I recently recalled an event that happened during my adolescent days when my superb piano teacher, Mr. Stephen Erickson, assigned me Bach’s Prelude in B Minor from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier. With the score open on the music stand, he instructed me to read it at sight, which I did, quite well I believe. At the conclusion of my performance, he observed with some excitement that this prelude was one of the few keyboard pieces by Bach that was accompanied by an original tempo marking (Andante). An awkward silence ensued; he must have expected some sort of reaction from me, some sort of excitement that matched his own, perhaps. But he became disappointed when I had no reaction whatsoever, and he offered no further observations on the matter. Sixteen-year old boys are rarely excited by such insights.
Relearning this prelude and a few other pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier many years later, it finally did occur to me that this was indeed something remarkable. Only four of the ninety-six pieces in the two books are accompanied by an original tempo marking, the other three being “Largo” for the B-Minor Fugue in Book 1, “Largo” for the G-Minor Prelude in Book 2, and “Allegro” for the B-Minor Prelude in Book 2. Clearly, Bach’s “Andante” was a request for a moderate tempo for this prelude. But isn’t this obvious from the opening measures?
Surely no experienced musician would play this as an allegro, or, at the opposite side, as an adagio. Why did Bach feel the need to include “Andante” for this prelude, yet not any others? What was unique about this piece?
“Andante” is the present participle of the Italian andare, to walk. All musicians recognize this common designation and understand that it indicates a leisurely, moderate “walking” tempo, something, perhaps, midway in the hazy tempo continuum between Allegro and Adagio. However, this was not the case for musicians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to Sébastien de Brossard’s Dictionaire de musique of 1703:
Andante…means above all for basso continuos that all the notes must be made equal, and the sounds well separated.” (Robert Donnington, The Interpretation of Early Music, 388).
Bach’s “Andante” indication, thus, is not a tempo marking, but rather an indication for performance; it stipulates that the eighth notes in the left-hand part (present in nearly every measure of the piece) should be performed as written, not to be played as inégale (the same indication may be found in "Et in unum dominum" from the Mass in B Minor, which likewise features an eighth-note bass line). In modern terms, this would be indicated as “straight eighths, not swung eighths,” an unequivocal indication for us that would have been utterly incomprehensible in Bach’s time. “Andante” as a tempo indication seems to have arisen in the decade of Bach’s death. Leopold Mozart notes in his Violinschule of 1756:
Andante, going (gehend). The word itself tells us that one must give the piece its natural gait.
(Robert Donnington, The Interpretation of Early Music, 389).
Exactly how the term was transformed from an indication of performance to an indication of speed and/or mood remains unknown. But from this point on, “Andante” became a ubiquitous indication in music, although occasionally troubled by confusion and misinterpretation.
Mr. Erickson, if you happen to stumble upon this entry, my apologies for not recognizing the significance of your observation. I am not entirely sure if you realized what Bach was specifying (my deadpan reaction did not invite any further discussion), but you were quite correct in pointing out the rarity of this indication. Such, however, is adolescence.
Postscript: It occurred to me that I never truly considered what the actual tempo (i.e., the “tempo giusto”) of this prelude is, if we accept that Bach’s “Andante” is an indication of performance. The eighth note is the general rhythmic unit in this prelude, with sixteenth notes occurring in but four isolated instances. Thus, a tempo based on the eighth note is seemingly a reliable determination. Consideration must also be given to the right hand’s ability to manage two independent voices; the soprano-alto pairing of voices in the right hand in the above example is continued for the duration of the piece and can present a few treacherous instances of finger co-ordination for the performer.
With these factors in mind, an actual “Andante” might indeed be the most appropriate tempo: a moderately paced tempo, not too fast and certainly not too slow, that is fairly unwavering for the duration of the piece (save for sectional cadences). Consider the range of the approximate metronome values from the following eight recordings of this piece (featuring performances on harpsichord and piano):
Vladimir Feltsman: quarter note = 56
Sviatoslav Richter: quarter note = 60
Rosalyn Tureck: quarter note = 68
Wanda Landowska: quarter note = 72
Maurizio Pollini: quarter note = 80
Glenn Gould: quarter note = 86
Kenneth Gilbert: quarter note = 88
Roger Woodward: quarter note = 94
From 56 to 94, this is quite a spread, but none of the performances approaches an “Allegro”; even Glenn Gould, notorious for his extreme tempos, keeps his tempo relatively tame. Personally, I believe a metronome value in the 80s is the most appropriate for this piece, regardless of the choice of keyboard.
Could it be, then, that Bach’s “Andante” is both a manner of performance and a tempo indication?
Relearning this prelude and a few other pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier many years later, it finally did occur to me that this was indeed something remarkable. Only four of the ninety-six pieces in the two books are accompanied by an original tempo marking, the other three being “Largo” for the B-Minor Fugue in Book 1, “Largo” for the G-Minor Prelude in Book 2, and “Allegro” for the B-Minor Prelude in Book 2. Clearly, Bach’s “Andante” was a request for a moderate tempo for this prelude. But isn’t this obvious from the opening measures?
Surely no experienced musician would play this as an allegro, or, at the opposite side, as an adagio. Why did Bach feel the need to include “Andante” for this prelude, yet not any others? What was unique about this piece?
“Andante” is the present participle of the Italian andare, to walk. All musicians recognize this common designation and understand that it indicates a leisurely, moderate “walking” tempo, something, perhaps, midway in the hazy tempo continuum between Allegro and Adagio. However, this was not the case for musicians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to Sébastien de Brossard’s Dictionaire de musique of 1703:
Andante…means above all for basso continuos that all the notes must be made equal, and the sounds well separated.” (Robert Donnington, The Interpretation of Early Music, 388).
Bach’s “Andante” indication, thus, is not a tempo marking, but rather an indication for performance; it stipulates that the eighth notes in the left-hand part (present in nearly every measure of the piece) should be performed as written, not to be played as inégale (the same indication may be found in "Et in unum dominum" from the Mass in B Minor, which likewise features an eighth-note bass line). In modern terms, this would be indicated as “straight eighths, not swung eighths,” an unequivocal indication for us that would have been utterly incomprehensible in Bach’s time. “Andante” as a tempo indication seems to have arisen in the decade of Bach’s death. Leopold Mozart notes in his Violinschule of 1756:
Andante, going (gehend). The word itself tells us that one must give the piece its natural gait.
(Robert Donnington, The Interpretation of Early Music, 389).
Exactly how the term was transformed from an indication of performance to an indication of speed and/or mood remains unknown. But from this point on, “Andante” became a ubiquitous indication in music, although occasionally troubled by confusion and misinterpretation.
Mr. Erickson, if you happen to stumble upon this entry, my apologies for not recognizing the significance of your observation. I am not entirely sure if you realized what Bach was specifying (my deadpan reaction did not invite any further discussion), but you were quite correct in pointing out the rarity of this indication. Such, however, is adolescence.
Postscript: It occurred to me that I never truly considered what the actual tempo (i.e., the “tempo giusto”) of this prelude is, if we accept that Bach’s “Andante” is an indication of performance. The eighth note is the general rhythmic unit in this prelude, with sixteenth notes occurring in but four isolated instances. Thus, a tempo based on the eighth note is seemingly a reliable determination. Consideration must also be given to the right hand’s ability to manage two independent voices; the soprano-alto pairing of voices in the right hand in the above example is continued for the duration of the piece and can present a few treacherous instances of finger co-ordination for the performer.
With these factors in mind, an actual “Andante” might indeed be the most appropriate tempo: a moderately paced tempo, not too fast and certainly not too slow, that is fairly unwavering for the duration of the piece (save for sectional cadences). Consider the range of the approximate metronome values from the following eight recordings of this piece (featuring performances on harpsichord and piano):
Vladimir Feltsman: quarter note = 56
Sviatoslav Richter: quarter note = 60
Rosalyn Tureck: quarter note = 68
Wanda Landowska: quarter note = 72
Maurizio Pollini: quarter note = 80
Glenn Gould: quarter note = 86
Kenneth Gilbert: quarter note = 88
Roger Woodward: quarter note = 94
From 56 to 94, this is quite a spread, but none of the performances approaches an “Allegro”; even Glenn Gould, notorious for his extreme tempos, keeps his tempo relatively tame. Personally, I believe a metronome value in the 80s is the most appropriate for this piece, regardless of the choice of keyboard.
Could it be, then, that Bach’s “Andante” is both a manner of performance and a tempo indication?
RSS Feed