Luogo e data di registrazione		Doopsgezinde Gemeente Kerk, Haarlem (The Netherlands): - 13 Febbraio 1986 (BWV 825-827) - 2 aprile 1986 (BWB 828-830)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Gerd Berg
	Balance Engineer		Hartwig Paulsen
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Records "Reflexe" | LC 0233 | 27 0532 3 | 2 LPs - durata 46' 18" - 46' 48" | (p) 1987 | DIGITAL
	Edizioni CD		EMI Electrola | LC 0542 | CDS 7 47996 8 | 2 CDs - durata 40' 36" - 54' 36" | (c) 1987 | DDD Virgin "Veritas" | LC 7873 | 7243 5 62337 2 0 | 2 Cds - durata 40' 38" - 54' 38" | (c) 2003 | DDD
	Cover Art		"Clavicimbel" (Johann Christoph d. J. Weigel) - Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin
	Note		-

Clavier-Übung 1. Teil To his contemporaries, Bach was famous as a virtuoso without equal on the organ and other keyboard instruments, not as the composer of cantatas and passion oratorios. There were periods in his career, even during the years when he held the office of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, when he concentrated his compositional energies exclusively on his own instruments. In keyboard works he relied wholly on himself, and so long as he performed them himself they could bot be misrepresented by the failings of others. A caesura divides his creative output as early as the last years as Hofkapellmeister in Köthen, when orchestral and chamber music gave way to keyboard works, and the ‘English’ and ‘French’ suites were rapidly followed by The Well-tempered Clavier and the inventions and sinfonias. Our impression of Bach as the master of counterpoint has led us to look on The Well-tempered Clavier as his most important work of that period, and to think less of the suites. We do not know what his own opinion was. When, a few years later, in Leipzig, he published keyboard music for the first time, he did not choose strict contrapuntal works, but the formally freer partitas. No doubt that was in part a concession to these the taste of the times, but it was certainly not a reflection on their relative artistic merit. They are superior to the suites, and for quality of craftmanship they are the equal of the great fugal works: what they yield to them in contrapuntal skills they make up in richness of invention and rhythmic life and vigour. His first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, relates what Bach’s sons and pupils told about the partitas’ reception: ‘The work when new created a mighty stir in the musical world. No one had ever heard or seen keyboard compositions of such excellence. Anyone who learned to deliver a good performance of some of those pieces, could make his way in the world with them; and in our own age a young artist can still make his name with them, they are so luminous, euphonious, expressive and ever new.’ That was written in 1802, but the words are still true today. Bach took his time over their publication. They first appeared separately, spread out between 1726 and 1731. The last was issued simultaneously with the first edition of all six together, as opus 1: a declaration of an intention to publish more of his work. The Clavier-Übung is an interesting example of the state of music printing at that date. ‘Letter press’, with movable type, was still used for printing partbooks but it was not suitable for the polyphonic complexity of keyboard music, and engraving was not yet practicable. Bach’s score was therefore etched, acid being used to bite the music-text in mirror-image on to a copper plate, from which an intaglio impression was taken. To assist this process, Bach provided a fair copy, obviously on one side of the paper only, which was then oiled to make it transparent, so that the notation could be traced directly on to the plate. To that extent, at least, the first printing represents something of Bach’s lost autographs. The original title-page of opus 1 reads: ‘Clavir Ubung, consisting of preludes, allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, gigues, minuets and other galanteries; composed for the spiritual delectation of music-lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach, capellmeister to the court of Saxe-Weisenfels and directore chori musici Lipsiensis. opus 1. Published by the author. 1731.’ The somewhat didactic denomination ‘Clavierübung’ - ‘keyboard exercises’ - alludes to the two volumes with the same title published forty years earlier by Johann Kuhnau, Bach‘s predecessor as Thomaskantor. In Bach’s case, the work consisted of six partitas; the reason why this is not stated on the title-page probably has to do with the retention of the form of words used on the six original separate title-pages; but another reason may very well have been the thought that a list of dance movements would appeal to a wider public. In this instance ‘partita’ is a rather elevated term for ‘suite’: a series of dance movements welded into a whole by unity of key and an intelligent sequence of movements of different rhythms, tempos and moods. The backbone of the suite was four dance movements with different national associations: the German ‘allemande’, the French ‘courante’, the Spanish ‘sarabande’ and the English (more precisely Irish or Scottish) ‘gigue’. These had developed in various ways during the 17th century: the allemande had a faster and a slower, adagio-like, form; the courante had a variant in a lively 6/8, which was usually called a ‘corrente’, while the slower courante alternated between 3/2 and 6/4. Stylization at the French court had made wholly distinct types of these dances, but in the hands of Bach the types became characters. Every one of the six allemandes, courantes and sarabandes is individually formed, and nothing is repeated. Each dance is a musical character piece, adopting and underlining particular traits of the original model. Notice how, for example, in the sarabande of the fourth partita, the customary accentuation of the second beat in the bar is used to shape an eloquent, interrogative intonation. In addition to the four basic movements, each partita includes one or more other movements conforming to newer fashions, the ‘galanteries’ of the tltle-page: minuets, gavottes, bourées and so on. They usually come after, or on either side of, the sarabande. They also stand up well as separate pieces. While the two minuets of the first partita give the impression that they would be a welcome relief to anyone who found the rest too much for them, the others are particularly demanding to play and call for meticulous rhythmic control. All the partitas open with a movement in a free form, different in each case. The first has a vigorous prelude, the second a three-part sinfonia, the third a fantasia for two voices, the fourth a French overture, the fifth a concerto-like ‘praeambulum’, the sixth a toccata. Taken as a group, these six movements amount to a compendium of those free forms of instrumental music that did not originate in dance forms. We do not know why the original publication of these works was spread out over five years. The third and sixth partitas were already completed by 1725. Bach wrote them for the ‘Klavierbüchlein’ of his wife Anna Magdalena. Some of the material came from earlier works: the Corrente and the Gavotte of the sixth partita were originally composed for an earlier version of the sonata for harpsichord and violin BWV 1019a, and it is quite possible that something of other, earlier, lost works survives in various movements. Even if the majority of the movements were written shortly before publication, the tonal sequence of the set of partitas must nevertheless have been planned from the ouset: there is nothing random or accidental about it. Beginning at B flat, it proceeds by taking single steps alternately up and down the scale: B flat, C, A, D, G, E, with major and minor held in balance. From an advertisement accompanying the appearance of the fifth partita, it seems that there should have been a seventh - which would logically have been in F. In the end Bach settled for the half-dozen customary at the time - but the first piece in Part II of the Clavier-Übung, published in 1735, the Italian Concerto, is in F major, and that is certainly not by chance. Georg von Dadelsen Translation by Mary Whittall