I'm hardly the first musician whose heart has been touched by Bach's music, and I won't be the last. I've played all of his harpsichord music at one time or another, and started to record it. Then a creep rubberbanded the tempi, pretended they were his and were played on a piano, legally copyrighted the results in the USA, and threatened legal action against sites that refused to carry them.
One of them was the recording I made for my daughter just before she died of brain cancer. He removed the prayer for her that I had placed in the recording. The sites that carry his files know what happened, and don't care.
You can listen to my recordings done to that point at several sites, notably at Dave's J.S.Bach Page, or by dowloading my zip file.
I thank David for his support during this period.
Two brief notes that are relevant to my recordings:
- Bach did not invent a tuning scale, nor did he compose for equal-tempering.
He wrote for a wohltemperierte, a 'good' tempering, specifically
tunings
similar to that we call Werkmeister III today. What he invented was equal-tempered
composing, the techniques of controlling consonance so that music could have a
consistent style in all keys while remaining in tune on harpsichord or organ.
- Bach was aware of the piano, in fact he was agent for a piano maker during his
later years. Further, although I play the Italian Concerto with cross-manual
technique common to German organists of the time, it bears strong evidence of having
been written for pianoforte.
John Sankey