandeur, as if she were seated at the great organ of a great Baroque church of Mitteleuropa (another of Fran’s famous “visualisations”!).  And this term Bella, who is my most advanced student, has learnt a simplified version of the first Prelude of the WTC (simplified only in that the semiquavers have been replaced with quavers and the closing phrase has been shortened), a piece she plays with wonderful colour and texture, a piece which she clearly loves. (She is opening my Christmas concert with it next weekend). Working on this piece, alongside Debussy’s Prelude from Pour le Piano, a piece which draws many influences from the Grand-daddy of them all, reminded me of how much I like the architecture of Bach’s music, his voices, and textures. It’s incredibly satisfying music to play, and requires a high degree of cerebral input, which appeals to the ‘intellectual pianist’.

A brief aside – I am no Bach purist, and will happily listen to his keyboard music played on harpsichord, organ or concert Steinway. To me, Bach was a revolutionary and an innovator: I am fairly certain he would have loved to have been able to compose for the modern piano, fully utilising all its capabilities.

The Toccata from the Partita No. 6 has a grandiose introductory section, the arpeggiated and dotted figures of the opening bar setting the tone, and style (here is another opportunity to imagine one is playing a great organ in another great Baroque church of Mitteleuropa!) before a shift in mood into a tightly-constructed three-part Fugue. Although called a Toccata (from the Italian “toccare“, to touch, and featuring lightly-fingered, fast-moving, virtuosic passages or sections to demonstrate the player’s dexterity: the third piece from Debussy’s ‘Pour le Piano’ suite is a fibrillating Toccata which requires immense fleetness of touch – I haven’t attempted it yet….), this is really a ‘Toccata and Fugue’ in the manner of the (in)famous, D-minor Toccata and Fugue. The introductory material is recapitulated at the close of the piece: the middle section is all fugue.

I played as far as bar 34, just after the subject and counter-subject of the Fugue are heard for the first time; this is all I have learnt so far (and I know this piece is going to be a long and satisfying learning process). My teacher complimented me on my playing, my phrasing and ability to highlight the ‘voices’ (I have never been keen on “monochrome” Bach-playing). We did some work on the opening measures, and then she turned to me and said “Can you explain the structure of a Fugue to me?” – and for a moment I was a 12 year old again, back in Rickmansworth, with my previous teacher, Mrs Murdoch, one of the “48” open on the music rack in front of me, a diagram of the construction of a fugue pencilled-in at the top of the page, which looked something like this:

Fugue Subject__________________________________________

______________Counter-Subject___________________________

_____________________________________Stretto___________

_______________Free Counterpoint_________________________

I managed to prevent myself from woffling about subjects, counter-subjects, stretto and suchlike to my current teacher, and admitted that I had not had to study a Bach fugue since A-level music, over 25 years ago. But as I spoke the various elements that make up the fugue in the Toccata from the BWV 830 seemed to spring out of the music before me, and as Penny asked me to identify the Subject, Answer, Counter-Subject, Codetta and so forth, I found myself playing each example as it appeared. Three pages in, and the music becomes more close-textured, and I was really enjoying this game of “hunt the Fugue”. Meanwhile, Penny was busy writing out my “homework” for me.

On my food blog, I have written about two “deconstructed pies” I recently cooked, where I took the constituent ingredients of two classic pies (steak & kidney and chicken & mushroom), and reconstructed them so that the key elements (filling, pie crust) were obvious and separate. In the same way, my teacher has set me the task of deconstructing Bach’s fugue, identifying the constituent elements and laying them out in such a way (on manuscript paper) so that each one stands alone. By highlighting each element, and writing it out in a different colour, I will be able to fully comprehend the architecture of Bach’s fugue, down to the tiniest detail, and will, I hope, know the piece intimately before I actually play it – rather like stripping out all the curlicues, traceries, columns and pediments of a great Baroque church of Mitteleuropa to see how it was built.

“I’ll start this on the way home” I thought excitedly as I left my teacher’s home and began my great trek back to south London. With a 90-minute commute in prospect, I could get quite a lot done, but tiredness overtook me by the time I reached Waterloo and I spent most of my homeward journey listening to Murray Perahia’s marvellous recording of the Partitas. In the Toccata, under his fingers, we hear great arches of sound (that Baroque church again), a lulling inner-heartbeat, and a middle section redolent of the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, with its fanciful codettas and cadenzas. This is one of the things I love about Perahia’s playing – his ability to highlight all the interior architecture, the harmonies, textures and voices. He does it with Chopin too, reminding us that Fred’s music is not just about “laahvely melodies”.

Meanwhile, as I traversed the London Transport system and considered the notes my teacher had made for me to set me on the task of mapping Bach’s landscape, with the different elements of the fugue highlighted in different colours, it occurred to me that my map of the fugue might not be so different from the London Tube map – coloured lines converging and veering off again, each with a distinct place, and role, in the construction of the whole. Just a thought….

I’m off to buy coloured pencils and a big pad of manuscript paper: I’ve got homework to do!

Explanation of a Fugue

Postscript – a note on Bach’s ornamentation:

When I played the opening measures of the Fugue for my teacher, I played “old school” mordents, the decoration beginning ON the note. This is how I was taught to play such decorations when I first encountered Bach, way back when…..  Modern scholarship (within my pianistic lifetime) suggests that a mordent should begin on the note ABOVE (thus, in the example given here, the decoration starts not on E but on F-sharp), thus creating some wonderfully crunchy harmonies and moments of tension.

Links

Bach’s Ornament Table

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Debussy – Voiles: This is one of the pieces for my students’ concert. It feels “concert-ready” to me – I hope my teacher will agree when I see her on Wednesday.

Debussy – Pour le Piano (Prelude & Sarabande): Both these pieces are at a fairly early stage, though I have made useful inroads in the last week or so. I am looking forward to having my teacher’s critical ear on them this week.

Chopin – Ballade in G Minor: I feel I’ve reached an impasse with this, partly because I over-practised it last month and ended up with a return of the tenosynovitis in my right hand. Some time away from it should renew my interest in it. It is not part of my Diploma repertoire.

Bach – Toccata from 6th Partita: It’s very satisfying to be playing Bach again after a long absence from his music. I hope my teacher will agree this piece will make a good opener for my Diploma recital. I love the intricacies of Bach – to me, playing it is like looking at the traceries of a Baroque church. I’ve only learnt two pages of this so far. Murray Perahia’s recording is a constant source of inspiration – he is so good at highlighting all the intricacies and nuances, interior architecture and harmonies, textures and ‘voices’ in the music (this is also true of his Chopin-playing).

Messiaen – Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus, no. 4: Hearing Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ recently inspired me to learn some of his piano music – and this piece is on the Diploma repertoire list. It is a strange little lullaby, shot through with premonitions of Jesus’s fate. I have done little more than read through it. Not sure how it will fit into my Diploma programme….

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One does not often have the opportunity to hear all of Beethoven’s sonatas for piano and ‘cello (nor indeed the 9 duo sonatas for piano and violin) at one sitting in a single concert. It’s something of a musical marathon, for performers and audience alike, yet it’s a fascinating  and absorbing experience because to hear the sonatas played in chronological sequence, one is offered a unique window onto Beethoven’s creative and compositional development: it is a journey through Beethoven’s life.

The Opus 5’s are a young man’s works: fresh, vibrant, colourful, energetic, humorous. They are clever and witty – take the false cadences in fast movement of the G minor sonata – but nor do they lack depth, or emotion. They also remind us that Beethoven was a fine pianist, and the Opus 5 sonatas were composed at a time when Beethoven was carving a career for himself as a virtuoso. The F Major and G Minor sonatas are works for piano with ‘cello, not the other way around, and the piano definitely gets the greater share of the virtuosity: Beethoven was clearly not going to allow himself to be overshadowed by some ‘cellist! Over and over again in these sonatas, the piano seems to lead, and the ‘cello replies.

The A major sonata, the Opus 69, is from the middle, most productive, period of Beethoven’s life; yet, it was at this time that the composer wrote his moving Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he contemplated suicide. His deafness was now acute, if not quite total. The Opus 69 marks a turning point, particularly in the variety and organisation of its thematic material, and its improvisatory nature. It was composed during the same year as the Violin Concerto and the  Opus 70 piano trios, and the completion and publication of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. It is an entirely classical sonata in its measured, well-proportioned construction, and, in contrast to the earlier sonatas, where the piano and ‘cello are, more often than not, engaged in witty musical repartee, the first movement of the Opus 69 opens with the ‘cello alone; variations of its expansive main theme and a pair of contrasting secondary motifs allow much contrapuntal and melodic interplay between the two players. This an equal sonata for cello and piano, and the material is distributed between the two instruments with perfect symmetry. And at this point, Beethoven had invented a new genre not seen again until Brahms. (Previous ‘cello sonatas were either ‘cello solos with continuo, or like the Opus 5 sonatas: piano sonatas with ‘cello obbligato.)

The final pair of sonatas, the Opus 102, dating from the beginning of the “late” period of Beethoven’s life, sit alongside the beautiful, pastoral Opus 96 violin sonata, and the last three piano sonatas – all truly miraculous works. Like the sublime Opus 110 piano sonata, these sonatas seem to inhabit another world entirely, and exude an almost transcendental spirituality. And like the Opus 96 violin sonata, and the Opus 110 piano sonata, they are imbued with a sense of “completion”, of acceptance (but most defiantly not resignation) created by a composer finally at peace with his life and his God. (As my friend Sylvia says of the Op 110, “there he was, deaf as a f—–g post, unlucky in love, and he still managed to write that!)

The last ‘cello sonata, in D major, contains a prayer in its slow movement, offering an almost Messiaenic vision of eternity: yet the final movement is a life-affirming fugue, that most stable and triumphant of musical devices, bringing us emphatically back to earth.


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“It sounds wrong, but it’s right” is something I say to my students quite regularly. And sometimes I say it to myself as well, when a ‘crunchy’ or unexpected harmony catches me out, and I have to go back and check that what I played was in fact correct.

Fairly early on in their lessons with me, my students learn about intervals, “the distance between one note and another” as it says helpfully in the tutor book I use. We play them and listen to them and describe them: a major second, a “pinched” sound, usually elicits a shriek of distaste at its dissonance; a third is pleasant, warm; a fourth, when played in different places on the keyboard, “sounds Chinese” (it sounds “medieval” to me); a fifth is a bare, open sound – it needs the middle note to form a satisfying chord; a sixth is easy on the ear; a seventh “hurts” almost as much as a second, though when converted into a dominant seventh chord, it is enjoyable, especially the sense of relief when the harmony goes “home”.

An unfamiliar, or especially crunchy harmony – and in the simple pieces (pre-grade, and Grades 1 to 2) my students are learning these are often very bare chords, formed of only two notes and are therefore far more noticeable – can bring a student up short, cause them to stop playing, go back and play that section again, thinking they have made a mistake. “It sounds wrong but it’s right” I say patiently, urging them to keep playing. Afterwards, we play “spot the interval”, and it becomes apparent that the problem was not an incorrect note, merely that the ear did not like the sound!

Saskia, who is working on ‘Tarantella’ from the Grade 1 repertoire, a rather charming, plaintive little A minor dance by Pauline Hall (she of the excellent Piano Time series), does not like the chords in the first section, which alternate between a straight A-minor tonic chord and a chord composed of A, D and E. “I can’t play it!” she grumbled at her lesson this afternoon, and then proceeded to play it perfectly, albeit somewhat tentatively. We have been trying to achieve the effect of a strummed guitar in the left hand, with soft chord changes, while the right hand melody dances moodily over the top. Going back to the score, I showed her why she did not like that A-D-E chord, and explained that it was a deliberate device on the part of the composer to create moments of tension, and delayed gratification, before the resolution comes on the next beat. “Music would be very boring if we didn’t have these crunchy harmonies and surprising moments,” I said.

It is this sense of delayed gratification that makes the Chopin Ballade I am working on (and indeed all his other music I play, or listen to), so fascinating, so suspenseful, and so utterly addictive. He forces player and listener to work hard, taking the ear on amazing harmonic journeys, to distant highways and byways, and so when it comes, the resolution, the “reward”, is all the more wonderful and satisfying. Sometimes it may sound ‘wrong’, but in Chopin’s extraordinary hands it is most definitely right.