We know incredibly little about Bach and maybe that's a good thing. I find that the biographical details we know about Beethoven
or Schubert for example don't always contribute
to a better understanding. Bach's works exist
independently of his life. But what we do know
is incredibly interesting and exciting. People try to imagine
what he was like as a man but I don't really feel this works.
I can't imagine how anyone could work so concentratedly
with such a large family and with so many children.
There's never any peace and quiet. Bach had a home
but he always worked elsewhere. There's no doubt that he had a study
or something similar at St Thomas's or St Nicholas's,
something like a miniature abbey, where he could work in peace. One thing is certain: whatever we do we need peace and quiet for music. Bach simply couldn't exist today with this constant bustle and noise. The other thing
I really don't understand is the sheer quantity of music. People have calculated that if someone were to copy out
all Bach's works, purely mechanically, it would take several decades. He wrote an incredible amount of music! Each Sunday he had to write
a new cantata in Leipzig as well as music for various feast days
and other occasions. These are large-scale works and he had to compose them,
prepare the score and write out the parts. In this he may have been helped by Anna Magdalena
and by pupils or assistants. Even so, it was a huge amount of work. It's wonderful that we still have
a relatively large number of manuscripts. There's no more beautiful musical
calligraphy than Bach's. I understand his music best of all
when I study these manuscripts because you can see these
wonderful waves, like flowing water. He never writes a straight line but only waves. And so you can imagine
how this music flows along. And you rarely find any corrections
in these manuscripts. Of course, they're fair copies but you really get the impression
that this music flowed from his mind. Like all children,
I played Bach from the very beginning. Many children don't like this. I always liked it,
I loved it from the very beginning. This became very important when I was about thirteen or fourteen and I was introduced to the great
harpsichordist George Malcolm in London. He added greatly
to my understanding of Bach. I never studied formally with him, it was more of a friendly relationship. Of course, he was decades older than me but he taught me a lot,
I learn a lot from him: things about Bach,
about the Baroque style, the way music written
for the harpsichord or clavichord can be adapted to a modern concert grand. The instrument I'm playing on now
didn't exist in Bach's day. I owe this to George Malcolm. I then knew that for me Bach is
the greatest and most important composer. He's remained so
and will always remain so. It's almost a ritual: every day when I get up
- and if there's a piano available - I have to play Bach for an hour,
that's how my day begins. I've never enjoyed playing
piano exercises - studies and scales. I've always found this
very mechanical, terribly boring and a bit undignified. A bit like chopping wood. Of course, young students
have to do this. You have to have
the scales in your hands and the fingering
for the different scales. But I don't think you need this later. I discovered that Bach's music
gives me all I need. Psychologically and spiritually,
of course, musically and emotionally, but also purely physically. As I said earlier: there's this
volatility and playfulness. There are lots of these elements
in the French Suites but you find these from the outset,
even in the Inventions. To be able to start a day like this
cleanses the soul. It's also very satisfying
from an intellectual point of view. You're always playing polyphony
- music in several parts - in which all the voices are independent
and of equal value. It's like a society
in which everyone is equally important. I didn't play the French Suites
when I was a child, perhaps only a few movements from the Notenbüchlein
for Anna Magdalena Bach. This is a very affectionate collection
of shorter pieces, dance numbers, but also arias and chorales that Bach wrote for his beloved wife. Bach wasn't only
the greatest composer of all time, that's perfectly clear to me. He was also a distinguished teacher. His work as a teacher
shouldn't be underestimated. He had a lot of children.
They were all very musical. In a family like that
this really goes without saying. He also wrote didactic pieces
for his children. When you reach the end of this
Notenbüchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach there are the Two- and
Three-Part Inventions. These lead on to the
Well-Tempered Clavier and then to the Clavier-Übung and finally to the Musical Offering
and the Art of Fugue. In short, there's a straight line
that leads to these final works, an evolution you have to go through. I don't understand
today's young pianists who play the Goldberg Variations
when they're only twelve or thirteen. This is a wonderful work but they've played practically
nothing else by Bach. You can't start at the top. The French Suites... Let's try to define what this means. They're "French" because this genre
comes from France. The French clavecinistes, above all Lully, Couperin and Rameau, who were a little older than Bach
- Rameau was in fact the same age -, they all used this suite form.
What is a suite? It's a collection of pieces.
Imagine a bouquet of flowers, for example, a bouquet made up of various flowers, roses, carnations
and all manner of other flowers, but all of the same color. In music this color is the equivalent
of the key ortonality. In other words, all the movements
are in the same key. There are various dance movements,
not only ones that are French in origin. Each suite includes an allemande. As its name indicates,
this is a German dance. Then there's the courante,
a French dance. Then comes the solemn sarabande,
which is at the heart of the suite, a festive, ceremonial dance from Spain. For a time this dance was banned in Spain because it was felt to be too erotic. Then come other "galanteries",
as Bach calls them: minuets, passepieds and gavottes,
all of them in pairs. First there's Menuetto 1,
then Menuetto 2 and then da capo - Menuetto 1
is repeated from the beginning. And every suite ends with a gigue. This is a Scottish or Irish
sailor's dance, very lively. In terms of their origin or character some dances are slow and flowing,
others very lively. As I say, the sarabande
is solemn and festive. The result is a wonderful
series of dances. This is playful music in the best sense. Let's not forget that in every language we talk
about "playing" an instrument: "Onjoue le clavecin." "We play an instrument." Only the Italians say "suonare", in other words, they "create a sound". But this playful element,
when we play an instrument, must always be present. It's this that's so great about Bach:
he has the wisdom that comes with old age. He'd already turned forty
when he wrote these Suites. In Bach's day this was a ripe old age. Such an old master,
endowed with a certain wisdom, looks back, as it were,
on his own childhood and writes playful pieces
for his own children too but on the highest level.
There's nothing cheap here. It's also an introduction
to the style of composition, a kind of teaching manual - how to compose
and how to play the instrument. What kind of instruments did Bach have? Above all the clavichord,
which was his favorite instrument, and then the clavicembalo
with two manuals. I'm fairly certain that the French Suites
are clavichord music. They're very intimate, very introvert. And the clavichord was ideal
for the living room. We simply can't appreciate this
in a larger room today. It really is something very private, just for the performer
and three or four listeners at the most. On the clavichord he could
create a slight vibration, a trembling effect caused when the finger
moves vertically over a key. It produces a vibrato effect. That's why the clavichord
is a much more sensitive instrument than the harpsichord,
which is much more brilliant and hence more suited to a concerto,
at that time too. But I think of the French Suites
as domestic music. Why are there six French Suites? It was a custom at this time. If a composer had written
a collection of pieces, it was the custom
or, rather, the fashion. It made sense to publish them
in groups of six and Bach did so frequently. There are six Brandenburg Concertos,
six English Suites, six Partitas,
six Suites for unaccompanied violin, six Cello Suites and so on. Bach's contemporaries did the same, even the Italians,
Vivaldi, Corelli and the others. But Bach was unique as a composer to the extent that he never left Germany.
This is very important. Leipzig, where we are now,
was the last stage in his life but he also had other appointments
and positions where he worked, all of them fairly close to here -
in Saxony and Thuringia, in Arnstadt, Weimar and Köthen. Leipzig was perhaps
the most important of them. But for instrumental music
Köthen too was very important. These keyboard compositions,
the French and English Suites, were mostly written in Köthen. And so there are six French Suites:
the first three are in minor keys and the last three are in major keys. This is odd. I don't really know
why this is so. When Bach wrote them he certainly never imagined that a madman like me would come along
and play them all at once. That was never his intention.
Even so, I find today that this music by Bach
has a wonderful universal message. It creates a sense of community
with its listeners. No other composer does this,
in my opinion. I act as an interpreter
between Bach and his listeners and I try to convey this message. And when it works, a wonderful sense of
community is created between us. How does this message arise?
This is very important. Even when we're sitting
in a church, as we are now, in a very plain and simple church: this is secular music, it's not sacred music. Even so, Bach was a believer, you can heart his in every bar he wrote. This isn't the music of an atheist. And even when he writes such dancelike,
playful and secular music his faith still shines through. Conversely, his Masses, Passions and cantatas,
which are beyond question sacred works, contain these same dancelike elements. With Bach, the sacred and the secular
coexist harmoniously. I think this implies a unique message that young people are happy
to accept even today. Rhythmically, too.
This is very rhythmic music and with today's associations
of jazz and other kinds of music... I think this is why young people
like listening to Bach. Perhaps they're less fond
of Mozart and Beethoven. But they should like them, too. It's something of a mystery
how Bach achieved this. Take Handel, for example,
his great contemporary. They were both born in 1685. He was a man of the world,
a cosmopolitan. He travelled a lot and he spent the best part
of his life in England, where he was incredibly successful. Even at this date, then,
there were musicians who travelled abroad and who became cosmopolitan. Bach was something of a hermit. In spite of this, he was hugely cultured
and took an interest in everything. Even at that time it was possible
to read and study music and Bach had access to these scores. He spent his whole life studying them
and copying them out. He went blind, working in poor light,
by candlelight or torchlight, writing out countless scores,
his own as well as other composers'. He transcribed works by Italian composers
-Vivaldi, Marcello, Geminiani - Italian concertos. His wonderful Italian Concerto
in the Italian style is a tribute to these Italian composers. Bach knew everything that was being written at this time
in France, Italy and England, even though he never went there.
It's a miracle. I think that western music
reached its peak with Bach. It's not the same with the other arts. In painting it was
a couple of centuries earlier, let's say the Florentine Renaissance. Bach was in fact forgotten
by the 19th century. By then people were no longer
interested in early music. This is remarkable but understandable
when we think that there was then a knowledgeable
and sympathetic audience for contemporary music. People only wanted to hear
the latest works, and works of early music were
museum pieces. People knew about them but in Beethoven's day no one wanted
to hear Bach's music in the concert hall. It was inconceivable. Mendelssohn was the one...
Even if he'd done nothing else, he'd have been assured of immortality
for this reason alone. In 1829 he was only nineteen and he gave what was effectively
the premiere of the St Matthew Passion or at least the first modern performance. It's believed that the St Matthew Passion
had already been heard in Bach's day. But the work then disappeared
and was forgotten until Mendelssohn revived it in Berlin. With that, the Bach Renaissance began,
and -thank God - it has never ended. A French Overture is a genre,
a musical form that composers wrote
at the time of Louis XIV, above all Lully. It's pomp and circumstance music
for orchestra with brass instruments,
horns, trumpets, timpani. It was very festive music
for the court of the French kings. Bach takes this orchestral music
and adapts it for a single instrument,
a two-manual clavicembalo. I've adapted it a second time
to play it on a modern concert grand. It's a very, very lavish
orchestral work. It's a bravura solution on Bach's part: you can really hear
where the whole orchestra is playing and where it's only smaller groups. Here, for example, I seem to hear flutes,
this is a solo passage... And here the whole orchestra enters again. In other words, tutti passages
keep alternating with solo passages. A French Overture is
an opening movement in two sections. First you have very festive music
with dotted rhythms. Here this sounds like this: This double dotting... is the music's basic rhythm. Then comes a quick section... It's very fugal, like a kind of fugato. Bach was the greatest contrapuntalist
and polyphonist of his age and he combines
these elements of the French style with all his own polyphonic mastery. And after this Allegro section
the festive dotted section returns... This is an example of A-B-A form,
a variant of A-B-A form. This monumental opening movement
is followed by the galanteries,
the dance movements, and this links this work
with the French Suites. But everything here is much grander,
and there are several dance movements, again with a solemn sarabande
in central position... And then come Bourree 1 and 2
and the gigue. The difference is that the Overture
doesn't end with a gigue. Instead the work ends
with some very remarkable music. The final movement is headed "Echo" and, as far as I know, this is unique
in Bach's output: it's found only here. It's also very wittz. As the title
suggests, there are melodies and fragments of these melodies are
repeated very quietly, like an echo: There's a loud passage... and it's repeated like an echo. It's music that mimics nature,
and that's very rare with Bach. Otherwise we find these natural elements
only with Beethoven and Schubert and much later. And there's something else
that needs to be mentioned: this French Overture is in B minor, a very dark key. Even so, it's a secular,
very worldly composition. Whenever I hear a piece in B minor I naturally think of the B minor Mass... With Bach, every key is symbolic and B minor is somehow
associated with death. All the pieces in B minor- a fugue in
the Well-Tempered Clavier, for example... They're very chromatic
and very anguished. And elements of this are also found
in the French Overture. It all hangs together.
