This past January I learned that Stephen Malinowski had completed his project to create animated visualizations of all of the preludes and fugues in Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. At that time I felt it would be a good idea to survey the entire collection of visualizations. As I wrote when I began this undertaking, I had forgotten that I had written about the 24 couplings of preludes and fugues in the first of Bach’s two books in July of 2016, but it seemed reasonable to take on the full collection of 48 couplings. I also discovered that, on the basis of attention fatigue, the best I would be able to manage in a single shot would be twelve of those couplings. As a result, on January 19 I wrote about the chromatic traversal from C major (BWV 846) to F minor (BWV 857).
Today, a little less than four months later, I finally pulled together the time to view the remainder of the first book from F-sharp major (BWV 858) to B minor (BWV 869). By all rights, this should have involved 24 videos, assuming separate videos for preludes and fugues. However, this was not the case. Each BWV number is assigned to a prelude-fugue coupling; and those couplings are joined into a single video for the keys of A-flat major (BWV 862) and G-sharp minor (BWV 863). In addition, there are selections for which Malinowski created two different visualizations, such as the BWV 859 prelude in F-sharp minor. This should explain why the playlist for the first book consists of 46 (rather than 48) videos.
At this point I should note that I have mixed feelings about the playlist. No matter how many recordings have been released and recitals been performed, there is no evidence that Bach ever intended either of the two books for “concert performance.” As I re-emphasized in January, these books were written for pedagogical purposes; and each visualization of a prelude or a fugue should be taken on its own terms. When Malinowski decided to include a segue from prelude to fugue in his visualization, that was his own aesthetic decision. Personally, I was glad to be relieved of the bother of cuing up each video individually!
My own concern, however, has to do with the nature of “reading” these videos. As I observed in January, there are both syntactic and semantic elements in those visualizations; and both require a “learning curve” on the part of the viewer. I would guess, however, that anyone whose listening experiences have led to familiarity with these Bach compositions will grasp the logic behind Malinowski’s interpretations with little difficulty. Whether visualization leads to new insights that might not have been evident from simply listening to the music (or even reading the music notation) will probably depend on both the experience and the attitude of the listener.
For the most part, I found the videos I experienced during this second round to “make sense” with my understanding of each of the pieces being visualized. However, I would like to call attention to one video that revealed a prankish side of Malinowski’s technique. He created two visualizations for the B-flat major (BWV 866) fugue. The first one visualizes only the descending whole step that concludes the fugue subject. As the fugue progresses, there are a few instances of a half step, as well as the occasional ascension when the subject is inverted. The result is a screen full of blank space punctuated only by these squiggly cadential references:
screen shot from the first YouTube video for the BWV 866 fugue in B-flat major
Having had his fun, Malinowski then presents a second video which gives a more thorough note-by-note visualization of the same fugue.
Sometime a bit of prankishness can enhance even the most disciplined theoretical study.
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