Fugue no. 23 in B major (Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2)

A Moment of Bach

Bach the composer, Bach the educator, Bach the church music director, Bach the scholar, Bach the instrument inventor... Johann Sebastian Bach was so many things.

In this episode, we focus on Bach the innovator of keyboard technique -- specifically, a style of playing which facilitated the complexities of the music he put on the page. Familiar with the great keyboard composers of the past, Bach built upon standard clavier technique and developed his own, which his son and his first biographer both recorded after his death. This little compilation of information on how Bach played, down to the specifics of how the fingers bent and exactly what time each finger arrived at and left each note, is a real gem. It might even be more precious to Bach performers than some of his manuscripts themselves -- because it can crack the code of how to actually play the music (or at least, to play it well). Indeed, many players of Bach nowadays owe a lot to this description of Bach's keyboard technique, not because they have necessarily read it themselves, but because all of the best music teachers have passed on its secrets over the years.

Fugue no. 23 in B major from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2, performed by Christine Schornsheim for the Netherlands Bach Society