University of Virginia Library

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.