HELEN 7/19: I’ve really enjoyed thinking about Katie and Grace’s comments over the last few days, and about fingering and the use of hands in the Well-Tempered Clavier. I began paying exquisite attention to the fingering especially today, with the long sixteenth note countersubject that first appears in the fugue at measure 23 (is Steven going to tell me that it’s a double fugue?).
Fingering is also an important part of mastering transposition, you may recall from those beastly keyboard exams I made you take every October. Today I read this from Daniel Barenboim: “In my childhood I played practically all the preludes and fugues from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier and many other pieces by Bach. That was my basis. At the age of twelve I moved to Paris to study harmony and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger. When I arrived for my first lesson, Das Wohltemperierte Klavier was on the music stand of the grand piano. She turned the pages forward and back; finally she settled on the Prelude in E minor from Book One and said: ‘Right, my boy, now play it for me in A minor.’ She held a wooden ruler in her hand and every time my fingers played a wrong note she tapped them with it. Thus Das Wohltemperierte Klavier became the foundation for everything.”