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Subject:
From:
"D.C. Carr" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Harpsichords and Related Topics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:11:31 +0200
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Davitt wrote, among other interesting observations, the following:

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Davitt Moroney" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: "Bach harpsichords" ?


> [...]
> Bach's keyboard ranges are instructive:
> -- WTC I (1722) is strictly 49 notes, four chromatic octaves (this
> need not be just because he was thinking of a little clavichord).
> That this is not a coincidence is shown by the fact that he twice
> deliberately mistreats the countersubject to the fugue in B minor to
> avoid high C sharps.  [....]

The question remains, in my opinion, *why* Bach preferred to avoid those 
high c#s.  The reason or reasons may have had nothing to do with the compass 
of an expected instrument.

A similar example, also in b minor, is the organ prelude & fugue BWV544. 
Toward the end of the fugue Bach makes an alteration of the countersubject 
which avoids the high c#.  In my opinion he may have wished to avoid this 
note for "purely musical" reasons, by which I mean that he possibly 
preferred a more gradual and uninterrupted descent from the high b, maybe as 
a means to achieve a more convincing closure.  A high c# might possibly have 
been perceived as too prominent, in his composer's ear, at this point in the 
piece.  [The high b is approached as a fairly spectacular dissonant seventh, 
and the resolution to a may have seemd too important to permit the intrusion 
of the high c#.]

We can only speculate as to why he chose this solution, which has indeed 
both advantages - if indeed one considers them to be advantages.  Whether an 
18th-century player using an instrument with a high c# would have found 
Bach's "solution" to what he saw as a non-existent compass problem to be an 
improvement, we'll never know.

The temptation to think "Bach wrote this, so he must have 
meant/wanted/intended such&such" is great.  Davitt expresses himself more 
circumspectly.

Regards,
Dale 

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