Johann Sebastian Bach: Sämtliche Klavierwerke IX – Fantasien, Capricci, Ouverturen & Suiten

Description

The music recorded on this double CD allows us to get a glimpse on a genius musician’s first steps in the world of composition. Johann Sebastian Bach was orphaned of both parents at a very young age; at ten he had already to find his place in the world. Fortunately, he was neither destitute nor alone; his siblings did not abandon him, and his elder brother Johann Christoph, who lived in Ohrdruf, took care of him. Taking care meant not only providing him with food and shelter, but also to enable him to earn his living. Probably, Johann Sebastian’s outstanding talent was already showing; but even had he had much more ordinary gifts, the obvious option would have been to educate him as a musician. The Bachs were musicians – performers and composers; there was such a coincidence between their family and professional musicianship that, in some zones of Germany, “ein Bach” did not mean just a brook, but also “a musician”. So, unless a Bach had some objective and unsurpassable obstacles preventing him from practising music, the path was laid before him.
Music teaching and learning took the form of apprenticeship, in the style of a Medieval artist’s workshop. Young artists worked, studied, and frequently lived with their teacher – particularly if one’s teacher happened also to be one’s brother, as in Bach’s case. There were also schools of music, like the Thomasschule where Bach himself would teach in later years; but his primary education as a musician took care under his brother’s guidance. Bach did attend a gymnasium, where his intelligence was quickly acknowledged, and where his keen cleverness found the outlet it needed. In later years, Bach would sorely regret the fact of having been unable to attend a university (something he would have deeply loved to do); and he did his best in order to secure that opportunity for his sons.
At 15, while still abundantly a teenager, Bach began to feel a) that he had probably outgrown his brother’s teaching; b) and that perhaps he had also overgrown his status as a child under tutelage. At that moment, his most effective presentation was as a keyboard performer; an art in which he already excelled. In spite of this, it was not possible for him to find immediately a job; his young age deterred particularly church employers from trusting him and his art too much. He found therefore a first job as a violinist in the court of Prince Johann-Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar, and, at 18, he impressed those who had invited him to test a new organ in Arnstadt: they offered him a place which he was happy to secure.
Very little, if anything, survives from that period. Bach certainly improvised a lot, and composed many works: for his personal musical growth and use, in order to promote his art, and for use in worship or on other public or semipublic occasions. However, if Bach’s overall published output is quantitatively minimal in comparison with his overall oeuvre, his youthful works seem not to have passed the rigid self-censorship he applied to his production.
On the other hand, however, some of his early works he did appreciate; but, following one of his constant habits, he kept revising those pieces he most prized, and so it is very difficult to pinpoint the real origin of a piece, let alone its original form.
Furthermore, matters are complicated by some other practices which were usual at his time. It was considered as perfectly legitimate to combine movements written by several composers and to create a “Suite” in the form of a pastiche work; one could arrange and restyle movements or works by another composer; finally, even with one’s own works, the score – particularly if intended for personal use – might work more as an aide memoire than as a prescriptive notation. And, of course, papers got lost, both at Bach’s own time and later.
In many cases, therefore, it is extremely difficult to establish authorship. We may lack an autograph – and this is one of the most frequent cases: we have copies which might or might not attribute the work to Bach, and are trying to establish who is the actual composer on stylistic and technical (or even physical) grounds. But Bach was a young and curious musician at the time: his own style had still to be fully defined. His mature style would show a brilliant incorporation of musical stimuli coming from all European countries and from different epochs as well. This he would do, in his later years, in an almost spontaneous fashion, showing tinges which suggest a French, Italianate, or Northern-German influence, but always mediated by his own powerful musical personality. This compositional attitude, and this voracious curiosity were already showing in his youthful years, but at times the result is not as seamlessly integrated as it would later become. The unique mark of his own talent and personality is not always discernible with absolute certainty.
Therefore, this album collects works that are unmistakably and certainly Bach’s, along with others whose authenticity has been, or still is, disputed or even denied.
Authorship is certainly Bach’s in the case of the Capriccio sopra la lontananza del fratello dilettissimo (actually the original title reads “fratro” instead of “fratello”: Bach evidently knew Latin better than Italian and creatively derived the Italian noun for “brother” from its Latin form). It is dedicated to and inspired by the same brother who had offered him a living and an education, and who was leaving Germany, following his employer, Charles XII of Sweden, who was embarking on a series of military campaigns. Johann Christoph was his court oboist, and as such had to provide music for ceremonial and martial occasions. Travelling was difficult and risky, at that time, and travelling for military purposes was certainly not safer; indeed, Johann Christoph was to die at the young age of 40, his health undermined by the discomforts and hardships of his many journeys.
It was not improper, therefore, for the people who loved him to be concerned and worried by his decision. Johann Sebastian decided to “voice” his preoccupation through a musical composition, which represents a unicum in his oeuvre inasmuch as it is a piece of genuine “program music”. Musically, it is almost certainly inspired by the Biblische Sonaten by Johann Kuhnau, who had selected episodes from Scripture and quite literally narrated them in sounds, with an abundant use of both onomatopoeias (mimicking particular aural effects) and musical rhetoric (symbolizing affections and feelings). Here we find a similar approach: onomatopoeias are found particularly in movements 5 and 6, where Bach’s brother’s departure is portrayed by means of the calls of the post horn (typically, Bach builds a fugue on it!). The whole arsenal of the Baroque depictions of grief, worry, anguish, ana pain is employed in the first four movements, where the traveler’s friends attempt to portray the various incidents which may befall him if he will undertake the perilous journey. A very idiomatic topos is the “passus duriusculus”, the bass descending chromatically: it is a quintessential figuration of musical sorrow. Possibly on that same occasion, Bach presented Johann Christoph with another Capriccio (in this case a piece closer to a fugue than to a fantasy) written in his honour, i.e. BWV 993, demonstrating the young composer’s adroit handling of the musical material.
The other works in Disk One are beautiful examples of Bach’s talent as an improviser, although not all of them are doubtlessly ascribed to his authorship. The difficulty in determining their paternity comes largely from their very nature, improvisation: in the absence of some of Bach’s typical patterns of development and elaboration of the subjects, the sole abundance of musical ideas is not sufficient to determine whether they are the work of a young Bach or of one of his contemporaries. Certainly Bach’s is the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, another extremely well-known piece by Bach and one of the first to gain acceptance and recognition on the concert stage, played by pianists in the nineteenth century. In particular, the Chromatic Fantasy is a masterly example of harmonic thought, as it wanders amongst the various keys with daring skill and perfect command. A characteristic element of this Fantasy (as of BWV 944, also recorded here) is that – revealing its improvisational roots – Bach does not specify all the notes that should be played; in some passages, he merely indicates harmonic progressions, leaving the choice of how to arpeggiate the chords to the performer. By way of contrast, BWV 904 remained largely unknown until the twentieth century, when a handful of pianists began to play it following its publication in Busoni’s edition.
Fantasia BWV 904 reveals the importance of the early Baroque and even late Renaissance tradition of the ricercare and of the organ improvisations, with Italian influences, on Bach’s style; the Fugue is somewhat atypical in its construction, but nonetheless compelling and tightly woven. BWV 906 comes from Bach’s Leipzig years (1737-8), but survives in an incomplete version; in spite of this, it is an impressive work, introduced by one of Bach’s most majestic and solemn demonstrations of creative fantasy. BWV 922 demonstrates the Latin adage repetita iuvant – but only when repetition is handed by a genius of Bach’s standing!
Among the works in Disk Two, the Suites (one of them is actually called “Partie”) BWV 832 and 823 deserve special mention, since they are practically an addendum to Bach’s so-called “French Suites”. Similar to the works collected under that title, they embody the French tradition of the keyboard Suite; BWV 832, from Bach’s Weimar years, is particularly noteworthy for its “trumpet aria”, which parallels the post-horn Air in the Capriccio; BWV 823, whose authenticity is debated, offers however a magnificent Sarabande “En Rondeau” (i.e. in a form with refrain and couplets) and a delightful Gigue in the form of a “Canarie”, a light and rhythmical dance. Both BWV 820 and 822 date probably from before 1710; BWV 822 is particularly notable for its three Minuets, which are frequently employed in keyboard teaching as a first approach to Bach. It is also somewhat atypical in its use of modulations, whose seemingly abstruse wanderings may be attributed to the young Bach’s taste for experimentation. BWV 818 and 819 are even closer to Bach’s six French Suites than 832 and 823, as they follow rather closely (in BWV 819’s case very closely) the formal model employed by Bach in his “major” suites.
Together, most of the works collected in these two CDs offer us a fascinating panorama on Bach’s early keyboard output and on how his genius, already evident in his youthful years, developed into the mature style which has conquered millions of Bach enthusiasts worldwide.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023