Show Notes
I was always jealous of jazz musicians, simply learning music off recordings— no sheet music necessary. Why couldn’t I do that? Why don’t classical musicians have this skill? It seems like all musical cultures in the world learn this way, so what was I missing? About 12 years ago I decided I wanted to be part of this tradition. After some trial and error, I hit upon a method that allowed me to learn Bach (or any other composer) by ear. And more than just being glad for having developed the skill of transcribing, the method is extremely efficient: I find that pieces are usually memorized faster than when using sheet music. Here is the method as explained in the episode: -Record, slowly with the score, up to 60 seconds of music (or even 10 seconds if you like.)-Put away the score and play ‘call and response’ with the recording, relying on your ears.-Once learned, re-record the music as you've heard it, now learned aurally.-Re-open the music, play the new recording, checking for inaccuracies, missing details, &c.-Repeat… Stretch the Octave:
Now, once something is memorized, you may want to keep it memorized. So you’re up against the ol’ Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve: the speed at which your mind forgets without conscious review. We all have our own curves, but my rule has been roughly: Play the newly memorized music twice on the first day,Review the music on the second day,… three days after learning,… one week after learning,… two weeks after learning,… one month after learning,… three months after learning,… six months after learning,… one year after learning,…two years after learning. You can even put dates in your calendar saying, “You learned fugue X three months ago: Review it today.” With this practice, you’re sure to have some counterpoint written into your DNA. W.T.F. Bach wants YOU to learn a fugue by ear:
The Pakistani musician I mentioned is the immortal, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Listen to his extraordinary live concerts where he and his band achieve the heights (while sitting on the floor.) In my next life I’d like to be one of the guys in back clapping only quarter notes. Want to help this resource? Here’s how: We encourage our listeners to become a paid subscriber atwtfbach.substack.comFree subscriptions are also beneficial for our stats. You can make a one-time donation: https://www.paypal.me/wtfbachhttps://venmo.com/wtfbach Supporting this show ensures its longevity. Thank you for your support!
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More from WTF Bach
The music at the end is BWV 600, from a forthcoming ‘electrified’ arrangement of Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. The beautiful passage toward the end of my rant— with the koto accompaniment and bird song— comes from one of my absolute favorite books: R.H. Blythe’s writings about Haiku. Blyth considered the three greatest geniuses of time to be Basho, Bach, and Shakespeare— in that order! Wow! What am I missing with Basho!? More than a podcast. This is WTF Bach.
Volume 6 in ‘J.S. Bach: Complete Keyboard Works’ is on presale today! Here are the relevant links: * J.S. Bach: Complete Keyboard Works, Vol. 6 - Arrangements of Albinoni and Reincken(https://modernclassicalx.lnk.to/JSBachCompleteKeyboardWorksVol6FromArrangementsofAlbinoniandReincken) I might call this volume a ‘headphones album’ or perhaps one to listen to in the car: The sonic space shifts throughout the course of these pieces. I describe this process in depth in the episode, but essentially each track is two recordings of the piece, playing simultaneously: one recording is the original live performance, while another is that very same performance, played back through the Disklavier with the dynamics flatlined— as if the piano keyboard were incapable of dynamics — like a harpsichord. The two recordings were then ‘live panned’ during the mixing according to my feeling for the music. The result, while perhaps less extreme than this all sounds, is certainly a noticeable phenomenon, especially in headphones or seated between two speakers as in a car. But enough about that, let’s get to the music. Fugue it:
We’ve now covered the seven surviving earliest vocal works by Johann Sebastian Bach! This episode is a brief tour through the episodes we dedicated to these pieces, refreshing our memories and attempting to identify unifying stylistic features. All the episodes covering the Arnstadt/Mülhausen cantatas can be found at:https://wtfbach.substack.com/t/early-cantatas Wanna Cantata?
“The consummate expressiveness of {BWV 4] has always been marvelled at. Each verse is as if chiselled in music.” -Albert Schweitzer, Vol. 2 Bach’s early Easter cantata remains one of the most beloved in the entire canon. Barely 22 years old, he is already in full command of his tone-painting. Here are three measures particularly packed with symbolism: Filling the music with rests at the word nothing, ‘one death eating another’ through the closest possible canon, crosses both in shape and every note ‘sharped’ (gekreuzt,) dripping blood on the Passover doors with short 8th notes, leaping a diminished 12th (!) in the bass aria at the word death, this cantata is a dictionary of text painting. …und singen Halleluja!
Sometimes an article from the EB strikes me as so amusing, I simply have to share it with you. See you next week (or the week after, latest) for the conclusion of our early cantata survey, with Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4. Thanks for listening! Well, That’s Fascinating!