Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach

Judge: Andrew DeFour

Review Date: 2025-03-26 02:25:20
Review Status: Judgement Received

I'm glad I reviewed your other performance first so I can use some of my philosophy from that to address this performance.

Ironically, you are very strong with the rhythm of this piece, but I would argue that the rhythm is *not* in fact the focus here.

It seems to me that the harmonic elements of this composition are what deserve the most attention.

There isn't a melody to speak of, and the rhythm is not very interesting because it never changes - it's almost entirely consecutive 16th notes for the duration of the piece.

So, this would lead me to conclude that the most interesting feature of this composition, deserving the most attention, is the harmonic composition.

There are two considerations, harmonically:

1. Each chord being arpeggiated.
2. The relation of each chord to the next and across the piece.

First and foremost, I would slow down and really live in the beautiful harmonic structure here. "The Well-Tempered Clavier" literally means a "well-tuned piano" so these songs are meant to show off how beautiful a well-tuned piano can sound when the right combination of chords and voicings are selected.

Slow down. Enjoy the exact way that someone as meticulous as Bach arranged each and every chord he chose for this composition. Try not to just plow your way through the song, but to really stop and examine each meaningful progression from one harmonic painting to the next in this Baroque Museum.

Maybe think about what each chord means to you. Do you have a favorite? Do you intellectually understand how each chord relates to the root? Have you already analyzed each arpeggio to know what exact chord they are numerically? (The I? The V7 in first inversion? The ii7 in 3rd inversion? The relative minor? The secondary dominant? etc.) This whole piece is going somewhere. Don't just walk down the path. Really enjoy the path or, more importantly, try to convey to the listener what it is about this path that is worth enjoying. Which chords are more stable? Which chords are more acting as a pivot chord?

What does each chord do emotionally? Stabilize? Destabilize? Give you hope? Give you a false sense of hope? The whole song tells a story without words. "It's going to happen... it's happening! Wait, it's not happening anymore... is it happening again? Maybe? Where are we going? Are we there? Why did we leave? When will we return?" It's much like life.

Personally, because harmonic structure (at least to me) is more important than rhythm in this piece, I would linger even harder on more dissonant sections (or hurry through them because they are too nerve-wracking? It's up to you! But make a deliberate choice). You can use tempo as a dynamic here and really bring it home at the end.

This journey is essentially leaving home, exploring the world, and then returning home at the end. So when you land back on the one at the end, you should really feel like you've gone somewhere and returned. That last run of chords over the V of the scale really keeps tricking you, making you think you are going to land... but you don't... until you finally do. So, if the composition is really "milking" the tension of teasing the final resolution, then you can too! (with tempo and dynamic).

The voicing and harmonic structure of this piece is the entire focus.

Also, please be aware of how powerful this music is without being complex in speed or dexterity. The genius of this work (and why you are performing it 300 years after its original creation) is that it understands how chords work in relation to each other. If music is sound and silence organized into time, this piece begs you to explore what can happen when you pick a very deliberate set of chords and voicings in a set amount of time, unpolluted by much else - no melody, no change in rhythm or even note duration, and no showing off or showcasing some superhuman finger dexterity. It is very pure and very effective.

Enjoy it! If you do, others will too.

Judge: Natasha Frid Finlay

Review Date: 2025-03-26 02:25:20
Review Status: Awaiting Judgement