University of Virginia Library

MUSIC

Tureck: Understanding Problems, Agonies, Joys

By Terri Towe

(Rosalyn Tureck is
considered to be one of the
world's finest concert planss
Called "The High Priestess of
Bach" by one New York critic,
Mme. Tureck is particularly
renowned for her
interpretations and
performances of the music of
Johann Sebastian Bach.

While an undergraduate at
Princeton, Cavalier Daily Music
Critic Teri Towe interviewed
Mme. Tureck for a broadcast at
WPRB-FM, the student radio
station at Princeton University.
Portions of Towe's
conversation with Mme.
Tureck, recorded in the Music
Room of her country home
outside New York City, appear
here in print for the first
time.–Ed.)

Q. Mme. Tureck, a question
that is uppermost in my mind
as well as in the minds of many
Bach lovers is why it is that, in
a day when playing Bach on
the piano is, if anything, out of
style, you decided to make a
career of playing Bach on the
piano?

A. One comes to the
conclusion much too quickly
that, because the harpsichord
and clavichord existed in
Bach's time, that these are the
instruments for performance of
his music.

There's no question that
these were among the major
instruments, but there's a need
for finer thinking than that.
First of all, the harpsichord
was not the home instrument
in Germany; the clavichord
was. So that when Bach's
music was performed in the
home, that music was played
on the clavichord most of the
time, not on the harpsichord.

It is purely historical fact
that in Germany the clavichord
was the home instrument, and
the organ was the church solo
instrument. The harpsichord
was the accompanying
instrument. It was mainly the
continuo instrument.

Now, the important thing
to remember is that the
harpsichord was the French
solo instrument. Couperin was
the great French court
composer of harpsichord
music, and the harpsichord was
the solo keyboard instrument
of the French Court.

When you put Bach and
Couperin next to each other,
the comparison is very vivid. I
do not play Couperin on the
piano, and I never did, and I
don't intend to. Couperin must
be played on the harpsichord
because there is within the
style of Couperin the
harpsichord sound and

technique. The rhythmical
ornamentation, which is
demanded by that music, is
extremely typical of the
harpsichord and depends a
great deal on the harpsichord
action and sound for its
fulfillment.

Bach's music is very
different, and the failure to
understand the great
differences between Bach and
Couperin may be one of the
major reasons why Bach is
played so much on the
harpsichord.

Orderly Minded

I am not saying that one
should not play Bach on the
harpsichord, not at all. But it
does seem rather difficult for
some people to think that it's
possible to play music, and
Bach's in particular, on more
than one instrument.

The conception that this
work was intended for this
instrument and stops there is a
purely twentieth century idea.
This is a kind of viewpoint that
is largely the natural result of
our way of looking at things in
the twentieth century. We're
very involved with statistics;
we like to-label things; we're
very orderly minded; and we
like to ascribe certain things
with a certain kind of clarity.
This is very much the discipline
of our times. Now, for a
number of centuries before
Bach and certainly within his
time still, although it began to
taper off, the concept that the
same work might be played on
different instruments was a
generally held and accepted
custom.

What I am trying to show
you is a great arc, or any shape
you wish to give it, for that
matter, but the line of thinking
which formed the basic
concepts and structural
composition of Bach through
our time, (and when I say
"through our time" I mean
right, literally, into right now)
all this history of thinking
must be taken into
consideration when you talk
about performance.

I have never separated
performance from everything
else. I have never been solely a
performer. I love every thing
about performance per se. I
love the craft of it; I love the
skills; I love the feel of the
keys under my fingers; I
understand all the problems
and agonies and the joys, of
course, of sheer performance,
which is very great and really
enough to fill a lifetime.

Perhaps the fact that I have
never been solely a performer
is the answer to some of the
mystery that I seem to create
in peoples' minds because they
wonder why I play Bach on the
piano, how did I come to Bach,
why have I spent my whole life
with this music, and so forth
and so on. And then, if they
see I am giving a concert on the
harpsichord, clavichord, and
the piano in the same evening,
some questions come up there
oo.

Because I have never
separated performance from
the mainstream of thinking, I
continue to play Bach on the
piano.

Q. Does the fact that the
harpsichord was not intended
for use in large rooms, like the
concert halls of today, have
much to do with the choice of
instrument question?

A. Yes, of course. The
harpsichord was simply not
intended to be heard in the
large concert halls we have
today. In most cases, when it is
used in a modern concert hall,
it is amplified in order for it to
be heard. Now, that becomes
an artificial sound, an
electronic sound. It is not an
eighteenth century sound at
all.

Historically, the clavichord
and the organ, as I have said,
were the main solo instruments
in Germany. If you try the
works of Bach on the
harpsichord, the clavichord,
and the organ, you will find
that most of them work on all
of these instruments.

And, as far as tempo is
concerned, in playing Bach on
the harpsichord, the clavichord,
and the piano, I do not
necessarily play the work at
the same tempo on all three
instruments. The instrument,

however, is not the only
measure for tempo. The music
itself is the fundamental
dictator of what you do with
it. If you know how to read
the music, it will show you
what to do.

Q. As Csals would say, not
the art of reading the notes,
but the art of reading behind
the notes.

A. Exactly. The more
"correctly" you read Bach, as
far as exactly reproducing the
printed notes is concerned, the
more incorrectly you're
playing his music. You have to
know how to read your score
from the inside, and if you can
dive, you know, as Alice
through the Looking Glass,
you really can find an infinite
world, behind the score, inside
the score. It's all there, all of it,
as far as tempo, dynamics
phrasing, if you know how to
read the score. And this shows
you how secondary the
instrument was then and is
now.

Tempest In A Tespot

You must become a scholar
to perform this music with any
validity. Now despite the fact
that I play many concerts on
the piano, not all but many,
and although I am associated
with Bach on the piano, I still
am always insisting on and
emphasizing the need for study
of the results of musicological
research, or work in the
musicological field itself, in
order to understand what this
music is about and how to go
about recreating it.

You know, this controversy
over instruments is a
tremendous tempest in hardly
a teapot. Bach himself was
moving from one instrument to
another all the time in his own
playing. A cursory view of the
index to the complete works of
Bach will show just how many
times Bach adapted his own
music for instruments and
instrumental combinations
other than his original ones.

Playing Bach on the piano
and insisting on the deepest
understanding of the research
into this music are not
contradictory at all. I am
interested in Bach's music; I
am interested in the way he
thought; I am interested in
why he produced the kind of
forms and structures that he
did, what they mean, and how
they work. That to me comes
first.

Copyright, 1972

The Cavalier Daily