Johann Nikolaus Forkel News
German musician, musicologist and music theorist (1749-1818)
- organ
- classical music
- Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
- composer, musicologist, music theorist, music historian, biographer, writer, organist
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2024-04-24
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2022-08-08 09:07:00
Two very different approaches to Bach's Goldberg Variations from harpsichordist Nathaniel Mander & violinist Jorge Jimenez
Nathaniel Mander with the harpsichord used for his recording of Bach's Goldberg VariationsJohann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations; Nathaniel Mander; ICSM RecordsJohann Sebastian Bach, transcribed Jorge Jimenez: Goldberg Variations; Jorge Jimenez; Pan ClassicsTwo very different approaches to Bach's iconic variations, with a harpsichordist taking an admirably direct and musical approach, and a violinist channelling Bach's own writing for solo violinThere is something of a mystery at the heart of Bach's Goldberg Variations. They were the fourth volume of Bach's work to be published in 1741, under the soubriquet Clavierubung IV (Keyboard practice), though the name was the publishers, linking the volume to the previous three of Bach's that had been published during the 1730s. It can be seen as an educational demonstration of what a skilled craftsman might do with a theme. But there is also that story.Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818) in his biography of Bach (published in 1802) tells the story […]
2022-07-14 05:04:00
Vivaldi: 12 concertos op. 3 l’estro armónico (CD Review)
[…] about the overarching idea behind this album. As you can glean from the header above, what we have here are related compositions by two composers who lived at about the same time but in different parts of Europe. Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice, Italy; he published these concertos in Amsterdam in 1911 at the age of 33. Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, in 1685.The liner notes point out that “a famous passage in Forkel’s biography gives the young Bach’s study of Vivaldi’s concertos an essential role in his education and there can be no doubt that he had the opportunity to reflect and work on the relevance of Vivaldi’s invention for his own music, assimilating structural and even melodic ideas from it. In fact, the transcription of Italian keyboard concertos was a widespread fashion at that time. Bach was undoubtedly stimulated to transcribe various originals in Weimar by Prince […]
2021-10-01 07:00:24
They’re one of the greatest glories of classical music but the Cello Suites took many decades to be appreciated and understood. Steven Isserlis tells the story of ‘one of the pillars of western civilisation’ Much of Bach’s music was forgotten after his death in 1750. A few works – mainly for keyboard – had been published during his lifetime, mostly at his own expense; and a few unpublished works somehow became known, too. His first biographer, Forkel, tells us that “for a long series of years the violin solos were universally considered by the greatest performers on the violin to be the best means to make an ambitious student a perfect master of his instrument”. Meanwhile, in late 18th-century Vienna, Mozart was introduced to several of Bach’s works by Baron van Swieten, a fanatic for baroque music, to whom Forkel’s Bach biography is dedicated (as is Beethoven’s first symphony). […]
2021-03-08 21:38:43
In 1731, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) gathered six keyboard partitas that he had previously composed and published individually, and issued them himself as his Op. 1, the first part of his monumental Clavier Übung (Keyboard Practice) anthology. He dedicated them to “music lovers, for the delight of their spirits,” and although sales of his printed edition proved disappointing, these amazing dance suites circulated widely in manuscript copies. “This work made in its time a great noise in the musical world,” Johann Nikolaus Forkel wrote in 1802. “Such excellent compositions for the clavier had never been seen and heard before. Anyone
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