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Bach Methodology

Bach, Blog, Early Music, Essays, Marlboro Music / Koji Otsuki

Since I left the Midwest and moved back to Philadelphia a couple of years ago, I haven’t made music with any period instrumentalists here. In early January this year, I debuted my violoncello da spalla, beautifully built by Dmitry Badiarov, in a concert of Bach cantata BWV 41 with the period instruments, but that was not in Philadelphia— it was in Bloomington, Indiana. I should be networking harder to make early music connections here, indeed, but it isn’t easy for me… It is so true that your networking base and strong connections are developed while you’re in school, and it gets much harder after that. But since I left Bloomington, […]

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Ketchup Talk

Blog, Early Music, Essays, Music / Koji Otsuki

This blog entry isn’t really about ketchup… it’s about vibrato, the intentionally produced pitch pulsation in a musical sound. Why ketchup then? Here’s the story. Recently I saw an image post on facebook by a musician from Germany. It was a picture of a page from a magazine or something, and the page had a quote in large font sizes that read: “Vibrato on every note is like putting ketchup all over the music.” I thought this is a quite good analogy— one that’s as good as it could get. I don’t mind ketchup at all— I just don’t use it as much, but once in a while I feel

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Context

Bach, Early Music, Essays / Koji Otsuki

(Originally posted on February 20, 2011) Fairly recently on facebook, I commented on an online video clip that I watched earlier. It was of an European virtuoso violinist making a recording of Bach violin concertos. In the video this young violinist said: “I love to hear about authentic interpretation and baroque violins; however, we do not know how it was actually played. So the freedom of interpretation is much wider than some people might think. I do believe that I play for the people of the 21st century.” My comment was about this quote that stuck with me… It struck me as too shallow a thought for an established violinist

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Why a Bach cantata ensemble needs a conductor

Bach, Early Music, Essays / Koji Otsuki

(Originally posted on April 18, 2010) In December 2001, I was in Brussels visiting my good oboist friend Katy. Thanks to her, I was able to sneak into the Flemish side of the conservatory and observe some of Mr. Sigiswald Kuijken’s baroque violin lessons. In between those lessons he taught (all in different languages), he came to me and asked a few questions. When he asked me what my goal was, I told him that I wanted to organize my own Bach ensemble and direct Bach cantatas regularly. “Well, then you must be a violinist, and that explains why you are here,” and he went on, “who do you study

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Appreciating 1/6-comma — Temperament Part III

1件のコメント / Early Music, Essays / Koji Otsuki

(Originally posted in March, 2010) By now we hopefully understand that the Pythagorean temperament is really a stack of pure perfect 5ths (Pythagorean 5ths) and can bring out melodic beauty, and the temperament based on the narrow 5ths, each tampered by a quarter of a syntonic comma (mean-tone 5ths), can bring out chordal beauty. Then what about those so-called well-temperaments like Kirnberger, Werckmeister, Vallotti and Young? What is the 1/6-comma mean-tone that we hear about lately? How different is that from the Vallotti or the Young temperaments? Before we get to the discussion of 1/6-Pythagorean-comma systems vs. 1/6-comma mean-tone, let’s take a look at the 1/4-comma systems. Among those well-temperaments,

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Hating and loving 1/6-comma — Temperament Part II

1件のコメント / Early Music, Essays / Koji Otsuki

(Originally posted in March, 2010) In the previous blog entry, I mentioned that you can characterize those temperament systems as either harmonic systems or melodic systems. The Pythagorean tuning is suited for monophonic lines because of the sharper mediants and leading tones, and thus it is a typical example of a melodic system. Not great at all for playing harmonies it is though. On the other hand, the mean-tone has just intonation major 3rds for harmonic purity; because of low mediants and leading tones, its melodic contours often suffer, but it is a harmonically pleasing temperament. The biggest problem of mean-tone is, because of the fact that twelve of those

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1/6-Pythagorean-comma mean-tone?? — Temperament Part I

1件のコメント / Early Music, Essays / Koji Otsuki

(Originally posted in March, 2010) If you just thought this title didn’t make sense, no, it does not make sense, at least to you and me. Perhaps some of you can help me understand this stuff better — I don’t have a mathematical mind and I can only go so far as to understand the temperament issues, but I don’t think I’m too stupid to understand the basics. Some of those claims out there doesn’t quite make sense to me…. Now, those of you who are thinking you’ll be in over your head talking temperament, you’ve got to stay with me. Let’s clarify what the mean-tone temperament is. Well,

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Period Instruments and Bach

Bach, Early Music, Essays / Koji Otsuki

(Originally posted in February 2010) Sometimes people ask me if I like any Bach performances on the modern instruments. Somehow they expect me to say ‘no,’ but my answer is actually ‘yes,’ with an asterisk. Those people who expected me to say ‘no’ might have heard me lightly criticize modern performances on some occasions.. I don’t deny I do that sometimes. But when I did that, I must have had no expectation as to what I was going to hear. When I hear the metal string sound from the high-tension turbo-charged modern violin with a continuous vibrato playing Bach, out of the blue, I may get a bit displeased. But

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