I have just started on the Anna Magdalena notebook (with the 115 minuet) and while discussing fingering with my teacher he was telling me a couple of points where a 'lift' would be a good idea (I was worried about fingering so I could play all of it legato)

Is there any resource I can look at to learn more about this? My next lesson is in 2 weeks and I'd like to have a bit more background, I am playing off an urtext edition so I don't have any extraneous markings to guide me either way (good in some ways, bad in others I guess )

Hi,

I too am working on the Anna Magdelena Notebook (just started with a teacher 4 months ago). Are the "lifts" you are talking about where you "float" off of the last note in a legato phrase ? "Drop and float" is what my teacher calls it. You drop your hand into the first note and float off the last, lifting from the wrist.

I think that's more or less what I mean, places where you actually stop playing legato, you stop to 'clarify' I guess that the musical phrase is over: some of these are obvious (I think the first 4 bars in the second part come to mind as a 'phrase' you would lift 'after', I don't have the score in front of me unfortunately) but I was wondering if there is any 'rule' to this or if it's more a 'listen to what makes sense' kind of situation, sort of like choosing places where to breathe when playing a wind instrument.

Yes, that is pretty much correct. My teacher says to think of that entire legato phrase as a complete musical thought. Kind of like a complete sentence, where you would naturally pause very briefly at the end.

Bach shouldn't be legato. Here's one I prepared earlier (some legato accidentally creeps in).

That sounded beautiful - almost like a harpsichord!

If Bach should not be played legato, then why are there slur markings throughout almost every piece in the book I have. It is "J. S. Bach - The First Book for Pianists" edited by Willard A. Palmer and published by Alfred publishing.

To say that Bach should not be played legato is, I'm sorry to say, nonsense. Legato and staccato - with the full intermediate spectrum - are needed in Bach as with any other composer. Whilst there are no rules as such, in Bach, LH especially, a good rule of thumb is adjacent seconds, legato, adjacent thirds and more, detached, if not staccato. But it's only a rule of thumb. Musical sense should always be the first consideration. To the OP, stick with your 'listen to what makes sense' approach, subject to advice from your teacher of course.
If you look at Bach autographs you will often see the music 'curve', as Bach writes with his intended phrasing in mind.

KBK I enjoyed your playing, dont know why people give you two stars... the only thing Cruel in the video was your tweed jacket.

/lol jk but not about that jacket.

OH FYI I died laughing at your "How not to use arm weight video"

They are put there by the editor. If you look at a good edition of the 15 Two-part Inventions you'll see he only put slurs in two.

I posted the video to show how much richer the music is if you play the end of the notes as well. You can't do that in legato.

I can't agree that Bach isn't meant to be played legato. His emphasis on cantabile playing requires legato.

Legato and cantabile are two different things.

I know, but I don't think you can achieve cantabile without legato.

C P E Bach refers to his (and to his Father) playing of melodies to be like "a string of pearls," each note separate, with a distinct beginning and end before the next note. And yes, it can be done cantabile.

http://www.mu.qub.ac.uk/tomita/essay/inventions.html

From Johann Mattheson’s The Detailed Figured-Bass Method
(Hamburg, 1735, pp. 48-49, 51):

And, finally, (that which is the most important benefit of all) you will have become accustomed from the very beginning to playing melodically or acquiring the ability to play as if you were singing so as to achieve the manner of playing similar to the singing human voice, i.e., having the characteristic or nature of flowing movement as well as connectedness, which is something that cannot be learned simply from playing figured-bass now or until the end of time and yet is something, the use of which, in the practice of figured-bass, is absolutely required on a continuous basis and is indispensable.

…however, in regard to playing figured-bass, it is inevitably necessary that a figured-bass performer must
understand the main melody which he has before him and which he is to accompany. He must know this main melody so well that he can either sing it as he plays the figured-bass, or accompany it in a singing manner; for I, once and for all, remain steadfast behind this motto: Whoever cannot sing, also cannot play. Singing is necessary, even if you only imagine this singing voice in your mind.

One of my hobby-horses is how the vast majority classical singers seem to feel that consonants are an irritant that disrupts the beautiful flow of vowels. There are so few that have good diction. Usually I can't understand the words even when they are singing in English!

A 'singing manner' and legato, as John points out, are two different things. You've got your 19th century hat on.

keyboardklutz: do I understand you correctly, that all Bach's notes should be detached ("string of pearls") and therefore any phrasing should, can only, be marked by a longer space between the end note of one phrase and the first note of the next phrase? Is that what you are saying?

Phrasing on the harpsichord, for obvious reasons, was an amazing art. I think Kirkpatrick may have dealt with it at one time. Check through a good edition of the Anna M Bach book - a glance through mine shows only a minuet with a couple of slurs and a Rondeau where he obviously wanted the second of groups of two notes to be quieter. So yes, detached. It was the 18th century way.

C P E Bach's Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, page 149 in my copy: "There are many players who play stickily, as if they had glue between their fingers. Their touch is lethargic; they hold notes too long. Others, in an attempt to correct this, leave the keys too soon, as if they burned. Both are wrong. Midway between these extremes is best. Here again I speak in general, for every kind of touch has its use".

"Every kind of touch has its use".

Just before this, same page: "In general the briskness of allegros is exspressed by detached notes and the tenderness of adagios by broad, slurred notes."

"Slurred", which I take to be legato in spades.

P 154: "Notes which are to be played legato must be held for their full length."
Further to what I wrote earlier, about intervals of a second being legato, P155: "Generally speaking, slurred notes appear mostly in stepwise passages"

Note the continual use of words like "Generally speaking" and "In general". C P E Bach did not lay down rigid rules and he was also careful to differentiate between what works on a harpsichord and what works on a clavichord.

Forgive my amusement at reading your "Phrasing on the harpsichord, for obvious reasons, was an amazing art." I practised that art for nearly 20 years, including many public performances. I have learned a little about "the 18th century way". Believe me, coming to terms with a 'Bach' style was dead easy compared with coming to terms with the French style - and then seeing if and how that could/should be applied to works Bach wrote in the French style.

We are each entitled to our opinion and I can be wrong about all sorts of things and have learned bad practices, but please do not be simplistic. There was no "18th century" way. There were (as now) an almost infinite number of subtle ways of playing, which changed from instrument type to instrument type, from country to country and over a period of time.

Why did you leave out the next sentence? - 'A slur is placed above them in the manner of figure 167.'

Are you going to ask the same qestion for all the other omitted sentences? What's your point? I hardly feel that a reference to an unseen figure would be of great interest.

Stalkers I don't need.

How about treatment for paranoia?

Keyboardklutz: since you have a copy of C P E Bach's Essay, you should know that he advocates legato playing when appropriate. In your clip you refer to "legato creeping in", (this being "bad"), so to deny legato in Bach actually contradicts C P E Bach. All of which is somewhat academic in that C P E Bach's Essay was first published in 1753, 3 years' after J S's death. Performing practices both varied and evolved: C P E Bach was familiar with organ, clavichord, harpsichord and the early piano. Most of us now are faced with being aware of 18th century practice and adapting it as musically as possible to playing on the modern piano - which C P E Bach was not writing for. As for editions, there are inconsistencies even, or especially, in autograph manuscripts, let alone subsequent editors. My own view on marked (2 note) slurs - which I will readily admit to not being exhaustively researched - is that a marked slur indicates a super legato. On the harpsichord, in the absence of a sustaining pedal and a sound that decays very rapidly, one touch that helps a singing tone, rather than a dry, detached tone appropriate at other times, is to overlap: release the first note after the second note has been depressed.
My main point of divergence is from your assertion that legato has no place in playing Bach. I wrote originally and will repeat: such a simplistic assertion is nonsense, both in terms of actual 18th century practice as we know from sources like C P E Bach and in musical terms.
If you had asserted that legato has no place in the playing of Bach on the modern piano, then you are entitled to your opinion, but claiming authority from C P E Bach is not borne out from the text.

Very nicely put. I should be most interested to hear some fugues from the 48 attempted with a constant ban on legato...

It isn't so complicated. CPE says "notes which are neither staccato nor legato are played for half their value unless the word Ten. [Tenuto] is placed over them".
Your previous quote (but with both sentences) makes it clear legato is marked by slurs placed above/below the notes. So, unless otherwise marked, notes are to be played for half their value. Now, this isn't done strictly with a stop watch but it in no way approaches legato.

so, perhaps you'd care to upload a selection of fugues from the 48, played in this manner? I should be most interested to hear the 5 part fugues, especially. Try using your ears, instead of quoting from the rulebook.

Incidentally, the next sentence is vague. Does it mean a slur SYMBOL is placed in the text? Or a slur GESTURE is placed upon the execution? Considering how rarely slurs were notated, the latter seems far more probable. I think you totally misread it...

Don't expect me to read whatever you've posted. You're a cyber bully. Where others provide references, you provide bile.