University of Virginia Library

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