Back in the Sixties, a gentleman called Walter Carlos decided to use the Moog synthesizer (which had been invented some months earlier) to play a number of pieces by Bach. The resulting album was Switched-On Bach, which was a fairly iconic album at the time.
The Moog synthesizer, created by Robert Moog, was an electronic instrument that constructed musical tones directly, by generating oscillations in tuned circuits, which were given various characteristics (tone colors), which were connected to a simple keyboard for ease of use. The keyboard was much smaller than those in a present-day kid's synthesizer, but instead of generating tones using mathematical formulas, as today, they generated sounds using analog circuits. In all other respects, they were true synthesizers in that the sounds were generated, and not recorded, as in today's sampled synthesizers, which used sounds recorded from actual instruments, such as violins and flutes.
My plan is to base this program on Walter Carlos's album. Some decades later, Walter underwent gender transition surgery, and took the name Wendy Carlos, who continued her career as a synthesizer performer, and according to Wikipedia helped provide scores for the movies A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron.
In 1999, Ms Carlos released an album to commemorate an anniversary of the original Switched-On Bach, called Switched-On Bach 2000, which featured some new takes on the pieces on the original album, as well as some new pieces.
Part A Switched-On Bach, Glenn Gould, Archie
Sinfonia to Cantata 29
Once Bach had written about 20 Cantatas, he always opened a cantata with a big chorus. But in early cantatas, there was a sort of overture, and this is the best-known one. Wendy Carlos chose to open the S-O B album with this.
Air on the G String
[6:15] The second movement of Orchestral Suite no 3 in D, entitled simply Air (or Aria, in Italian) became well-known as The Air on the G String in Britain. It was, at one time, the best known piece by Bach by people who didn't know a lot of Bach music.
Two-Part Inventions
[8:50] These very lightly-constructed keyboard pieces are not as easy to play as they sound. In fact, they sometimes sound as if there are more than two parts going on. Carlos plays the Inventions in F major, B Flat major, and D minor. (The other 2-part inventions are just as beautiful, and easy to appreciate.)
Invention No 4 in D minor Glenn Gould
[11:58] This is Glenn Gould playing the previous piece, on the piano.
Brandenburg Concerto No 3 in G Major
[12:56] Bach wrote six concertos for various combinations, and if you get to know just those six, you would be enriched immensely. The concerto in G major was made popular by Wendy Carlos, just about the time that the concerto in D major was made popular in the novel Love Story. [Here it is, on YouTube, played by the Freiburg Barockorchester]
Part B Switched-On Bach 2000
Prelude and Fugue in E-Flat Major
[0:00] You may have heard of Bach’s collection of 48 preludes and fugues called the Well Tempered Clavier. He was one of the first composers to write in every possible key. The piano scale has seven white notes, and the five black notes. This is twelve distinct tones. Bach wrote twelve preludes, and twelve fugues, one for each major key. Then he wrote another set, all in minor keys. Then he wrote a whole other set of another twenty-four.
Here Wendy plays the E Flat prelude and fugue. The prelude is a bit boring and takes forever, but the fugue, [6:11] which is much shorter, is nice.
Wachet auf
[7:54] The next cut on the album is named Wachet auf, which literally means "Wake up", the title of a cantata, no. 140. I was not very impressed with Carlos's interpretation of the movement widely known by this name, a chorale-prelude based on a chorus from the cantata. We're playing an mp3 constructed by myself, using Finale. The voice part is given to trombones. My wife thought that the organ part made it sound too churchy, so the keyboard part is given to a harpsichord. (The keyboard part, or continuo, may be played by any combination of organ, harpsichord, cello, double bass, lute, theorbo, etc.)
Happy 25th, S-OB
[13:20] This is the opening cut on Switched-On Bach 2000, released on the 25th anniversary of the original Switched-On Bach (1968). I'm not sure whether it is an original composition by Wendy Carlos, or whether it is based on some birthday composition by Bach himself. (On reading the liner notes, yes: it is an original composition by Wendy Carlos.)
Sinfonia in D Major
[14:10] The overture to Cantata 29 once again. I think this one is a big improvement. Lots of people seem not to care for SOB 2000; I think it is very much better, with more complex, richer sounds, and with Baroque tunings (in contrast to the equal-tempered tuning of SOB). In Bach's time, the interval (distance) between each note and the next was not the same; the tuning was chosen to make C major sound as good as possible, which made other keys close by sound different from C major, and very distinctive. (Keys such as C Sharp were hardly used at all.) A website that explains some of this is to be found here.
Air on a G String
[18:14] This is the SOB 2000 version
Two Part Inventions- In F Major, B-Flat Major, D Minor
[21:26] These, too, sound much more convincing and pleasing to the ear (than the 1968 versions). But, of course, for those familiar with the 1968 versions, those have amazing nostalgia value.
The Well-Tempered Clavier- Prelude No 2 in C Minor
[24: 36] This performance emphasizes the potential for this piece to sound angry, and presages "industrial" music of the mid 20th century.
The Well-Tempered Clavier- Fugue No. 2 in C Minor
[26:30] The fugue, in contrast to the prelude, is a sweetly plaintive piece.
Part C More Switched-On Bach 2000
The Well-Tempered Clavier- Prelude No 7 in E-Flat Major
As boring as before, but brutally speeded up by Archie from 5-plus minutes to 4.
The Well-Tempered Clavier- Fugue No. 7 in E-Flat Major
Even nicer than the 1968 version.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major- I. Allegro
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major- III. Allegro
This concerto, in contrast to most Baroque concertos, has only two movements. Carlos, along with many other scholars, surmised that Bach improvised a short bridge between the two movements, in place of a slow movement. She improvised a movement, and put it on the album, but it is whimsical to the point of silliness, so I have left it out. It was played on the broadcast on Saturday, but I decided to leave it out of the podcast. I apologize.
Tocata & Gugue in D Minor
I'm not sure what a Gugue is; I imagine it is something between a fugue and a gigue. In this case, it is just the fugue that goes with the toccata.
Part D Bachbusters
Italian Concerto
In the eighties, an album called Bachbusters made its appearance. Its most memorable cut is the third, the Presto from the Italian Concerto. Here are all three movements of Bach's Italian Concerto in F Major, realized by Don Dorsey, in Bachbusters.
Two-Part Invention, for keyboard No. 1 in C major, BWV 772
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 1 in C major, BWV 787
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 8 in F major, BWV 794
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 10 in G major, BWV 794
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 12 in A major, BWV 794
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 15 in B minor
Contrapunctus 1
To end this show, this is the first fugue from The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst de Fuge) by Bach, made by me, using sampled sounds from the Garritan Personal Orchestra, and Finale PrintMusic 2014. Because the sounds are sampled, the piece sounds like actual instruments, but because it is played by software, the performance sounds a little artificial. But this is one of the most perfect pieces Bach wrote, and I can't imagine why people like Wendy Carlos have left these pieces alone.
Archie
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