A Genius!

Cette clarté existe dans bien d'autres interprétations...sans ce caractère mécanique.

What three are you talking about??

I think that appreciating a work such as this (as well as many other works of classical music) is an acquired taste. Someone who has no clue may indeed dislike it.

Some see GOuld and downvote.

It's not a fugue! It's the prelude

@@Themozartthug For me the fugue is the astonishing one here! ;)

He does it via using staccato throughout. It is pedestrian in my opinion

Ci ha lasciati troppo presto!

Learn!

+Jon Weiss The most lyrical of all the preludes, the theme is repeated 3x, i like this one a bit slower.

It has three subjects, one in running 16th notes. Triple invertible counterpoint. Bringing out the voice of each subject and maintaining it, or at least establishing the entrances while the other subjects are playing is very difficult. Even a fanatic like Gould fails to bring out the last entrance of the 1st subject (in the soprano) at the end of the piece. Even though Bach was very serious about the WTC, there are certain preludes and fugues over which he really ponders. He probably wrote several earlier drafts of this one. This is one of them.I have also noticed that hen he writes a particularly beautiful prelude, as is the case with the F#m, Bk. II, he puts a lot of work into the accompanying fugue. Another good example of this is the Am in Book II, another masterpiece. The Prelude sounds like Be-Bop and is lilting and highly chromatic. This is followed by an aggressive and forthright fugue which uses 32nd notes and a trill in its rather elongated subject.

+Jon Weiss...i.e.your reference to Gould "failing"in bringing out the last entrance of the 1st subject in bar 67...sorry?

There are not staccatos, there are portatos.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rM6GlMmnu9PFk3k.html this may suit better for you.

I watched it all a few weeks ago but I don’t remember hearing all these bach pieces, it’s so weird

GD Dyno dont know if you care anymore but, kousei was practicing this piece towards the beginning of ep 19

he thought to know something fitting better than what Bach wrote. i permit myself to think that in this gould was wrong.

+Jon Weiss I doubt that was it. Glenn Gould was fanatic about the quality of his recordings. He gave up public performance because he couldn't control what people heard (that is, someone at the back of the balcony got a different experience than someone in the front row at the edge of the stage), and there were no retakes. I heard the first subject just fine at the end. I think he gave the three voices equal weighting to highlight the fact that this extraordinary fugue was really three one-part fugues in one, and the ending was sort of a substitute for the stretto Bach usually puts in his ordinary three- or four-part fugues.

Upon further listening, I can hear the last entrance of the subject in the soprano, but I feel it should be louder and that is why Bach put it in the soprano. Anyway, you description is incorrect,it is a three voice fugue with 3 subjects and insanely difficult to play, particularly at the tempo that Gould played it.The first sub. is he strongest and most important, not the running 16th note figure. Who knows why Gould did anything he did, he was a very strange dude, to put it mildly. He might have thought he got it as perfect as he could and left it at that.

Jon Weiss I don't think it's very difficult. I have intermediate skill, and I find it comfortable to play. There are certainly far more difficult fugues. My description isn't any more incorrect than yours is. The way the three subjects interact is far more imaginative than a typical multiple-subject fugue, so much so that the ending can correctly, albeit oddly, be described as three one-part fugues. That's why all three voices end on the same F-sharp, with no third or fifth--each of the one-part fugues resolves to its own tonic. Whether the first subject is supposed to be the most important is a matter of opinion and musical taste, which you're certainly entitled to. But I don't see, and have never heard, any reason that choosing not to is objectively a flaw.

Apparently you do not like to use the word counterpoint or it is not in your vocabulary. Considering all the bullshit and bombast that is being thrown around in our current epoch, I think it is necessary to be as clear and precise in our language as possible, particularly as far as so thoroughly engineered piece as a fugue is concerned. You can not have three one-part fugues, because part is synonymous with voice (STB) as in part-writing and and this is a three-voice fugue with 3 subjects and it can not be three fugues because it is Fugue XIV in F#m, not some piece by John Cage or Stockhausen. To wit, what you describe is three people playing three separate fugues, each with a single subject simultaneously As for the first sub., Baroque music was based on the theory of "affections" so that each subject represents a certain affect (think emotions) and it should be obvious to the ear that the principal subject with it wide leaps and rhythmic variety, length and trill by far presents the strongest "affect." I cannot tell if you are male or female by your moniker, but by your obstinacy and need to right, I would assume female. By the way, Gould is a very controversial figure, and while I like the Fugue, I think he destroys the beautiful Prelude with his needless and inappropriate staccato in is essentially a beautiful two -part aria.

Jon Weiss You sure are proud of your ignorance. Must be a virtue wherever you live.

Lol because you can't do It

Guarrdian1984 write it one more time

Glenn is a legendary pianist!

..."ever written"...?Très exagéré ;certes une belle fugue, (JS Bach en a écrit tant, plus belles les unes que les autres !),mais écoutez donc la 4ème du 1er livre du Clavier bien tempéré !

+Christian Bautista What about 3:22? Go for the complete sentence.