Research into Bach's calligraphy in a practical way. For commissions contact me at the email address below. You can support my research with a donation via the paypal.me link. Thanks for appreciating my work.
I love your videos. As a pianist and violinist and Bach enthusiast, I am grateful that you take your time out of your day to do this. Do you know where I can get the kind of rastrum you suggested? I can't find one
Thank you for your appreciation. For the rastrum you could use the search terms automatic pen 5 line, shops with calligraphy tools store it under those words. www.automaticpens.co.uk/html/which.asp
In Bach's scores notes are more or less regularly spaced. System endings are usually broken at quarter note level, sometimes with an increase in density, sometimes with a small empty space - possibly filled with announcing notes of the following system. Bach does not work from an example but from memory and makes an estimate for an equivalent entire page filling, which he regularly adjusts. The end result has fluctuations that can usually be optimized, without measure breaks, starting new episodes on a new system, and a regular page fill for more similar grayscale values. To do this I use a digital note program for a sketch, without aiming to achieve an ultimate solution, it is just one of many. Digital note programs each have their own pre-programmed division within a measure, which differs from Bach's flow. There I follow Bach's example, with minor adjustments if notes are being crowded out.
Bach's autographs and copies after by him can be found on the website www.bach-digital.de The oboe concerto in the handwriting of Alessandro Marcello is kept in the Mecklenburg Library in the city of Schwerin. The engravings were published by Jeanne Roger in Amsterdam, undated, but the publication number makes 1716 plausible. Thank you for your compliment.
I love this channel, if only people nowadays appreciated the time and effort it takes to write music on paper directly from one's mind! Bach's musical prowess is apparent not only in the raw musical product, his talent is reflected even through his calligraphy more than we think. Great video Joost!
Dear Mr. Witte - May I venture that this is your finest video yet? The greatness of your careful understanding, the simple and clear editing of your video, and your pithy sense of humour are all a worthy tribute to the genius of Bach.
That's good to hear, this topic is so close to my heart that I lost the ability to judge the video: rambling unhinged strong opinions or actually communicating some points. So thank you very, very much.
@@joostwitte5546 The only debt is how I owe you so much enjoyment and fascination from your videos! I am happy that I have been able to express my appreciation for them. Unhinged rambling on strong opinions isn't even a bad thing, as long as it's done elegantly. In the world of politics, it is the scourge of humanity; but with something like music, I don't think there's any risk. It's always just fun to talk about these things without worrying too much about being correct!
Maybe I was let to decide the grade I got from my Bach style counterpoint course myself. What would have it been if I had written like this! You are a real master, how long have you been handwriting music? That is very beautiful and easy to read. Think about writing over 1100 compositions like that, some of them very complex. But if I have understood correctly, some of Johann Sebastian's works were finally transcribed by Anna Magdalena. And I still have to wonder how did J & A do all that. J. was not only a composer but also a teacher and performing musician. With Maria Barbara and Anna Magdalena, he had 20 children! Did they ever sleep? Like... no, I don't mean that. I mean literally sleeping! And, generally, about handwriting, music or words: nowadays we rarely even see pens or pencils with which you can do anything beautiful. Even a high quality pen, not a ball point, is quite a rare thing. Using a tool that works without excessice power... well, you all know!
Hello Tero, thank you for looking and your thoughts. I have been practicing Bach's handwriting for almost two years now, before that I tried to copy the scores of Michelangelo Galilei, a total of about four years of writing experience. I still have some way to go to improve it. Bach would have written this page faster, maybe in half an hour. If you apply that time period to all his pages, the time required becomes quite conceivable and doable.
Watching this video for the 3rd time, and still feel I can't comprehend all the information. I need to watch it again, it's so good, and I don't want to miss anything. This channel is one of the best discoveries of the year for me. I thought the BWV catalogue it all I need to hear all works of Bach, but clearly this isn't the case. It shows that you can actually learn a lot from the manuscript, but you have to know what you are looking at. Now I'm looking into getting the caligraphy course. This video (and the entire channal) is very inspiring. I think it's time to subscribe. Thank you so much.
lovely, but the odd stroke seems to mutate in both number and place. a one-to-one reproduction would provide a more meaningful "library of movements". not that my wobbly hand could ever compare to thee!
I can imagine that a 1 to 1 copy would be more impressive and convincing. There are a number of reasons why I did not choose it. In the autograph the title text block collided with the right margin, so the letters of the name are in the original with a smaller font and on a second line. In the music notation there are a few places where arches of the different staves intersect. There are fluctuations in the distances between stems. With a slightly different distribution of these, bar breaks across multiple lines can be avoided. So there are good reasons to deviate from 1 on 1. Bach's style is characterized by methodological unevenness. A collection of possible forms of symbols is therefore more appropriate than strict repetition. In my training I specifically practiced being able to write in his style even when no original exists. With this Adagio that would not have been necessary, and a 1 on 1 might have been more appropriate. Technically speaking, literal copying is actually a lot easier. But the used writing style bandwidth here in this exercise should be able to fit within the library of movements.
Very interesting. I never wrote scores by hand while learning, so it never occured to me that one could appreciate musical artistry in this way with their eyes.
Ah, dank je wel! Het is zo fijn om anderen ook te zien werken met ganzenveer! Soms heb ik 't gevoel dat ik de enige ben. Dank je wel! Mijn 2 grote liefdes: Bach en kalligrafie!
Excellent work. Well done. Some of the strokes you made in 2 steps are actually one step strokes. The ball serif on the S and the S itself should all done in one stroke. You will find the cadence of the writing more in tempo with the music if you do it this way. Great to see someone putting the work in with a quill.
Hi Paul, thank you for the praise, that's really kind of you. You have been an enormously inspiring example and craftsman to me for years. Your observation about the movement at once also applies to the musical notes with the upward stem. Somehow I'm a really slow learner, and I break the shapes down into individual steps and change the movement. I see that it has been done differently, but I am still carefully working on putting everything a bit in the right place. My lettering also hangs around a bit because my focus is actually completely taken up by trying to figure out the musical notation. I still have a long way to go and I look forward to being able to write fluently and confidently.
Mistakes are part of crafting, they happen from time to time. In the video "How to start calligraphing like Bach" I show different types that Bach made and how he solved them.
