Glenn Gould: Bach Preludes and Fugues

It took a bit longer than usual for me to work my way through the third of the four categories into which I have sorted the 30 CDs in Sony’s The Bach Box collection of recordings of Glenn Gould playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This is the category that covers different approaches to preludes and fugues. It consists of nine CDs, six of which are devoted to the 48 prelude-fugue couplings of the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846–893). Each of the books provides a coupling in each of the 24 major and minor keys. Neither of the books was published during Bach’s lifetime, but copies of the manuscript were widely circulated. The first printed edition appeared in 1801.

Neither of the collections would have been out of place in the series of Clavier-Übung (keyboard exercises) publications. Bach probably used the first book, compiled in 1722 during his service at Köthen, in training his sons and possibly members of the family and retinue of Leopold, the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. Indeed, the title page includes a lengthy description emphasizing (in English translation) “the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.”

The title page of the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier in Bach’s handwriting (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

In this respect we would do well to consider at least the first book in the same light as the Inventions and Sinfonias (BWV 772–801) collection of two-part and three-part contrapuntal “inventions.” These are also included in my preludes-and-fugues category; and the fifteen two-part inventions (the first half of the collection) were also composed in Köthen. They are also given a lengthy text introduction as follows (again translated into English):

Forthright instruction, wherewith lovers of the clavier, especially those desirous of learning, are shown in a clear way not only 1) to learn to play two voices clearly, but also after further progress 2) to deal correctly and well with three obbligato parts, moreover at the same time to obtain not only good ideas, but also to carry them out well, but most of all to achieve a cantabile style of playing, and thereby to acquire a strong foretaste of composition.

In other words, from a pedagogical point of view, Bach expected this music to be performed with clarity but also with the intention of presenting “good ideas” through expressive (“cantabile”) rhetoric.

Gould clearly takes this introduction seriously in his recordings, not only of the entirety of The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions and Sinfonias but also in his execution of many of the shorter preludes and fugues collected on a single CD and the BWV 903 coupling of a “chromatic fantasia” and a fugue, both in the key of D minor, also probably composed in Köthen. Furthermore, while it is clear that none of these collections were intended to be lumped together for “marathon” recital experience, one can still appreciate having a resource that provides a recorded account of all of them. Thus, when Gould fills a single album with eight prelude-fugue couplings, he clearly wants the listener to be aware that each of them has its own unique set of “good ideas.” Put another way, if I was concerned about Gould being too idiosyncratic in his Clavier-Übung recordings, his approaches to the diversity of preludes and fugues is more convincingly inventive.

That said, I have to get back on an old favorite hobby-horse about the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The first time I had to write about a recital performance of this collection was in 2009, when Frank French performed the “second round” of 24 preludes and fugues in its entirety. This second collection was compiled in Leipzig in 1742, about twenty years later that the first collection and less than ten year’s before the composer’s death. Having already listened to French perform the “first round,” I found myself speculating that, rather than simply preparing another Clavier-Übung volume, Bach was using his second book as “a retrospective reflection of a life of making music in a wide variety of settings.” Particularly among the preludes, there is a diversity of forms and styles that bear “family likenesses” (a phrase coined by Ludwig Wittgenstein) to past compositions.

This is clearly little more than a “pet theory.” Were I to pursue more serious research, I would not be surprised to encounter more than a fair share of grounds for refutations. Nevertheless, I find that I have developed a tendency to refer to Bach as a “music-maker,” rather than a “composer.” I think this has to do with my own disposition to prioritize the act of making over the artifact that is made when writing about Bach. If these thoughts are leading me down the wrong tracks, I am sure that someone better informed will shake them loose some time in the future!