The Well-Tempered Clavier, Complete: Schirmer Library of Musical Classics, Volume 2057 (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a travesty.

In his opening introduction, Czerny writes that "We have indicated the time and style
(1) from a consideration of the unmistakable character of each movement
(2) from a vivid recollection of the manner in which we have heard many of the fugues played by the great Beethoven; and
(3) lastly, by profiting from the ideas that we have gained during more than 30 years' patient study of this incomparable work.

All three of these topics would be excellently contained in a book, where Czerny could justify what he saw as the "unmistakable" character of the work (not so unmistakable to this pianist...), could describe the way Beethoven played these fugues, and could expound upon the ideas gained during his 30+ years of study. One might not agree with every statement contained therein, but one could at least profit from the explanations.

But instead of offering us such a book, Czerny elects to dictatorially place in tempo, phrasing, and dynamic markings with not even a single footnote by way of explanation. With the dynamics, one at least can be certain that these are Czerny's own additions, and can ignore them to a large degree; not so with the tempo and phrasing. Bach did occasionally put in his own tempo and phrasing markings, and we have no way in this edition to discern between whether such markings are Bach's own or Czerny's (though a modifier in tempo markings -- eg, maestoso -- is a fair clue that Czerny is the culprit).

As for the dynamics -- I love Bach played on the piano, and I am not opposed to the use of dynamics in Bach per se. However, these are choices best left to the imagination of the performer, not to the dictation of Czerny, or even Beethoven via Czerny. Even if one attempts to ignore Czerny's dynamic markings, they almost inevitably seep into one's playing; moreover, after one has been assiduously ignoring dynamic markings, it is hard to get back into the habit of not ignoring them when one plays pieces where the composer has notated dynamics.

With all Czerny's excess markings, this should really be sold as Czerny's pianistic transcription of the WTC, not as an edition.

In addition to the aforementioned problems, there are numerous notational inaccuracies. To be fair, this is not really Czerny's fault-- since this is such an old addition and did not benefit from the discovery of subsequent manuscripts, such errors are to be expected -- but it is still another blemish on this already awful manuscript.

I cannot even in good conscience list its cheapness as a positive attribute, because on closer inspection this becomes yet another negative aspect of the work; it leads unsuspecting students (like myself) to buy this awful addition for pecuniary reasons. Chances are when the student realizes how wretched it is, he will (like me) be compelled to go out and buy a new one anyway, and will have ended up spending more than he would have if he had bought a good edition in the first place.

I cannot recommend NOT buying this edition enough. An excellent edition, different from the Czerny in all the best ways, is the Bärenreiter Urtext, which is clear and comprehensive and allows this musician to see Bach's own progress on these fugues by presenting various changes in different manuscripts (changes which generally tended towards greater rhythmic and harmonic complexity). Really, though, any other WTC edition has to be better than this one.

A minor side note -- I notice that Schirmer has changed the title of this edition to its correct title ("Well Tempered Clavier"). Perplexingly, as recently as 10 years ago it was sold under the inaccurate title "Well Tempered Clavichord."

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This new volume in Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics brings together Books I and II of Bach's classic repertoire at an affordable price.

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