#41: Autechre, "Draft 7.30"
Autechre, Draft 7.30, released 2003 by Warp Records

1) Xylin Room
2) IV VV IV VV VIII
3) 6ie.cr
4) Tapr
5) Surripere
6) Theme of Sudden Roundabout
7) Vl Al 5
8) P.:ntil
9) V-proc
10) Reniform Puls

It an obvious thing to state that any work of art -- particularly temporal or sequential media -- must strike a balance between predictability and unpredictability. And it may also be apparent that just as too much of the former can become boring, so can too much of the latter; a surfeit of unpredictability becomes randomness, which is, ultimately, not terribly interesting.

Most of Draft 7.30 consists of experiments in digital percussion and stilted rhythms that become boring real fast. The sounds they come up with are always neat to listen to, but they're presented as such a mess that instead of sounding exciting and fresh the tracks come of as what amounts to electronic dirt -- a disappointment compounded by the fact that in most of the tracks, that dirt is all there is; unlike their earlier albums, which offer a (generally) pleasing contrast to their synthetic beats, there's almost always nothing to listen to but Autechre's empty mastery of their technology.

I do like "V-proc", which strikes the right balance, featuring a solid dub-influenced backbeat on top of which another rhythm dances and jerks and under which float soft tones. And I enjoy "Surripere", which is a lovely ambient piece that also features a placid cloud of tones against a gentle but propulsive beat (and is reminiscent of Signer, which may or may not have meaning to you).

But for the most part, starting with Confield, Booth and Brown seem to have abandoned what made their earlier works more compelling for me: the contrast of superficially incompatible ideas to form fascinating wholes, if not always coherent ones[1]. With their rejection of something solid and stable against which to juxtapose instability, their compositions sound like poetry written in a language they don't want you to learn, the sneer of an in-joke they don't want you to get.
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(1) Not to mention that their abandonment of stable beat patterns robs their music of any sort of physical impulse (and of any danceability), which served as a nice counterpoint to the heavy abstraction of their ideas.

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#42: "autumnature"
autumnature, released 2001 by autumn records

01) colongib - move bed here
02) jet jaguar - there's a choice we're making
03) lackluster - 31/10/99
04) hrvatski - gemini (early)
05) fizzarum - torsion
06) bauri - tummy
07) i am robot and proud - the snowstorm: two moods
08) kettel - barsevoice
09) cex - good will sidis
10) zammuto - feedbag
11) ml - intl bidniss mgmnt
12) asterisk - sea green and cyan
13) marumari - atlantic
14) lexaunculpt - little bear sounds

autumnature is a collection of techno and electronica put together by greg davis[1] (featured here as asterisk), basically music by friends and people he knows. It's a neat collection, though I have to admit that much of it sounds a bit dated by now. It's full of boopy, bubbly tracks that are pleasant to listen to, but that ultimately feel a bit too bland to really stick. ("the snowstorm: two moods" and "atlantic" are really insipid.)

There are certainly highlights, though:

hrvatski's "gemini (early)" opens with a shrill, piercing electronic whine that's pretty harsh to listen to, like a seagull's cry sharpened; it quickly gives way to a more gentle murmuring...and then comes back in a totally different context that transforms it into something gorgeous.

bauri's "tummy" is a cute, soothing piece with some lovely use of loops.

cex's "good will sidis" is my favorite track, which uses its pitched elements as a foundation for an amazing use of sampled percussion, somehow turning its beat patterns into an incredibly moving melody.

zammuto's "feedbag" is a fun piece in which a nervous, boingy melody bounces over the cracks and pops of faulty wiring and equipment, kind of like the ball in a roulette wheel.[2]

asterisk's "sea green and cyan" is another peaceful work, split into two halves. In the first, soft, cloudy tones dance around over a simple rhythmic pattern; both become fragmented and mixed around, as if one were able to apply the "shuffle" function to not tracks but each second of a track. Eventually the shuffling fades and is replaced by a lovely, simple, guitar melody, that's eventually joined by out-of-phase copies of itself.

It's a nice CD, and I'm glad to own it[3], in particular because of the aforementioned tracks. Most of it is ideal music to do something else to, which is not great praise, but praise nevertheless.
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(1) Who I met as a fellow Master's student in composition at NEC.

(2) Nick Zammuto, Williams Class of (I believe) '99, now of The Books.

(3) 500 copies exist; I got one of the first!

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#43: J. S. Bach, "The Musical Offering"
Johann Sebastian Bach, The Musical Offering, released 1996 by Virgin Classics
performed by Ensemble Sonnerie

The Musical Offering BWV 1079
I. Ricercar a 3
Canon perpetuus super Thema Regium

II. Canones diversi super Thema Regium
Canon 1. a 2 (cancrizans)
Canon 2. a 2 Violini in Unisono
Canon 3. a 2 per Motum contrarium
Canon 4. a 2 per Augmentationem, contrario Motu "Notulis crescentibus crescat Fortuna Regis"
Canon 5. a 2 (Canon circularis per tonos) "Ascendente Modulatione ascendat Gloria Regis"

III. Ricercar a 6
Canon a 2. Quaerando Invenietis
Canon a 4

IV. Sonata sopr'il Soggetto Reale
Largo
Allegro
Andante
Allegro
Canon perpetuus

(V. Ricercar a 6)

Honestly, there's nothing I can tell you about any of Bach's pieces that hasn't been more thoroughly researched by somebody smarter than I am, so instead I'll mostly be using these pieces as a starting point for a bunch of related (and hopefully interesting) issues in performance practice and musicology.
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I probably don't need to give you too much of an introduction to J. S. Bach. Many of us still consider him the greatest composer there's been, most notably in his amazing ability to integrate the horizontal and vertical aspects of highly contrapuntal music. In plain English, that means being able to write a piece filled with many independent melodies that are beautiful when heard alone, but when played simultaenously combine and harmonize in unimaginably[1] lovely ways.

Though he worked in many styles, Bach's signature form is the fugue, the crux of which is the "subject", which is generally stated alone (by one "voice") to begin the piece. After this statement, another voice joins, restating the subject but in a different key while the first voice accompanies with a "countersubject"; then another joins in (in either another key or the original), etc., until you usually have three or four voices chugging along, all presenting the subject, countersubject, or a brief accompanying figure. Often, the subject will be presented in myriad forms simultaneously: upside-down, backwards, sped up, slowed down, also in all different keys. It makes for an incredibly complex structure to control; even more so with a highly chromatic subject -- that is to say, one with lots of notes outside the original key.

In summary, it's wicked difficult to create a fugue that just follows the simplest rules correctly, let alone the more challenging ones, and sounds good.

So the story of The Musical Offering goes, Frederick the Great challenged Bach to write a six-part fugue on an insanely complicated theme written by the King himself. Bach fulfilled not only that request, but presented a slew of pieces written on "The Royal Theme", including a few riddle canons[2] -- perhaps intended as a challenge in response.
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This recording is made by an early music ensemble, Ensemble Sonnerie, on period instruments and possibly even with period tuning. That is to say, it's performed on 18th-century instruments; harpsichord, viola da gamba, oboe da caccia, etc., with 18th-century musical inflection.

My understanding is that the idea of historically accurate performance came into prominence in the early 20th century, a movement led by harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. Before then most musicians, when confronted with an older piece of music, simply played it with a modern..."accent", if you will, on modern instruments. Landowska was one of the pioneers of reproducing performance practice, performing music as it would have been when it was first written.

The very idea of "authenticity" in performance is a fraught one, however. Early music ensembles seek to present music as it would have been heard by its contemporaries -- and while I think that's an admirable goal, and I very much respect them and their work, it's also a fundamentally impossible task.

For Bach's audience, his music was living, contemporary, and vital. But in modern times, playing Bach's music on period instruments intractably presents it as a historical artifact, a cultural reconstruction...which Bach's audiences could never have perceived his music as. The very attempt to play his music as it was centuries ago precludes it from being experienced as it was centuries ago.

More importantly, though, any attempt at understanding other societies will always be colored by our own; the lenses through which we examine others will always put something of ourselves into our perceptions and the conclusions we draw from them. More succinctly, the study of a culture cannot but be as much about ourselves as it is about the culture we study.

That's not to say early music societies and groups are bunk; far from it, I consider it a valuable thing to preserve and present historical performance practice. But it's no more or less valid to perform Mozart's, or Beethoven's, or Monteverdi's music with a carefully read period interpretation than to perform it with a carefully read modern interpretation.
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(1) Thankfully, we don't have to imagine them.

(2) In which performers are presented with a melody, and have to figure out how to play it against itself (staggered in time, or in different keys, or slower or faster) to make a pleasing canon. These are generally accompanied with some sort of hint.

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#44: J. S. Bach, "6 Suites For Unaccompanied Cello"
Johann Sebastian Bach, 6 Suites For Unaccompanied Cello, released 1983 by CBS Masterworks
Yo-Yo Ma, cello

DISC 1

Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007
1) Prélude
2) Allemande
3) Courante
4) Sarabande
5) Menuett
6) Gigue

Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, BWV 1010
7) Prélude
8) Allemande
9) Courante
10) Sarabande
11) Bourrée
12) Gigue

Suite No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011
13) Prélude
14) Allemande
15) Courante
16) Sarabande
17) Gavotte
18) Gigue

DISC 2

Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008
1) Prélude
2) Allemande
3) Courante
4) Sarabande
5) Menuett
6) Gigue

Suite No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009
7) Prélude
8) Allemande
9) Courante
10) Sarabande
11) Bourrée
12) Gigue

Suite No. 6 in D Major, BWV 1012
13) Prélude
14) Allemande
15) Courante
16) Sarabande
17) Gavotte
18) Gigue

I own almost no solo music that isn't for keyboard; most such pieces fail to grab me because they necessarily lack the things I find most compelling in music: counterpoint, intertwining melodies and rhythms, interplay between voices, and rich harmonies. As a corollary, I've only written one piece for solo instrument, which I think is only moderately successful at best (though its premiere was my first public performance). To be blunt, I usually get bored listening to solo pieces because I feel like not enough is going on. However...

Bach's Cello Suites (like most of his music) are considered masterpieces of classical music in general, let alone solo repertoire. Through careful use of timbre and separation of register, he makes a single cello sound like many, as many melodic parts and their accompaniments are woven together into a single instrument[1]. Obviously, the biggest difficulty for the performer is to delineate all these different voices while still maintaining unity of vision and concept[2].

Incidentally, in contrast to his other collections of suites, this one appears to have been conceived of as a set of six, as evidenced by the fact this is the only "collection" which such consistency in the ordering and types of dances.

This is one of Bach's few signature pieces for which no autograph manuscript[3] exists; performers must base their interpretation on the imperfect source they trust most -- and it will always be unclear what markings in a particular manuscript are Bach's and which are somebody else's. Seeing as how even definitively notated Baroque music already requires a lot of interpretation, this is an interestingly thorny situation.
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I may be wrong on this, but my understanding is that notation was still being standardized during the Baroque era. Lots of elements that were universal by the mid-1700s and which are crucial to properly playing a piece of music were often absent, inconsistent, and/or vague at best. For example, you were given at most one dynamic marking and one tempo marking, and had to decide on your own whether or not to vary either. Articulations -- staccato, tenuto, legato -- are simply not present; and standard practice (I believe) must be inferred from descriptions of performances. How a wind or brass player should breathe, or a string player should bow can be critical to how a melody is expressed...and is totally unaddressed.[4]

A mild addition to the confusion is that Baroque music includes markings that indicate specific flourishes, particular kinds of ornaments to the notes above which they appear. Nobody knows for sure what they mean, though -- again, it was assumed that anybody worthwhile knew what they signified, so there are no lookup tables from the era. Also, improvisation was a much larger part of everyday performance than it is today, so what might initially seem like a fairly plain piece of music might be intended simply as a "lead sheet", a starting point the performer was expected to elaborate on.

In short, Baroque composers assumed that performance practice was so universal and widespread that most people just knew what to do, or could figure it out with a minimum of fuss. Perhaps it's not until posterity became an issue that composers became much more concerned with communicating clearly with future generations of performers[5].

Where does that leave us? What I imagine described by future musicologists as "Standard 20th-Century Baroque Reconstruction" is today's norm; there are modern standards for performing Bach that most people adhere to, codified rules that address the uncertainties I've described above. No one can really know how authentic those rules are; but honestly, music played with those rules sounds pretty damn good.
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(1) Bach has another famous set of solo pieces, his Violin Partitas -- which I've stayed away from because I don't particularly like the sound of the violin.

(2) I suppose that's a goal of most performances, but I imagine it's particularly difficult in this instance.

(3) A manuscript that we know was written by the composer.

(4) A Shakespeare play is a good analogy, in which you have the words and characters and very little else; to bring it properly to life, much more needs to be done than simply reproducing what's on the page.

(5) Notation has gotten more and more specific over the centuries; I imagine that each generation of composers looks back at earlier music, gets confused about something unclear or assumed to be implicit, and resolves to be as explicit as possible.

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#45: J. S. Bach, "The Art of the Fugue" (excerpts)
Johann Sebastian Bach, Excerpts from The Art of the Fugue, released 1997 by Sony Classical
Glenn Gould, keyboards

The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080 (excerpts)
Glenn Gould, organ

1) Contrapunctus I
2) Contrapunctus II
3) Contrapunctus III
4) Contrapunctus IV
5) Contrapunctus V
6) Contrapunctus VI
7) Contrapunctus VII
8) Contrapunctus VIII
9) Contrapunctus IX

The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080 (excerpts)
Glenn Gould, piano

10) Contrapunctus I
11) Contrapunctus II
12) Contrapunctus IV
13) Contrapunctus IX
14) Contrapunctus XI
15) Contrapunctus XIII
16) Contrapunctus XIV (unfinished)

17) Prelude and Fugue, BWV 898

The Art of the Fugue can be seen as a summary of everything Bach knew about counterpoint. One of his last (and unfinished) works, the pieces within are arranged in rough order of simplest to most complex -- though that's more a relative than objective measure. Each fugue contains the simple subject outlined in the first, although often altered (though still recognizable). As the piece progresses, Bach introduces double and triple fugues[1], and even totally amazing mirror fugues, which can be played upside-down[2] as well as right-side-up. The final, unfinished Contrapunctus XIV is an unprecedented quadruple fugue, which famously is accompanied by the (possibly apocryphal) story[3] that Bach died just after introducing his own name[4] to the piece.

It's my understanding that the score for The Art of the Fugue does not specify instrumentation; that it was conceived of in the abstract[5], left to performers to decide on what instrument to best realize it. A few interpretations are for some sort of chamber ensemble (baroque and otherwise); most are on a keyboard of some sort or another; organ, harpsichord, or piano. This particular set of recordings features the maximally idiosyncratic Glenn Gould[6] playing much of The Art of the Fugue on organ, with a few selections on piano.

Perhaps this is a bias that stems from my musical training, but I've always felt that Bach is best done on piano. The piano has the ideal blend of punctuation, blend, and dynamic control to allow Bach's highly contrapuntal textures Bach creates to be heard either as complete wholes or as a collection of individual, intertwined voices, each isolatable by the ear. When I hear Bach played on the harpsichord, the buzzy indistinctness of its timbre creates too much noise and distortion to really convey the intricacy of Bach's music. With its clarity and sustainability of tone the organ is better-suited than the harpsichord, but its limited ability to distinguish one voice from another makes it less easy to pick them out. And somehow, a chamber group (or string quartet, or what have you) performing his fugues feels like cheating -- perhaps part of the allure of his fugues is how damn hard it is for a single performer to carefully and delicately balance the acoustics of multiple voice, as well as live up to the technical demands of the pieces.

Apparently, Gould's recordings on the organ were fairly universally reviled by critics and organists, but I really like them. His performances are stately and majestic, with the amazing lucidity and rhythmic genius for which Gould was admired[7]. Oddly, his recordings on piano sound a little pale and plodding, somewhat lifeless. He does make the fascinating and uncharacteristically dramatic decision to play the Contrapunctus XIV at full volume to the very end, so that the point at which Bach stopped writing sounds sudden and jarring; most performers decide to fade out towards the end, but this seems more honest and real, a nod to the suddenness of death.
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(1) Fugues that include multiple subjects; generally the opening subject will be introduced and developed, the second will be introduced, developed, and then developed in counterpoint with the first subject, etc.

(2) Not by literally turning the score upside-down, but by doing the exact opposite of the right-side-up fugue; going up five steps when the original says to go down five steps, and vice versa.

(3) Which was used by Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach to illustrate a key point of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, that usefully powerful mathematical systems can always be broken by recursion.

(4) In the German musical alphabet, B is what we know as B-flat, H is B-natural.

(5) Because it was not conceived of within the limitations of a specific instrument, it may not necessarily be playable on any instrument without some adjustments.

(6) On whom more in later reviews.

(7) And Gould's Contrapunctus IX is totally fucking badass.

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#46: J. S. Bach, "English Suites"
Johann Sebastian Bach, English Suites BWV 806-811, released 1994 by Sony Classical
Glenn Gould, piano

DISC 1

Suite No. 1 in A Major, BWV 806
1) Prélude
2) Allemande
3) Courante I
4) Courante II
5) Double I
6) Double II
7) Sarabande
8) Bourrée I
9) Bourrée II – Bourrée I da capo
10) Gigue

Suite No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807
11) Prélude
12) Allemande
13) Courante
14) Sarabande – Les agréments de la même Sarabande
15) Bourrée I
16) Bourrée II – Bourrée I da capo
17) Gigue

Suite No. 3 in G minor, BWV 808
18) Prélude
19) Allemande
20) Courante
21) Sarabande – Les agréments de la même Sarabande
22) Gavotte I (ou la Musette)
23) Gavotte II – Gavotte I da capo
24) Gigue

DISC 2

Suite No. 4 in F Major, BWV 809
1) Prélude
2) Allemande
3) Courante
4) Sarabande
5) Menuett I
6) Menuett II – Menuett I da capo
7) Gigue

Suite No. 5 in E minor, BWV 810
8) Prélude
9) Allemande
10) Courante
11) Sarabande
12) Passepied I (en Rondeau)
13) Passepied II – Passepied I da capo
14) Gigue

Suite No. 6 in D minor, BWV 811
15) Prélude
16) Allemande
17) Courante
18) Sarabande – Les agréments de la même Sarabande
19) Double
20) Gavotte I
21) Gavotte II – Gavotte I da capo
22) Gigue

"All of Bach's pieces have elements of dance." This is one of the most striking things one of my piano teachers told me, and it's something that's always foremost in my mind when I listen to and play Bach. I think one of the reasons my teacher's advice has always stuck with me is that devoted study of rhythm is generally neglected in classical musical pedagogy and analysis.

Even though Bach worked primarily in the dance form, when discussing his music people often overlook his incredible sense of rhythm, the kinetic energy and physical ecstasy that pervades his pieces. From what I've encountered, most people tend to talk about headier things: the exquisite balance of melody and harmony in his pieces, his sense of counterpoint, the towering intellectual constructions that are his fugues. All of that is valid, for sure -- but it ignores an incredibly crucial element of Bach, and of music in general.

Let's take a stab at loosely defining "rhythm". The most obvious definition is that rhythm is a series of relationships of durations of sounds; these durations are generally[1] (though not limited to) binary subdivisions of a "master" pulse (whole-note, half-note, quarter-note, etc). It can manifest itself in other, subtler ways: in the speed of harmonic changes, differing phrase lengths, changing section lengths.

Instrumental training is generally focused on technique, and justifiably so; just being able to play the right pitches in tune is a task that requires terrific devotion and concentration to do well. Reading rhythms is certainly taught, but for the most part I think it's assumed that a strongly internalized sense of rhythm just kind of happens. It doesn't really work out that way, though; it's surprising how many classically trained musicians have difficulty with playing even mildly complex rhythms in correct time (myself included, unfortunately). Even something as simple as a basic syncopation or a triplet can be an adventure.

Meanwhile, music theory concentrates on scales, chords, keys, and so forth...music theory provides a powerful analytical framework for talking about pitch relationships and so detailed analysis tends to focus mostly on pitch and harmony. Put another way, music theory provides allows us to discuss not only pitch but its context (chords, keys) and metacontext (modulations) that transmits meaning.

No such framework exists for rhythm[2]. Part of the problem is that rhythmic units do not exist without context. In pitch analysis, an A4 is indisputably a tone that sounds at 440 Hz; though a note may sound different depending on the notes that surround it, there is an absolute ruler against we can measure it. A pitch in isolation still has meaning. On the other hand, rhythm is solely about our perception of relationships between durations. There is no such thing as a quarter note in isolation; and a quarter note will sound entirely different depending on whether it's surrounded by eighth-notes, half-notes, a mixture of them, etc., etc. Without a trustworthy measuring stick, it's very difficult to talk about the more complex contextual aspects of rhythm with confidence and clarity.

As we can see, this problem is already incredibly thorny even if we only consider the simplest elements of rhythm. While we can catalog the elements of rhythm, we don't really know how to integrate that information into an understandable whole because rhythm is only heard, and we can't really meaningfully discuss how we hear things. As for the subtler elements I mentioned in my perfunctory definition, those are even harder to talk about because they involve relationships of durations between things that are themselves very abstract and hard to define, and operate on a whole host of other axes.

On yet another tangent, I would argue that part of the reason so much mid-20th century music lacks a real sense of rhythm is the fact that the majority of composers were steeped in academia, and were trying to write music worthy of deep harmonic analysis, worthy of the tools they had been trained to use...and totally ignored the rhythmic aspects of music[3].

That's not entirely true, of course. But what attempts they made at incorporating rhythm into their compositional styles seem quaint at best, lacking a real understanding of how we perceive rhythm. For example...I find Messiaen's use of palindromic rhythms (same backwards and forward) deeply flawed because his conception of them was based on durations, whereas what we really hear are attacks. Boulez and Babbitt tried serializing rhythm as they did pitch, putting together "sets" of 12 different durations or beat patterns -- which also strikes me as predicated on a misunderstanding because while pitches are easily delineated into 12 categories (the chromatic scale), rhythms are most certainly not.

More succinctly, their fault lay in treating rhythm as something abstractable, like pitch.

Interestingly, exposure is a much more reliable method of transmitting rhythmic information than music notation. I think that for most musicians, reading rhythm off of the page is much more difficult than duplicating something they've already heard...whereas I believe the opposite is true for melody. Maybe it's because pitch notation is an abstraction of something absolute, whereas music notation for rhythm is an abstraction of something that's already nebulous, something that's defined only in terms of its relationship to itself.

Anyhow, I've wandered far afield and mostly at random, and probably not terribly coherently. The upshot is that Bach was a master of rhythm as well as pitch. But because we don't have a good way of talking about the former, most people just talk about the latter. Even centuries after the fact, there's a shockingly large gap in the analytical tools we have, in that we don't know how to properly discuss one of the most basic and fundamental aspects of music.

In summary, for all the talk of Bach's harmonic genius and his command of counterpoint, we can't forget another important fact about his compositional skills:

Bach totally grooves.
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(1) In Western music.

(2) That's not entirely true; I can think of a few composers who outlined new approaches to rhythm in great detail. However, I wouldn't say that they managed to find a way to codify it.

(3) Of course, much of their music features complex relationships of durations. But that's not rhythm! That's just density, noise.

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#47: J. S. Bach, "French Suites"
Johann Sebastian Bach, French Suites BWV 812-817, released 1972/1986 by CBS Masterworks
Glenn Gould, piano

Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812
1) Allemande
2) Courante
3) Sarabande
4) Menuet
5) Menuet II
6) Gigue

Suite No. 2 in C minor, BWV 813
7) Allemande
8) Courante
9) Sarabande
10) Air
11) Menuet
12) Gigue

Suite No. 3 in B minor, BWV 814
13) Allemande
14) Courante
15) Sarabande
16) Menuet – Trio – Menuet da capo
17) Anglaise
18) Gigue

Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, BWV 815
19) Allemande
20) Courante
21) Sarabande
22) Menuet
23) Gavotte
24) Air
25) Gigue

Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816
26) Allemande
27) Courante
28) Sarabande
29) Gavotte
30) Bourrée
31) Loure
32) Gigue

Suite No. 6 in E Major, BWV 817
33) Allemande
34) Courante
35) Sarabande
36) Gavotte
37) Polonaise
38) Menuet
39) Bourrée
40) Gigue

Like the English Suites, the six French Suites are dance suites for keyboard, though smaller in scope. Also like the English Suites, the appellation was added by scholars well after Bach's death. Honestly, it's not clear to me how historians decided that these suites were part of a "family", but there it is.

I find the French Suites less compelling than the English Suites. The pieces seem more like diversions, bagatelles; they feature less of what attracts me to Bach's music -- the rigorous counterpoint and complex interplay of voices. Much of the music is much more straightforward in terms of delineation of melody and accompaniment, and so the exhilarating blurring of foreground and background which is so often a part of Bach's music is much less present here.

The minor-key suites are more attractive to me than the major-key suites; I find this tendency to be true of much of my musical taste[1]. Often, the major mode seems trite to my ear and limited in scope; the minor mode offers much more possibilities, both emotionally and harmonically. In fact, according to the dictates of traditional harmony, there are more notes in the minor key, as the sixth and seventh scale degrees can exist in either of two forms[2]; that ambiguity means much more opportunity for surprise and invention.

As well, for some reason, when a chord a listener expects to be minor is actually major[3], it sounds like the "new" chord is leading somewhere; but if the listener expects a major chord and receives a minor one, it usually sounds clumsy and dumb, somehow. Because minor chords take on prominent roles in a minor key, one can substitute major chords for them with greater effect.

As an aside, what is now formalized as music theory was still being codified in Bach's day. The major/minor distinction had pretty much replaced the older system of modes, but musicians still weren't really sure whether minor keys were "valid"[4]. It's my understanding that this led to one of the most recognizable tics of Baroque music, in which a piece in minor key ends on a major chord -- a device known as the Picardy Third -- because composers simply didn't know if it was acceptable to end a piece on a minor chord[5][6]. With that in mind, some modern performers of Baroque music -- such as Glenn Gould -- treat the Picardy third as optional, and sometimes end a minor piece on a minor chord although the composer has called for a major one...a decision I support, as the Picardy third deeply annoys me; it always seems like a non-sequitur.
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(1) It's my understanding that Bach felt similarly.

(2) For example, in a piece in A minor, F-natural, F-sharp, G-natural, and G-sharp are all technically in the key.

(3) i.e., what "should" be a D minor chord is actually a D major chord.

(4) In fact, 20th-century composer Paul Hindemith denied that minor keys were a tenable part of "proper" music theory, and never used them in his music.

(5) The Picardy Third is not limited to the ends of pieces, however.

(6) This may also have been a publisher's decision; it's difficult to tell, sometimes.

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#48: J. S. Bach, "Goldberg Variations"
Johann Sebastian Bach, Goldberg Variations BWV 988, released 1955/1992 by Sony Classical
Glenn Gould, piano

1) Aria
2) Variatio 1 a 1 Clav.
3) Variatio 2 a 1 Clav.
4) Variatio 3 a 1 Clav. Canone all'Unisono
5) Variatio 4 a 1 Clav.
6) Variatio 5 a 1 ovvero 2 Clav.
7) Variatio 6 a 1 Clav. Canone alla Seconda
8) Variatio 7 a 1 ovvero 2 Clav.
9) Variatio 8 a 2 Clav.
10) Variatio 9 a 1 Clav. Canone alla Terza
11) Variatio 10 a 1 Clav. Fughetta
12) Variatio 11 a 2 Clav.
13) Variatio 12 Canone alla Quarta
14) Variatio 13 a 2 Clav.
15) Variatio 14 a 2 Clav.
16) Variatio 15 a 1 Clav. Canone alla Quinta. Andante
17) Variatio 16 a 1 Clav. Ouverture
18) Variatio 17 a 2 Clav.
19) Variatio 18 a 1 Clav. Canone alla Sesta
20) Variatio 19 a 1 Clav.
21) Variatio 20 a 2 Clav.
22) Variatio 21 Canone alla Settima
23) Variatio 22 a 1 Clav. Alla breve
24) Variatio 23 a 2 Clav.
25) Variatio 24 a 1 Clav. Canone alla'Ottava
26) Variatio 25 a 2 Clav.
27) Variatio 26 a 2 Clav.
28) Variatio 27 a 2 Clav. Canone alla Nona
29) Variatio 28 a 2 Clav.
30) Variatio 29 a 1 ovvero 2 Clav.
31) Variatio 30 a 1 Clav. Quodlibet
32) Aria da capo

33) Fugue in F-sharp minor, BWV 883
34) Fugue in E Major, BWV 878

The Goldberg Variations is a theme and 30 variations, capped by a recurrence of the theme at the end. Each variation is based on the harmonic structure provided in the opening aria, sometimes refracted in minor. Bach showcases a variety of styles, making each variation unique and distinct and traversing the gamut of moods and affects. In addition, each third variation is an accompanied canon on a successively higher interval until the Quodlibet breaks the pattern.

This particular album was Glenn Gould's debut as a recording artist, originally released in 1955. Though he had been touring for a while, this brought him to international prominence as a brilliant and highly idiosyncratic performer. Gould's signature style as a pianist combined incredible rhythmic precision with an ability to keep every part of the music in clear focus even in highly contrapuntal textures...often at tempos no other performers dared attempt. Unparalleled as a technician, he built his physical technique around his greatest love, Bach's keyboard music; though he recorded a great deal else -- including a great deal of 20th-century music -- it's that he's best remembered for. The crispness of his playing both informed and reflected his choice of repertoire, as he played Bach, Beethoven, early Mozart[1], and modernist music; he mostly ignored the lush, dense textures of Romanticism and Impressionism.

As an interpreter, Gould's legacy is a bit checkered. He was notorious for making choices that went contradicted conventional musical thought...sometimes with merit, sometimes without. For example, he would choose a tempo twice as fast or as slow as anybody else had before, or highlight an inner voice that other performers thought insignificant; choices so much against the grain that even now, opinion about the tastefulness of many of his recordings is still very much polarized.

Even on this, his first recording, all of the hallmarks of Gould's oddities are present. He took none of the repeats mandated by Bach, and played many of the pieces at breakneck speed, making it the shortest Goldberg Variations on record. When performing, both on stage and in the studio, he would often sing along with his playing...which sometimes makes it into the audio. Even his choice of music for his debut was unusual; at the time, the Variations were a relatively obscure set of pieces.

Gould's musical interests extended beyond simply playing the piano. He was one of the pioneers of using the recording studio as an interpretive tool, regularly stitching together multiple takes to achieve a result otherwise impossible. In fact, he made the extremely unusual choice of giving up live performance in 1964[2], devoting his musical energy to releasing records and making television performances. He also began exploring other aspects of the music world, composing a few pieces and creating a series of radio plays (more on which later).

In 1981, he released another recording of the Goldberg Variations, entirely different from his 1955 debut -- it would also be his last contribution to the world. In extreme contrast to the reckless joy and effusiveness of his first recording, his last recording is slow, contemplative, and autumnal. It's an amazing bit of poetry that Glenn Gould's recording career began and ended with the Goldberg Variations -- with which he was so closely identified -- just as the Variations themselves begin and end with the same gentle, lovely Aria.
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(1) One of my favorite quotes from Gould: "Mozart was a composer who died too late rather than too soon".

(2) Which many expected would be the death of his career.

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#49: J. S. Bach, "Two- and Three-Part Inventions"
Johann Sebastian Bach, Two- and Three-Part Inventions BWV 772-801
released 1966/1992 by Sony Classical
Glenn Gould, piano

1) Inventio No. 1 in C Major, BWV 772
2) Sinfonia No. 1 in C Major, BWV 787
3) Inventio No. 2 in C minor, BWV 773
4) Sinfonia No. 2 in C minor, BWV 788
5) Inventio No. 5 in E-flat Major, BWV 776
6) Sinfonia No. 5 in E-flat Major, BWV 791
7) Inventio No. 14 in B-flat Major, BWV 785
8) Sinfonia No. 14 in B-flat Major, BWV 800
9) Inventio No. 11 in G minor, BWV 782
10) Sinfonia No. 11 in G minor, BWV 797
11) Inventio No. 10 in G Major, BWV 781
12) Sinfonia No. 10 in G Major, BWV 796
13) Inventio No. 15 in B minor, BWV 786
14) Sinfonia No. 15 in B minor, BWV 801
15) Inventio No. 7 in E minor, BWV 778
16) Sinfonia No. 7 in E minor, BWV 793
17) Inventio No. 6 in E Major, BWV 777
18) Sinfonia No. 6 in E Major, BWV 792
19) Inventio No. 13 in A minor, BWV 784
20) Sinfonia No. 13 in A minor, BWV 799
21) Inventio No. 12 in A Major, BWV 783
22) Sinfonia No. 12 in A Major, BWV 798
23) Inventio No. 3 in D Major, BWV 774
24) Inventio No. 3 in D Major, BWV 789
25) Inventio No. 4 in D minor, BWV 775
26) Sinfonia No. 4 in D minor, BWV 790
27) Inventio No. 8 in F Major, BWV 779
28) Sinfonia No. 8 in F Major, BWV 794
29) Inventio No. 9 in F minor, BWV 780
30) Sinfonia No. 9 in F minor, BWV 795

Inventions are short keyboard pieces in two-part counterpoint generally intended for pedagogical use, either as keyboard or compositional exercises; sinfonias are similar, but in three-part counterpoint (they're sometimes referred to as three-part inventions for simplicity's sake). They're not really intended for performance, and so are not terribly interesting to listen to...although, speaking from experience, they are fun to play.

My guess is that Gould recorded these out of a desire to provide a complete catalog all of Bach's keyboard works, as these inventions -- while pleasant -- aren't exactly shining jewels of Bach's creative output. And despite Gould's notorious perfectionism, there are a lot of odd decisions and quirks to his interpretations that make me wonder if he brought less dedication to these pieces than to Bach's more significant works.

His decision to contrast each invention with its corresponding sinfonia is neat, but it's not clear why they're not simply presented in numerical order. While there's no sense of progression wtihin each bundle of pieces, there's no sense of progression to this seemingly random mishmash either.

He brings the same sense of articulation to almost every piece, which gives the entire album a sense of monotony; though most of his choices when approaching other works are generally unusual, they're also thoughtful...but in this case, it seems like he decided to play each invention more or less the same. Because of the homogeneity of phrasing and tempo, CD feels lifeless and plodding -- with exceptions, of course.

Yet another oddity: the piano Gould uses doesn't work properly. In the mid-upper range of the piano -- where human hearing is at its most discriminating and accurate -- some of the keys "hiccup" when struck, causing a kind of stutter to the sound[1]. This not only compromises the quality of the recording, but is incredibly jarring; it has the same effect on me as hearing a wrong note in a performance...it breaks my concentration, my self-immersion in the music.

Anyhow, I wouldn't recommend these pieces or this CD as a listener; the pieces themselves aren't all that compelling, and if you're a fan of Glenn Gould, there are better options.
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(1) At one point, Gould built what he called a harpsipiano, a piano modified to simulate the action and sound of a harpsichord, but with the robustness and dynamic range of the piano. It didn't really take; perhaps this instrument is a remnant of that experiment.

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#50: J. S. Bach, "Partitas | Preludes & Fugues"
Johann Sebastian Bach, Partitas BWV 825-830 | Preludes & Fugues
released 1993 by Sony Classical
Glenn Gould, piano


DISC 1

Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825
1) Praeludium
2) Allemande
3) Corrente
4) Sarabande
5) Menuet I – VI. Menuet II
6) Giga

Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826
7) Sinfonia. Grave adagio – andante – allegro
8) Allemande
9) Courante
10) Sarabande
11) Rondeaux
12) Capriccio

Partita No. 3 in A minor, BWV 827
13) Fantasia
14) Allemande
15) Corrente
16) Sarabande
17) Burlesca
18) Scherzo
19) Gigue

Partita No. 4 in D Major, BWV 828
20) Ouverture
21) Allemande
22) Courante
23) Aria
24) Sarabande
25) Menuet
26) Gigue

Partita No. 5 in G Major, BWV 829
27) Praeambulum
28) Allemande
29) Corrente
30) Sarabande
31) Tempo di Minuetta
32) Passepied
33) Gigue

DISC 2

Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830
1) Toccata
2) Allemanda
3) Corrente
4) Air
5) Sarabande
6) Tempo di Gavotta
7) Gigue

6 Little Preludes, BWV 933-938
8) Praeludium in C Major
9) Praeludium in C minor
10) Praeludium in D minor
11) Praeludium in D Major
12) Praeludium in E Major
13) Praeludium in E minor

Prelude and Fughetta in D minor, BWV 899
14) Praeludium
15) Fughetta

16) Prelude in G Major, BWV 902
17) Prelude in G Major, BWV 902/1a
18) Fughetta in G Major, BWV 902

Excerpts from 9 Little Preludes, BWV 924-932
19) Praeambulum in C Major
20) Praeambulum in F Major
21) Praeludium in D minor
22) Praeludium in D Major
23) Praeludium in F Major
24) Praeambulum in G minor

25) Fugue in C Major, BWV 952
26) Fughetta in C minor, BWV 961
27) Fugue in C Major, BWV 953

Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 895
28) Praeludium
29) Fuga

Prelude and Fughetta in E minor, BWV 900
30) Praeludium
31) Fughetta


Bach's Partitas, like the English and French Suites, are dance suites for keyboard -- the last he composed and, in my opinion, the best. As with the other suites, Bach follows a loose order that provides some unity between them; each begins with a freeform introduction, followed by an Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande, another dance of Bach's choosing, and ending with a Gigue...mostly. As a matter of fact, each Partita breaks this pattern in some way, but the basic structure seems to be consistent. My guess is that, having mastered the form, Bach decided that he could play and experiment with the structure he built for himself.

Some of the individual dances are actually quite unusual. A select few have a Romantic flavor, with a strongly emotional component that might have been inspired by his own sons' participation in the then-burgeoning Sturm and Drang movement. In addition, many of the Partitas introduce new dance forms (the Burlesca!?), some of which would eventually become standard later in the century: the Scherzo, the Capriccio. My understanding is that by the end of Bach's career, many of the dances codified in the suite were going out of fashion; perhaps he decided to have some fun and 'update' the form with some fresher elements. My pure speculation is that those older dances were also associated with the aristocracy, while the dances Bach tried to introduce were considered more earthy and vibrant.

Anyhow, I don't have much to say about these pieces except they're really good – this is a great album for putting on when I feel like just immersing myself in some Bach keyboard music. There's a lot of variety and contrast both within and between Partitas, and Gould plays them with verve, energy, and care. The other pieces seem present mainly to fill out the second disc; the Partitas take up about 90 minutes, a remarkably inconvenient length if you're in the business of producing CDs.
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(1) I don't think that they appear in any other of Bach's works.

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