The 2 books of the Well-Tempered Keyboard by J. S.
Bach – published at somewhat 20 years distance (1721 and 1742) – constitute one
of the rare examples of both an Encyclopedic and Pedagogic music composition.
One can easily project oneself back into the
excitement that followed the speculation of Andreas Werckmeister (1640- 1706)
as the one who had succeeded in generating a Unitarian principle of
connectivity between all 12-semitones that would be thus called "tempered
tuning". This was nothing less than a process of tonal globalization, and
it would allow – in the course of the following 2 centuries – the up and coming
of increased "lanes of diversification" that would in turn fire up
the idea of "extension" from Baroque through Classical and up to late
Romantic Esthetics. (The film industry is still intensely benefitting from it).
As the readers of this contribution most probably
know, the 2 books of the WTK were published separately and in chromatic order.
My idea to reshuffle not only the order of tonalities but also to mix the 2
books as well as the succession of forms (i.e. not keeping the initial binomial
pair of a Prelude followed by a Fugue) arose out of a series of thoughts, all
somehow bound to one conceptual evidence. Our performance practice has been and
remains thoroughly affected by many crossings of influences that cannot be
restricted to the sole principle of a "going-and-return" procedure.
To me, that means, concretely, that the equation
Reading+Playing=Performing is just – literally – "unheard" of.
So, breaking up the Encyclopedic order meant
simultaneously to propel the issue of performing into a frame that would reset
and reload the necessity of being on stage with it. (But you will notice, later
on, that this is not only about a performer’s claim).
The work would thus consist of a dialectic process
of the inheritance of substance on the one hand, and a substantial proposal of
gift on the other. I could count on some remarkable basics in order to achieve
that. First of all, a combinatorial helix of repetition, as all 12 tonalities
appear in their major and minor mode, systematically granted a prelude and a
fugue, and all this twice through the 2 volumes. I would even go as far as to
say that the mobility of material – an idea that I kept as a mantra, all the
way through this working process – popped up as a confirmation of what I had
gone through in my attempt to forward something I consider, generally speaking,
disappointing in performed music formats: the dramaturgy of presence.
Is it perhaps due to my constant and renewed
connection to performance art, theater and dance, that I consider stepping on a
stage to be stepping in the very center of the "becoming"? I remain
convinced that there is no such thing as authenticity – unless it is to adopt
an extreme stoic point of view by looking at a printed score for about 2 hours,
in total silence, or spend your life in a Library looking for evidences: both
conditions are a denial of what performance is about.
The first thing to do was to diffract the full
available material. That meant: considering the 96 works (i.e. 48
preludes and 48 fugues) as equally many short-novels, with the idea to turn
these into a musical epos. (I even thought of an analogy to opera, since the
full performance lasts for about 4 to 4 ½ hours). I knew, of course, that I
would remain bound to the specific type of narrativity that all these
compositions contain, but that, at the same time, I would be looking at
expanding and extending a "theatrical/literary" process in order to
create a matching point in regarding the history of stage and the history of
music at a comparable level. I had thus no intention to disfigure the material
(I am not so fond of the idea that one would step on stage to express
"brute anger" on rather weak items such as the condition of the
artist, the obsolescence of representation, etc. – specificity of work matters
so much more), but rather to associate a "given state" with a
"potential" one. I like to think about it as an "inclusive
critique".
As we know that, in tonal music cadences,
territoriality and "coming home" are key concepts, I decided to
associate (although it was not only about deciding or wanting: I just felt, at
some point, that there was something evidently valid in proceeding this way)
these with their own projection in History, according to the adage that
"every generation thinks the next one".
The cadence is a principle of built-up in order to
complete a sequence, granting it something like constitutional characteristics.
Territoriality on the other hand results from comparative locations with
regards to the main tonality, and the concept of "coming home" –
a.k.a. the last cadence – is granting the full journey its completeness and confirmative
dimension. As such, we could even agree that these paradigms meet somewhat the
Lutheran spirit of work and investment, and that, frankly, there is not much
more to add.
That is correct, but not to its full extent.
Performing – whether music, a theater play, or even
curating an art exhibition – is a displacement of materials, of forms and
formats, and as such an interrogation addressed to the performer’s community –
pretty much like paraphrasing one of Madonna’s titles: "justify your
Love".
I thus associated ideas inherent to the published
material with ideas that I considered relevant to its performative perspective.
(Note that I make a distinction between the two – which I even believe could be
extended to other musical formats, and opera in particular, with the following
assumption: if you consider the score as an invariant, which is the
"Sacred Rule" in the institution, the staging remains of course of a
second order. But that’s another story.)
For obvious dramatic reasons, e.g. harmonic
proximity, elasticity, resistance, the tonal discursivity established that, the
further you modulate from a given tonality, the more parsimoniously one must
use that ability in order to avoid "exhausting" territoriality.(1)
We know what this means: modulations to the 5th and
the 4th degree (the circle of fifths turning left or right)
keep the highest index of proximity with the principal tonality; the minor
second and the tritone are at the other extreme of that topology as the most
"alien" ones. As you will witness in the playing order, printed
below, I indeed reproduced these characteristics on a meta-level to the full
cycle. (By the way, this is one of the generic ideas I tend to pursue in my
work as "music dramaturg": the continuity of History through the
editing of material, and, as such, the continuity of Material by other means.)
For instance: the first part starts with a B flat
minor prelude and finishes with an E major Fugue,
which sets a tritone modulation, but one that is projected over a good 2 hours
of music. At the end of the second part, the only "direct" modulation
to the tritone is taking place (A major – E flat minor), which, at that
moment, functions indeed as the "dramatic" cadence of the complete
material, reproducing again on a larger level what we do notice as a classical
standard. Basically, all possible modulations were used – similar to the famous
series in Berg’s Lyric Suite of "integral
intervals": minor second, major second, minor third, major third, fourth,
tritone, fifth, including the somewhat Schubertian "Moll-Dur"
modulation. (See for instance the repeated spots on A flat major and minor in
the first part).
But, with all this, the key question remains: how
did this particular (new) order emerge? I must say that this has been a
progressive process, with at the beginning "local" decisions on short
edits, trying to match textures and surfaces – eventually rethinking speed and
articulation in function of what these could produce in terms of congregations
and proximities. For those of the readers who are acquainted with the scores,
it will speak for itself that some of these do point at and contain Gothic
harmonies (5-part fugue in C sharp minor), Classic
Enlightenment style (prelude in D major), "speculative"
counterpoint (fugue in B flat minor), etc. In the course of a long
tradition of rhetoric and agogic, I remained attentive to, for instance, the
"breathing in and out" of the longer sequences. At some point, I
decided to transgress the symbolism of the double bar by starting to connect
preludes and/or fugues without stops, remaining in one tonality for a while in
order to induce yet another sensation of tonal duration, and by doing so
suggesting another view on Classical frames, indeed producing another view on
framing altogether.
The performers among us will certainly recall
"body-memories" of energy flow and long-term breathing when it comes
to designing a big arch that will eventually feed the attempt of grasping a
whole prelude or fugue in a few giant paces. Well, it occurred to me that, at
certain conditions (but thinking about conditions that are required to achieve
specific goals regarding performance seems to me essential), the final cadence,
i.e. chord, would contain enough resilience that I would, for instance, use
that remaining energy of a closing gesture as an upbeat for an opening one. I
remember having thought of the recitativo-aria module, where there is no such
thing as a clear, unambiguous end, but rather a "potlatch" of
giving-receiving material to carry on with. If you’re looking for a
famous example of the matter – and not at all connected to
Bach – just watch the opening scene (again) of Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001, A Space Odyssey. It ends with the beginning of
Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, one of the strongest
cadential progression ever written, and yet, just to say: "you know, and
this is just a beginning"…
It was by inquiring further into building this
meta-level of harmony, tonality and form, that I had the feeling I was
increasingly more busy with the idea of "staging" the material than
thinking of "playing" it. If you take a close look at the current
playing order (which I never regard as final), you will notice that there is an
idea of tonal regions that might not be instantly noticed while listening, yet
"doing something" on a level I’d like to consider Urban. For
instance: the tonalities of F and A (major
and minor) do not appear in the first part, whereas F sharp and C
sharp are absent in the second (on the noticeable exception of the
prelude in F sharp major). Now, as I am starting and finishing the
cycle with the B flat minor prelude (which I chose for its
association with a "walking pace" – and consequently played at
approx. 60 for a crotchet), the tonality of E flat is
following/preceding it in the conventional way, as if it were about
"leaving the church in the middle of the village". But, if the
beginning is clearly set on "reasonable" modulations (B flat – E
flat – H major – E major – etc., i.e. fifths in sequential pairs), at
the very end we are in a rather "blurred" situation, going from F
sharp major to A, then via F back to A.
At that point, the "break-up" A major – E flat minor is
reinforced by the rather high speed of the fugue in A (which I
play at about 110 for a dotted crotched), as well as emphasizing the
binary/ternary beat. The last chord of that fugue is cut abruptly, followed by
the E flat and B flat (i.e. D
sharp and A sharp), which I leave to resonate as if these
were the brass players in Siegfried’s death.
This extended oscillation of time and duration –
clearly exceeding the reasonable Time concepts of Bach – was, for me, somehow
the conceptual key to the "interface" between score and performance,
which I even decided to emphasize by having the audience seated around the
instrument – the chairs being placed almost as if these would reproduce the
shape of the grand piano. (The picture below shows the empty space during the
tuning session).
