Good evening

I am curious how is taught the Menuet in G major in Magdalena Bach, attributed to Christian Petzold:


legato or portato?


More precisely, eighth notes legato, and all else portato, clearly detached, left and right hands alike. This is the manner that I have learned.

Now my daughter is being told to play everything legato. And I don't know what to think. To me it sounds awful.

What do others think?

What edition is your daughter playing from? I use the Alfred Masterworks and there is phrasing shown and that's how I teach the piece. The eighth notes are legato. I would consider all else to be portato, keeping in mind the phrasing.
Playing the entire piece legato does not sound right to me.

General rules: moving notes (8ths, 16ths, etc) legato. All others, connect steps, detach skips.

It's interesting to me how different editions suggest this piece (and other Baroque pieces) be played. I have a few editions of this piece and they all have different staccato markings, slurs, etc. One old edition a student brought to me some time ago actually said "legato" at the beginning of the piece and no other markings were noted.

Minniemae, what you state in your post makes complete sense.

There were no dampers on Bach's harpsichords, nor did the instrument have much of a sustaining sound. Anything we do today on the modern piano is artistic license. The general rule of portato for quarter notes and longer is fine, but it's hardly absolute; ditto for legato eighths. To make it interesting, do some eighths legato, some portato/staccato and you will have an even more delightful piece.

Is she learning to ornament? With my quicker students, we ornament throughout. They really enjoy it.

Playing Bach legato is a waste of his effort. You need to play the end of each note as well - we lost sight of them in the 19th century.

Thank you for your responses.

I have the Henry LeMoine Urtext.

The teacher has written slurs along the whole thing, four measures at a time.

My daughter already knows the piece, at least schematically. I had her work on it last spring, with the ornaments in the urtext, with a great attention to the portato. I didn't have her polish the piece, nor memorize it.

Her new teacher, in the municipal music school, wants her to memorize it to play in a recital next week.

My daughter hasn't played it in this way yet, but looking at the score the idea sounds horribly schmaltzy to me. It strikes me as being derived from simplified versions, which would I suppose leave out the ornamental indications as well.

I am very uncomfortable with this, and I think that my daughter is as well. I am trying to see how to approach the question with the school and the teacher.

I don't know which version of Anna Magdalena Bach is used habitually in the school.

Could you ask for a teacher with a better understanding of 18th century practice?

Since Bach did not put those markings in, (either portato or legato) it is entirely up to the taste of the performer (or their teacher in this case). I have heard both ways done pretty equally in performances. You can have a discussion with the teacher -- without your daughter within earshot -- to ask her the reasons behind this, but it may just comes down to her sensibility versus yours. In any case, I would defer to the teacher. You are paying her for her expertise.

Talking of half, quarter and eighth notes CPE Bach, exclusively taught by dad, says 'such tones are are always held for a little less than half their notated length'. Hold on, that's for staccato.

Here's what's relevant 'Tones which are neither detached, connected, nor fully held are sounded for half their value...' What's interesting is the only slight difference in length between these and staccato. The reason being that in CPE's day the dot also meant accent.

There are two schools of thought:

1) Play it like they did. Follow CPE Bach's advice and observe the performance practices of the day, even though we're using a completely different instrument.

2) Recognize that the piano today is very different from the harpsichords and other keyboard instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries and play with a sound and articulation that suits modern instruments and modern ears.

While I see value in both approaches, I don't understand why some people insist on #1. The point of articulation is sound, and since it's impossible to replicate the sound of a harpsichord on the piano, why is it so desirable to replicate the articulation of a harpsichord on piano?

+1

Very well put!

For my taste, I prefer a brisk tempo and mostly non-legato touch for this particular minuet. Most kids play this way, way too slow. You can't dance to that!

No one is looking for the sound of a harpsichord, the articulation is in the music not the instrument. The clavichord (CPE's favourite) could play more legato than the piano. CPE makes it very clear when legato is required, and it's not required here.

The real choice is whether to play it in a 19th century manner or an 18th century manner. It's a no brainer (or should be).

What if one wants to play in a 21st century manner?

Basically, all pianoforte playing
is legato, except when you're
playing staccato notes, and even staccato
notes can be played legato. So
semi-legato notation, like portato,
doesn't really count for much.
You can simply ignore it and
play it legato.

Another no brainer!

Funny, CPE seems to have left that one out of his discourse on clavichord playing.

I pose the question on its head: from a pedagogic point of view, what is the interest in using legato in this piece?

This menuet serves, effectively, as the starting point for the entry into Bach. I have difficulty seeing the motivation in introducing legato, other than to permit the student to play it without delving into the particular character of this music ... in which case, why teach it at all!

I am not arguing, I am trying to understand the reasoning that is there.

Every time this problem crops up both Kreisler and John come out with the same 50 year old thinking. Starting with Mitchell's translation of CPE's Versuch in '49 keyboard scholarship has come a long way. We know so much about Bach's performance practice, there's really no excuse.

For teachers not up to speed on this arcane discussion, there is no damper control on the harpsichord, every note is damped as soon as the finger releases the key. See here and here for a better understanding of the mechanism.

This form of dance is not necessarily fast, AZN! It's a moderate tempo and the dance requires 6 steps to complete the pattern of steps. These dances were graceful and danced in the floor pattern of a Z, with toe-tapping, curtsying and bowing.

And besides, by the time of Bach, not many were really even dancing them anymore. They were quite stylized by this time.

Remember, this is often a child's first Bach piece. There are many fish to fry at this point in the child's development without being 100% historically accurate.

What are the Bachfish to fry, in your view?

50 year old thinking that understands there's a difference between the piano and the harpsichord, and that there are other treatises besides CPE Bach which also apply (Marpurg, Quantz, Couperin, etc.)

The literature is unclear as to articulation in music that is not explicitly marked as staccato or legato, especially at moderate tempi used in minuets.

And of course, the acoustic environment is wildly different. The hard stone with plaster over walls of the buildings used by 18th and 19th century performers makes for a wonderfully reverberant listening environment, where as, the N. American wood and carpeted flooring sucks up sound like a sponge. Articulation follows, not leads.

Speaking of articulations, I believe it was Bruce Berr who had some comments on this very subject in this month's MTNA journal. Worth a read. Back page.

Perhaps you could ask your question here to your child's teacher. My answer would be: there is no reason to teach legato in this piece.

Since kbk brought up the point of scholarly writing (and suggested maybe I wasn't interested in or familiar with Bach scholarship), I thought I'd share some things from Little and Jenne:



"The bowings in the Bach-Gesellschaft edition are different from those in the P 967 manuscript of the violin partitas...

...Minuet II begins with a suggestion of musette style with the note B held for three measures. Several measures in which the eighth notes are slurred in twos while moving by thirds or in conjunct motion (e.g., measures 5-6 and 8) suggest performance in notes inegales. Bach puts a slur across the bar line (which was unusual in dance music), possibly to hint at a hemiola in measures 22-23, which is appropriate to the lute version as well.

Arpeggio and broken-chord figures outline the harmonies in both minuets of Suite I for solo cello (BWV 1007). The bowings in Minuet I again appear differently in the Bach-Gesellschaft edition than in the P 269 manuscript. As Ex. V-6a shows, the P 269 manuscript is more lively and more closely articulated, emphasizing the individual pulses rather than the larger unites, as in the Bach-Gesellschaft edition. Further variety in the grouping of eighths occurs in Minuet II..."

The example shows the notated articulation of several measures of running 8th notes. The B-G edition shows 5 notes slurred together, while the manuscript shows only the first 3 notes slurred together. The slurs are the same in the version for lute.

Regarding a keyboard example, Little and Jenne write:

"BWV 841, 842, and 843 are three minuets from the W.F. Bach Notebook of 1720...

...According to Karl Geiringer, the first was written by W.F. Bach, the third by J. S. Bach, and the second jointly written by father and son. The original copy has carefully marked slurs."

And back to my rambling:

Nothing in these writings suggests that there is a single way to perform these kinds of passages, and as the string examples show, a variety of articulations is possible.

I think it is also interesting to note that the minuets in the notebooks were not intended for publication. They were used in Bach's own teaching. We have no idea what he might have told Anna Magdalena or Wilhelm. Maybe he asked them to play non-legato, but it's also possible that he, being a good teacher, suggested alternatives or urged them to come up with their own interpretations.

Finally, I think a word about pedagogy is important. Non-legato is difficult to do convincingly, and if attempted too early, can result in overly tense or fussy playing. Often, it is more desirable to use these pieces to teach and refine the basics - the first five notes of the Petzold minuet lend themselves very well to a legato slur, just as the repeated Gs immediately following lend themselves well to a slight staccato bounce. One can easily envision a situation where adding those slurs would not only be consistent with baroque practice, but perhaps desirable as well.

After all, the people who lived in 1720 were every bit as individual as those of us living in 2009. I think we do our musical ancestors a great disservice when we ascribe a "one size fits all" attitude to their music making. Part of the reason dynamics, slurring, ornaments, and even notes were left out was because performers were encouraged to improvise and embellish within the bounds of taste. C.P.E. Bach himself wrote:

"In general the briskness of allegros is expressed by detached notes and the tenderness of adagios by broad, slurred notes. The performer must keep in mind that these characteristic features of allegros and adagios are to be given consideration even when a composition is not so marked, as well as when the performer has not yet gained an adequate understanding of the affect of a work. I use the expression, 'in general,' advisedly, for I am well aware that all kinds of execution may appear in any tempo."

Kreisler, Thank you for the wonderful detailed information. It's very helpful and interesting.

It's a FANTASTIC book - it's been on my "must read" list for years, and I find myself referring to it constantly:

http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=21181