MUSICAL MONSTERS, BIZARRERIE AND INFLEXIBILITY TOWARDS FASHIONABLE TASTE
终于听到了这张，下面是用office 2003自带的工具ocr出来的专辑文案，想到Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach当时所处的年代:rococo，其作为一个纽带，承前启后，两股力量碰撞……Pletnev居然真的表现出来了……意义非凡。
"As I see it,music should move the heart emotionally,and a player will never achieve this by mere scrambling,hammering and arpeggiation,not with me,anyway"
----C.P.E Bach
-------------------
MUSICAL MONSTERS, BIZARRERIE AND
INFLEXIBILITY TOWARDS FASHIONABLE TASTE
The Keyboard Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
It is hard to think of any other composer whose works offer a more accurate reflection of a trend now generally known simply as "pre-Classicism" than Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in his keyboard music. Yet the underlying assumption that pre-Classicism was no more than a precursor of Classicism blinds us to the fact that the period between 1750 and 1790 was one of the most turbulent in the whole history of music and has an entirely distinctive profile all of its own. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach played a considerable part in fashioning this profile, with the large number of works that he wrote for the keyboard admirably epitomizing the progressive age in which he lived. In this, his contemporaries were not always able to follow him and were correspondingly critical, although, given the background of the early Enlightenment, such reproaches may have tended, rather, to act as a stimulus. In 1784, for example, we find the
German writer on music Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart summarizing these corn- plaints as follows: "What people criticize about his works is not only their idiosyncratic taste and even their bizarrerie, but their wilful difficulty, their idiosyncratic notation [...] and their inflexibility towards fashionable taste."
But it is very much the points criticized by Schubart that set Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach apart from his contemporaries. And of no works is this truer than of his keyboard works. (In Bach's day, the term "clavier" was taken to refer primarily to the clavichord, an instrument hugely popular at that time. Not until the 19th century did the more modern piano supersede it.) Bach was profoundly unimpressed by these criticisms and in these works sought to realize his ideas about a key- board style that bore no resemblance what- soever to anything that had gone before it. Particularly striking is his rejection of the
dogma concerning the unity of the underlying "affection", which demanded that a unifled mood be maintained throughout the whole piece. Composers who ignored this demand were accused of a lack of expertise and the result¨¢ntwork was regarded asa musical monster . According to Lessing in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie, "A symphony that expresses different passions in its different movements is a musical monster."
But it was precisely this "musical monster" that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach made the basis of his powerfully expressive and individual style. Taking as his starting point his improvisations on the clavichord, he preferred to give the impression that a particular phrase had sprung from a passing fancy, rather than being the product of a mood that was fixed in advance. The Sonata in G minor Wq 65/17 is a good example of this free approach to composition, its opening movement combining elements of first-move- ment sonata form with fragments of a free fantasia in the manner of a collage: there are no bar-lines and the harmonic design is strikingly bold.
This sonata was not printed in its corn- poser's lifetime. The circumstances in which Bach published his works throw significant light on the claims that he made for them:
works that he regarded as difficult in terms of the complexity of their musical ideas and the
technical demands that they placed on their performer were either not published at all or were made available only as copies in response to specific requests. Few other corn- posers of Bach's generation were as con- cerned as he was with public taste and the state of the market, even if, as we noted ear- her, Schubart accused him of "inflexibility towards fashionable taste". In his keyboard works Bach clearly set his sights on what we would now call his target groups of "con noisseurs" and "amateurs". "Connoisseurs" were discriminating, often professional musicians, whereas "amateurs" were generally enthusiastic lay people. But this taxonomical distinction implies no qualitative difference be- tween the two groups. During the Age of Sensibility, emphasis was laid on enthusiasm, which was more likely to be embodied by amateurs. Bach paid these music lovers the respect that was their due, providing them with pieces that were not too demanding technically but which were by no means lack- ing in musical substance. His six published collections of pieces "for connoisseurs and ama- teurs" (Wq 55-59 & 61), above all, represent a mixture that served both interests. Marked- ly expressive pieces that were close in character to free improvisations are found alongside traditional forms such as the inordinately popular rondo - a form that gave rise to heat- ed debate among Bach's contemporaries.
Yet even when Bach used such a conventional form he enriched it with his own idiosyncratic musical ideas. In his view, a musical form could not in itself be "good" or "bad":
for Bach, the quality of a piece of music was decided by the composition itself. The rondo offered him an opportunity to experiment with variation technique, a field in which he felt bound by its original function as a form of music designed to entertain. That he was fully alive to the taste of the time is clear from a letter to a business friend: "There is as much amateur interest in rondos here as there is in London and so I have included a number of them in order to encourage sales. I know from experience that many people buy my collections simply for the rondos."
Bach's business sense also found expression in what was known as a Praenumeranten-System, under which he offered purchasers his works at a reduced price in return for payment in advance, in this way opening up an international market for his music. But in spite of his contemporaries' suspicions, these works - and especially his six collections of pieces "for connoisseurs and ama- teurs" - were certainly not produced for a mass market but were the expression, rather, of a highly independent artistry.
UIrike Brenning
(Translation: Stewart Spencer)
"As I see it,music should move the heart emotionally,and a player will never achieve this by mere scrambling,hammering and arpeggiation,not with me,anyway"
----C.P.E Bach
-------------------
MUSICAL MONSTERS, BIZARRERIE AND
INFLEXIBILITY TOWARDS FASHIONABLE TASTE
The Keyboard Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
It is hard to think of any other composer whose works offer a more accurate reflection of a trend now generally known simply as "pre-Classicism" than Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in his keyboard music. Yet the underlying assumption that pre-Classicism was no more than a precursor of Classicism blinds us to the fact that the period between 1750 and 1790 was one of the most turbulent in the whole history of music and has an entirely distinctive profile all of its own. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach played a considerable part in fashioning this profile, with the large number of works that he wrote for the keyboard admirably epitomizing the progressive age in which he lived. In this, his contemporaries were not always able to follow him and were correspondingly critical, although, given the background of the early Enlightenment, such reproaches may have tended, rather, to act as a stimulus. In 1784, for example, we find the
German writer on music Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart summarizing these corn- plaints as follows: "What people criticize about his works is not only their idiosyncratic taste and even their bizarrerie, but their wilful difficulty, their idiosyncratic notation [...] and their inflexibility towards fashionable taste."
But it is very much the points criticized by Schubart that set Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach apart from his contemporaries. And of no works is this truer than of his keyboard works. (In Bach's day, the term "clavier" was taken to refer primarily to the clavichord, an instrument hugely popular at that time. Not until the 19th century did the more modern piano supersede it.) Bach was profoundly unimpressed by these criticisms and in these works sought to realize his ideas about a key- board style that bore no resemblance what- soever to anything that had gone before it. Particularly striking is his rejection of the
dogma concerning the unity of the underlying "affection", which demanded that a unifled mood be maintained throughout the whole piece. Composers who ignored this demand were accused of a lack of expertise and the result¨¢ntwork was regarded asa musical monster . According to Lessing in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie, "A symphony that expresses different passions in its different movements is a musical monster."
But it was precisely this "musical monster" that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach made the basis of his powerfully expressive and individual style. Taking as his starting point his improvisations on the clavichord, he preferred to give the impression that a particular phrase had sprung from a passing fancy, rather than being the product of a mood that was fixed in advance. The Sonata in G minor Wq 65/17 is a good example of this free approach to composition, its opening movement combining elements of first-move- ment sonata form with fragments of a free fantasia in the manner of a collage: there are no bar-lines and the harmonic design is strikingly bold.
This sonata was not printed in its corn- poser's lifetime. The circumstances in which Bach published his works throw significant light on the claims that he made for them:
works that he regarded as difficult in terms of the complexity of their musical ideas and the
technical demands that they placed on their performer were either not published at all or were made available only as copies in response to specific requests. Few other corn- posers of Bach's generation were as con- cerned as he was with public taste and the state of the market, even if, as we noted ear- her, Schubart accused him of "inflexibility towards fashionable taste". In his keyboard works Bach clearly set his sights on what we would now call his target groups of "con noisseurs" and "amateurs". "Connoisseurs" were discriminating, often professional musicians, whereas "amateurs" were generally enthusiastic lay people. But this taxonomical distinction implies no qualitative difference be- tween the two groups. During the Age of Sensibility, emphasis was laid on enthusiasm, which was more likely to be embodied by amateurs. Bach paid these music lovers the respect that was their due, providing them with pieces that were not too demanding technically but which were by no means lack- ing in musical substance. His six published collections of pieces "for connoisseurs and ama- teurs" (Wq 55-59 & 61), above all, represent a mixture that served both interests. Marked- ly expressive pieces that were close in character to free improvisations are found alongside traditional forms such as the inordinately popular rondo - a form that gave rise to heat- ed debate among Bach's contemporaries.
Yet even when Bach used such a conventional form he enriched it with his own idiosyncratic musical ideas. In his view, a musical form could not in itself be "good" or "bad":
for Bach, the quality of a piece of music was decided by the composition itself. The rondo offered him an opportunity to experiment with variation technique, a field in which he felt bound by its original function as a form of music designed to entertain. That he was fully alive to the taste of the time is clear from a letter to a business friend: "There is as much amateur interest in rondos here as there is in London and so I have included a number of them in order to encourage sales. I know from experience that many people buy my collections simply for the rondos."
Bach's business sense also found expression in what was known as a Praenumeranten-System, under which he offered purchasers his works at a reduced price in return for payment in advance, in this way opening up an international market for his music. But in spite of his contemporaries' suspicions, these works - and especially his six collections of pieces "for connoisseurs and ama- teurs" - were certainly not produced for a mass market but were the expression, rather, of a highly independent artistry.
UIrike Brenning
(Translation: Stewart Spencer)
- 表演者: Mikhail Pletnev
- 发行时间: 2001
- 流派: 古典
- 出版者: Deutsche Grammophon
- 专辑类型: 专辑