Bach in unusual instrumentation
Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846, from the Well Tempered Clavier Book 1, is probably my favourite piece of music ever.
I fell in love with it on the ZX Spectrum, played in monotonal BEEPs. I think Bach might've liked that. Chapter 19 of the Sinclair Programming Manual explained how to translate from music to BEEP codes. The example given was a few bars of the funeral march from Mahler's First Symphony. There were two exercises at the end. The first asked you to rewrite the code using FOR loops to repeat the bars. The second asked you to rewrite it to play the whole of Mahler's First Symphony. Hilariously, 30 years later, someone has actually done that, with all the parts, using a network of 12 Spectrums controlled by a Raspberry Pi.
I didn't manage to get that far at the time, but I did have fun recording the computer playing Bach's Prelude No. 1 on to cassette tape, and then playing it back while the computer played it again, creating an echo effect.
Some people like to play Bach on original instrumentation, to get a sound as close to what Bach would've heard as possible. That's great. Some people like to play Bach on more experimental instrumentation, like me on the Spectrum, to get a different experience. That can be great too. Indeed, easily my favourite rendition of the famous organ Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565, although some argue it isn't even Bach) was by a quartet of four accordions plus a tuba that I stumbled upon in a Brussels underpass once. (Have I ever told you Brussels is my second favourite city?) [Edit: Actually, it was Amsterdam, not Brussels. Which is also a lovely city.] [Edit 2: Ha ha! I have tracked down a phone cam video of them playing this. They were even more impressive live when I saw them. A commenter wisely bought their CD, which I stupidly, stupidly didn't. The commenter claims the outfit is called Souvenir which I suspect makes them look not quite so smart.]
But the Prelude No. 1 is Bach's best piece of music (IMHO), and Bach is of course the best composer ever, which makes this quite probably the best piece of music ever ever ever. We used it as 'go to sleep' music for the kids. We wanted to have a piece of music for them to associate with going to sleep. It had to be fairly simple, fairly quiet, and to be something we could bear listening to many, many times. Given their sleep difficulties, it turned out we listened to it many, many, many, many times. Literally thousands of times. I still love it, and bits of it still give me goosebumps. A good performance can bring tears to my eyes. It's that good.
And just today, I've been moved to flowing tears listening to this bunch of brilliant nutters playing it on boomwhackers - plastic tubes that make a note when you whack them. It's not note-perfect, but it is a truly remarkable piece of music.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/292064.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.
I fell in love with it on the ZX Spectrum, played in monotonal BEEPs. I think Bach might've liked that. Chapter 19 of the Sinclair Programming Manual explained how to translate from music to BEEP codes. The example given was a few bars of the funeral march from Mahler's First Symphony. There were two exercises at the end. The first asked you to rewrite the code using FOR loops to repeat the bars. The second asked you to rewrite it to play the whole of Mahler's First Symphony. Hilariously, 30 years later, someone has actually done that, with all the parts, using a network of 12 Spectrums controlled by a Raspberry Pi.
I didn't manage to get that far at the time, but I did have fun recording the computer playing Bach's Prelude No. 1 on to cassette tape, and then playing it back while the computer played it again, creating an echo effect.
Some people like to play Bach on original instrumentation, to get a sound as close to what Bach would've heard as possible. That's great. Some people like to play Bach on more experimental instrumentation, like me on the Spectrum, to get a different experience. That can be great too. Indeed, easily my favourite rendition of the famous organ Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565, although some argue it isn't even Bach) was by a quartet of four accordions plus a tuba that I stumbled upon in a Brussels underpass once. (Have I ever told you Brussels is my second favourite city?) [Edit: Actually, it was Amsterdam, not Brussels. Which is also a lovely city.] [Edit 2: Ha ha! I have tracked down a phone cam video of them playing this. They were even more impressive live when I saw them. A commenter wisely bought their CD, which I stupidly, stupidly didn't. The commenter claims the outfit is called Souvenir which I suspect makes them look not quite so smart.]
But the Prelude No. 1 is Bach's best piece of music (IMHO), and Bach is of course the best composer ever, which makes this quite probably the best piece of music ever ever ever. We used it as 'go to sleep' music for the kids. We wanted to have a piece of music for them to associate with going to sleep. It had to be fairly simple, fairly quiet, and to be something we could bear listening to many, many times. Given their sleep difficulties, it turned out we listened to it many, many, many, many times. Literally thousands of times. I still love it, and bits of it still give me goosebumps. A good performance can bring tears to my eyes. It's that good.
And just today, I've been moved to flowing tears listening to this bunch of brilliant nutters playing it on boomwhackers - plastic tubes that make a note when you whack them. It's not note-perfect, but it is a truly remarkable piece of music.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/292064.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.