Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Lists of Figures, Tables, and Music Examples
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword by Hans Davidsson
- Introduction
- Part One Source Studies
- Part Two Performance Practice Studies
- Appendix Friederich Conrad Griepenkerl’s Preface to J. S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (1819)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
4 - J. S. Bach and the Clavichord: A Reception History of a Technique
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Lists of Figures, Tables, and Music Examples
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword by Hans Davidsson
- Introduction
- Part One Source Studies
- Part Two Performance Practice Studies
- Appendix Friederich Conrad Griepenkerl’s Preface to J. S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (1819)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
Keyboardists can be heard, who after torturous trouble have finally learned how to make their instrument sound loathsome to an enlightened listener. Their playing lacks roundness, clarity, forthrightness, and in their stead one hears only hacking, thumping, and stumbling.
—C. P. E. BachBach’s Clavichord Technique
In this chapter, as in chapter 2, reception history is used as a tool to follow the reception of an abstract concept (rather than reception of a “musical work”) through time. Was the clavichord central to J. S. Bach’s technique and, if so, how? There are many good modern surveys of keyboard technique, and many treatises dating from the late Baroque. Some of them will be discussed here, but many of them will not, because our focus is on the immediate Bach family and instruments as close to that family as possible. Of all of Bach’s children C. P. E. Bach was the great proponent of the clavichord, not only in his own writings but also in accounts of his contemporaries. Johann Friedrich Reichardt wrote about C. P. E. Bach in 1774:
Bach’s manner of playing would not have been devised without the clavichord, and he devised it only for the clavichord. But he who once masters this instrument plays the harpsichord quite differently from those who never touch a clavichord.
Bachs Spielart konnte ohne Clavier gar nicht erfunden werden, und er hat sie auch nur fürs Clavier erfunden: derjenige aber, der diese einmal inne hat, der spielt auch ganz anders den Flügel, als jener, der nie ein Clavier berühret.
It is clear from the context in Reichardt’s original letter that “Clavier” refers to the clavichord. The prceding sentence reads: “Die Italiäner haben nie das Clavier bey sich im Gebrauch gehabt, sondern bedienen sich allein des Flügels” (The Italians have never used the clavichord, but rather use only the harpsichord). The wing-shaped harpsichord, the Flügel, was more popular than the clavichord in eighteenth-century Italy, although he exaggerates when he says the clavichord never existed there. According to Reichardt, C. P. E. Bach’s technique is closely related to the clavichord. The question remains whether his father’s was equally closely related.
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- Information
- Bach and the Pedal ClavichordAn Organist's Guide, pp. 69 - 88Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004