Bach and the Piano? 

I believe Bach couldn't care less which instruments we use. His music works with any arrangement!

The piano has been called _The Crown Prince_ of instruments, but the organ is _The King_

Please never stoppig to do these videos. You are doing something that will last many and many years and a lot of people will be benefit from your amazing Work Really thanks for what you do, It's unique in the world.

last line gave me straight up chills lol. thanks for the very informative video yet again, and keep up the great work :). prelude in g sharp minor is one of my favorites from the second book

I must to coment again. Man, what you do is like the BACH HIMSELF IS TALKING TO ME. The felling about this is so good that i have no words to please you. Bach is imortal because people like you make his move live than never. Thanks, obrigado. (from Brazil)

Very interesting. Always found this attitude of "doing this thing in music the right way!" weird. For me, music is all about bringing something unique to the table, changing things, without forgetting their origins, of course. Thank you for this.

Another engaging and very interesting video, Peter. Having never played a real harpsichord, only my old synthesizer, I'm sometimes in two minds as to which I prefer. At the end of the day the piano wins, but depending on my mood and the piece being played, the harpsichord comes a very close second. Loved Fantasia, very well played, thanks for sharing. 👏👏

Bach's music is so expressive that the notion he would deny it to be played on the Piano is unfathomable. Bach is known to have transcribed some of his compositions for different instruments himself. I play the Bach solo Violin Partitas and Sonatas, the solo Cello Suites, and the Lute Suites on Classical Guitar. I really don't think he'd mind.

This is a piece of art! Thank you so much for bringing such useful content in a so entertaining form to watch! Keep going, you're going to get noticed soon

It can even work flipping it ‘upside down’ (Prelude 1 C major Bk 1) - a compositional trick Bach frequently employed (albeit only phrases) as well as reversing. Anyway, worth listening to the re-written Prelude (puts it into minor key) - the chordal progressions sound very contemporary and weirdly beautiful

Extraordinary work!!! Thanks a lot!!

40 years ago I started learning classical guitar.That introduced me to the works of Bach and started a love of Baroque music in general,and a life long obsession with pipe organs. I think Bach would have loved the modern classical guitar for his music as much as the Baroque lute.Same with piano. Also,thank you so much for the series. I recently found this channel,and am at episode 17. It's wonderful to see on screen what was only previously visions in my mind from stories I've read,or heard from documentaries.

I think that if Johan Sebastian Bach could somehow travel to the future (be it the 19th century, or the present day), he would never be capable of ignoring the marvel of musical technology that is the modern piano, nor the advances of music that came with it. A lot of his keyboard pieces are also just that, keyboard pieces. They can be played on a spinet, an organ, or a synth. I don’t see any reason not to play his keyboard music, and in general, medieval, renaissance and baroque keyboard music, on the modern king of keyboard instruments, the piano. P.S. I also think that historically informed performance on period instruments should have their place because they’re amazing!

Thanks for another great video! There is no music more versatile than that of Bach, yet some so called "purists" are still trying to put him into a box. We know he was always interested in the latest tech. Not only would he love our modern piano, he would also appreciate Wendy Carlos style performances on moog synthesizers.

Thanks so much! This reinforces the conclusion I’ve been drawing for myself. The piano is what most other keyboard instruments aspired to become, in a manner of speaking. Makes me wish it had been developed just a little earlier, so that Bach himself could have heard more of his own music played on this vastly improved instrument.

that's such a great work, thanks!

Did Bach write for the piano? No. Was he aware? Yes. Was his piano like a modern piano? No, Not at all. It was so different we don't call it a piano nowadays.

Another brilliantly engaging video

So brilliant as always my friend 😀

This is great, so nice to see. I'm total Bach-head and for a long time I've playing Bach and had this idea that Bach was a lot more flexible and would have loved to see and hear the new technology of keyboards. Don't get me wrong, I love Bach on original instruments but I also like hear and play Bach with some modern influences and sounds. I have a project I'm working on called The Oddly Bach project in which I arrange Bach on different instruments and sometimes in arrange Bach into odd meters. I've been working on some Well-Tempered Clavier and arrangements. I've recorded one so far a Prelude that I change from 8/8 to 7/8 played with a Rhodes piano sound (on my youtube channel if you're interested).

I love that final piece (BWV 921), quite obscure. I played it on harpsichord for a school competition many years ago. I always thought this was early Bach and I don't know much about it, I'd heard there was no autograph score of this but I may be mistaken. I'm curious to know if there is one and when it is dated. It definitely works well on both piano and harpsichord and I still play it (on piano...wish I owned a harpsichord!)

Very interesting episode. It certainly makes a lot of sense. Your playing is beautiful. I believe that , a thoughtful and emotional performance can be played on any instrument… if the player is a sensitive soul and respects the composer.

fabulous work!

Excellent take on Sebastian Bach👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏….you‘re quite right…in his last 15 years of his life he was acquainted with versions of Fortepiano and he composed many manuscripts for this instrument in mind.

A delightful episode, dealing with a polemic topic, progressives vs purists, and i love the final conclusión. Thank You Peter for revealing information about the G sharp minor prelude, i wonder if the same indications on the Italian Concerto refer to the piano forte rather than harpsichord manuals. Beautiful Playing of the C minor fantasia, what a joy this channel is !. Perhaps (just a personal intuition) , during the Baroque, music was so much more about ideas and it´s architecture and proportions, so the instrument was just an available medium. Later on as music and art evolved towards the individual, it became more intertwined with the instrument , in a way that, for instance, a successful translation of Chopin to the Harpsichord would be very unlikely . Bach Music can weather temperaments, bad instruments, even sloppy performances or weird tempos , and still retain it´s value, Even on 8bit it´s still Bach, That´s a miracle. May be the.problem is not so much the modern piano, but all the idiomatic weight that romantic music brought to it, and how to go back to the purity of ideas when performing Bach on it. I´m sure that he would have loved the possibilities and dynamics of today´s instruments seeking out even farther. Cheers & immense thank You for Your wonderful work.

Wonderful ! I have not finished your Bach series yet as I like to take my time with them, but I must confess I could not hold myself of watching this recent video. Look at the cast shadows you have depicted in Bach's face and body! It is truly enjoyable to look at those transitions of gray, I even found myself kind of hypnotized by the artwork and not being able to focus on what was being said at the moment, and so I had to re-watch it. I believe I could sound like if I am "gushing", and I really hope it is not overbearing, but this is truly outstanding and I do not know how could I remain quiet; plus your playing is beautiful! I would like to know something, though. What is your overall sincere opinion on the Vienna Imperial VST? Thank you Mr. Fielding-Bach.

This is a very valuable presentation, thank you for upload! Anyway, I completely agree with what was said.

What you say is very true, but I disagree on one small thing: the fortepiano and the piano are not the same instrument. It's suffered an important evolution to even say that the fortepiano would be considered as the modern piano's grandfather. My point is that the modern pianists should take interest in playing baroque music with instruments that already existed at the time (not literally). Most of the pianists (even the top ones like András Schiff or Glen Gould) play Bach's pieces with a romantic approach. That, in my opinion, is exactly what shouldn't be done, because it doesn't respect the historicist interpretation. Baroque music is very free and it has lots different ways to be played. Please respect it, as it has been the hard work of historicist researchers to rediscover the beautiful techniques of this musical era.

This is a piece of art!

As I always say to those who says Bach cannot be played on the piano using pedals. “Please, don’t use any dynamics either” - as you can’t do that on most harpsichords. Bach’s music is so beautiful and we should do it as beautiful as we can with the means we have.

Brilliant video!

Being a piano player, I've always taken to Bach on the piano. The piano allows so much expression. Would Bach sneer at dynamics applied to his fugues, for instance? I don't know, but my hunch is Bach would just love the piano for all his non-organ keyboard works.

This is great edutainment!

wonderful video!

Thank you! 🤍

Wow very well made content👌🏼

Isn't there an announcement for a concert by Bach's collegium musicum where they would perform on the fortepiano for the first time in the town?

This segments are great

Thank you

In Bach's organ music, you can find indications for "piano" and "forte" dynamics too. The method for executing these indications on the organ is by switching keyboards or registrations, and for the harpsichord it is the same. Since this was the way to execute these indications, every keyboardist, including the juniors, had to be very accustomed to switching keyboards quickly, especially if they were organists like Bach. Regarding the prelude you mentioned, it is unlikely that Bach wrote those indications with the piano in mind

The early piano-forte's have little to do with the piano as we know it.

Hats off to your work, always glad to see Master Bach debunking some facts 😁

Never been too much into animation, not even when I was a child, but this series is one of the rare exception (and cannot be but as such). I'm one of those which thinks Bach or any other Baroque composer sound better on harpsichord, and given the choice I exclusively listen to them played on it or the organ, but I also am unbothered by people playing them on piano.

His music can absolutely be played on the piano, but the question is why would we play it on a piano? It’s not pianistic, definetely not as pianistic as 19th and 20th century music, we could also say it sounds way better on instruments of his period like harpsichord (especially the dances).

I believe harpsichord is generally the go to and a better examples for most of his works and I do much prefer harpsichord to piano but just conveniently I was just playing out of the well tempered clavier and das orgelbüchlein on my midi organ and I set it to piano and played the works again after strictly playing harpsichord and organ and something just felt right for once. I really don't care for the piano much but I'm just very picky which pianos I like but I realized just how much more emotion can be expressed on the piano in different ways and it took me back. Bach would probably have enjoyed music on the modern piano and I really think I understand it now.

The same has been said of Domenico Scarlatti

Unless the composer likely wrote music specifically with an keyboard instrument's given tone as a final goal, I'd say, give the composer a little credit, if Bach had a modern grand piano, he'd love to have the extra creative and expressive flexibility of the instrument to play any of his music. Artists don't generally like to constrain their creativity artificially to a specifically limited tool if a better one is available. Because I also studied voice, I hear many vocal passages on the keyboard when I play certain pieces because I can. Bach could do infinitely more with his musical mind and I assume he was not dreaming in harpsichord sounds and then going to the orchestra to mimic that. No, he dreamed in orchestral sound, and used his everyday keyboard instrument wherever he was working to hammer out (haha) his orchestral ideas. A modern piano would let him work out/express those richer inner musical ideas much more than a crummy plucked harpischord. Music at the level of Bach's mind is a lot less about instruments and much more about the perfected modulation of human emotive aesthetic response.

What's the last piece ending the video?

I'm here "by chance" and it's really superb..too bad there isn't a "French" translation, because my English is not very good..But I suppose that would require too much work..Have a nice day and thank you..Michel-Henri

The first and foremost problem isn’t the pianoforte as an instrument but the „normal tuning“ for this instrument, i.e. the equal temperament, especially for his compositions for a well tempered (not equal tempered!) keyboard…

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que gran idea tienes al hacer esto

This is great, though I think it would benefit from a bit of background music

Bach wrote beautiful music. At the time, the harpichord ŵas the most popular instrument. Bach wanted to sell music? So why not appeal to the widest potential buyers.

English accent for Bach. Yeah that makes sense.

Hi

This was very interesting!!! I personally would choose the harpsichord over the piano any day because it just sounds wayyy better to me but I think Bach’s keyboard pieces on the piano sound just as well as if they were played on a harpsichord or a clavichord!! Thanks for another amazing video

t r u e ❤

Elk instrument biedt een ander perspectief op Bach's muziek. Dat kan omdat deze muziek diepgang heeft.

There is absolutely no objective reason why a performer MUST keep to the composer's initial "intention" when playing his music. The significance of the dispute around this question is similar to the one about how one should make the sign of the cross - left side first (the Catholics) or right side first (the Orthodox). Enough with it already! In all ages, purists and proponents of the "sole authorized" way of doing things, "by official appointment" if possible, were a royal pain in the whazoo and an impediment to creativity. It it is no different in this case. Whether Bach "meant" for his music to be played on this keyboard instrument or another (there is even evidence that some of his famous keyboard concertos were initially written for a string instrument) is a secondary issue at best, one I wouldn't waste any time on. The brilliance of Bach's music is such that it can be played on any instrument, including a plastic recorder.

It is an insult to Bach that his music would not sound "beautiful" with a musical instrument other than the one for which it was written. Modern sequencers, such as the Moog synthesizer, emphasize the abstract character that an acoustic instrument distracts from.

honestly? most keyboardists just have a cheap/mid-priced digital keyboard. if i told a bach purist i wanted to learn and play a bach piece, what the hell would they say? "no"? i hardly believe id be told "lol lmao go buy a harpsichord, or are you too poor? lolol" or something even remotely close..

Consider me a Bach purist. Music he wrote for the harpsichord should be played on the harpsichord just as Mozart's clarinet concerto shouldn't be played with a saxophone.

bach did not enjoy piano forte, thats why they say that.. but you left that out on purpose xd

Typical. Bach has an English accent. LOL.