Good morning everybody (well, at least it’s morning here in Lucca).
This is to communicate my new personal fingering mini-project.
As you know, a year ago I published my fingered edition of J. S. Bach’s WTC vol. I, with the invaluable help of our David Pickett, who not only edited my dubious English prose but also checked the score and provided useful corrections and suggestions.
It had the success expected in these mini-niche endeavours. I have longed ceased to gather statistics about sales, but I know that this edition hardly reached the hundred copies sold, although still a few copies sell every month.
With WTC vol. II I have no intention of producing anything like a baroque-fingering edition, for two reasons:
When I started the WTC I project, along the years I had already baroque-fingered most of the work.
Conversely, I have hardly fingered a dozen of movements from WTC II. So there is lots of work to do in this respect.
Bach put together WTC I in 1722, arguably with pieces composed during the few preceding years, when in Baroque German lands “everybody and his dog” played the keyboard with traditional fingerings.
WTC II was put together in 1742, when J. S. Bach and some students (W. Fr. Bach we know by sure) were still employing traditional fingerings, and the work is fully playable with these fingerings. However, modern thumb-based fingering was already widely diffused throughout Europe and certainly employed by the youngest readers of Bach’s MS (which, like WTC I, was not published during Bach’s life).
Therefore, the traditional-fingering of WTC II is likely to be of lesser interest to modern harpsichordists.
Nevertheless, and this is my “mini-project of the month”, for my own personal use, I am now in the process of fully-revisiting my old fingerings for that dozen or so movements from WTC II (which over the years I wrote over a very old Henle edition) and copying them over to a recently-acquired copy of Henle’s latest unfingered edition.
Should anybody have any questions about these matters, I will be happy to oblige.
A very interesting endeavour, which I’d enjoy seeing it completed (which sadly you are not going to do).
“Baroque” or not, epoque fingering is still interesting to see. I remember some pairs in WTC2 fingered by Bach’s son (don’t remember who: maybe Wilhelm Friedmann?). I was still playing them with a pianistic approach (probably Mugellini’s fingering: aargh!) and that ancient fingering by Bach’s son led me to a way different understanding of the articulation and phrasing. It was many years ago.
I know bach’s son’s is somewhat discussed by some - I guess I should go to Claudio’s book on fingering - but still is a historical fingering. So, if Claudio (or whoever) would extend the principles of fingering to the whole wtc, it would be great.
I know, I always say I am against fingered editions. Though, something has to be done against the “pianistic” fingered editions which plague the market. Those are “un-harpsichordly” in subtler ways than the “baroque-modern” or “thumb-less vs “thumb-based” opposition convey.
More, learning fingering via a properly fingered edition is more straightforward and easy than to learn the theoric principles and then applying them.
So I would encourage Claudio to finish the entire wtc, if the scarce selling wasn’t an issue.
(maybe there is a copyright issue too, if using commercially available editions such as Henle?)
On another matter, Domenico, today as I just said I was revisiting some of my fingerings for WTC II, written as corrections over a old Henle edition fingered by a Hans-Martin Theopold. His fingerings are atrociousl. It is not just that it is piano fingering, it is also inconsistent! In many passages, where for example the r.h. thumb holds a note and there is an upper voice moving, he inevitably has to resort to baroque fingerings, passing 3 over 4 or else 4 over 5. Elsewhere, however, there is a thumb-fixation: he sometimes uses again and again the thumb (not just for passing) where a long finger would play the passage more comfortably even on a piano.
Lately I am frequently surprised at how well the traditional fingerings work in some later Bach works. Also, due to some issues with arthritis in my thumbs, the traditional fingerings are much more comfortable to play, when applicable. In otherwords, it is not of lesser interest to me.
I can confirm from experience that traditional baroque fingerings are much easier on arthritic thumbs. While obviously not the primary reason for adopting the practice, I suspect they might also help to prevent future arthritic damage for younger players favoring early music.
Did I miss reading which dozen or so you are fingering?
Lately, I am having trouble with playing the ornament on the 3rd beat of m. 38 in the D major Prelude in WTC II. I suppose that ornament simply must be played with 5 and 4 in the right hand, and I’ll just admit that those are a bit weak for me to do in that manner especially while the thumb holds down the E.
Until lately, I had just been playing that ornament wrongly as an inverted mordent 4-5-4 because it just felt easier to play fast like that. But now that I’m getting older and wiser I’m trying to do it properly as 5-4-5-4 which is taking more effort. Any other suggestion for that?
Hi Paul. I am in the process of revising my existing WTC II fingerings. Some pieces are thoroughly fingered, in others i have a few suggestions, in others nothing. Once I am done I will gladly post here the list of fingered ones just in case.
The D major Prelude in WTC II is J.S. Bach’s is a most important piece: his “Rosetta Stone” for duplets and triplets. I wrote a paper on this matter half a century ago! Published somewhere in Spanish, have no longer a copy. An updated version in English is included in my Playing the Baroque Harpsichord book, 4.9 TRIPLETS AND DUPLETS IN J. S. BACH, pp.106-109, with evidence that disproves common erroneous assumptions in the matter.
Back to your question: this is a piece I have not fingered. But the answer is very easy, even for hands as small as mine. Prior to the trill you have in the soprano a d" played with 5. You start the trill with a repeated d" with 4, and trill with 4-3.