Evan Shinners has built a name for himself in the last decade for his stylish yet intense fixation on the keyboard repertoire of J.S. Bach.
His output, both under his name and the pseudonym “WTF Bach”, has incorporated a blend of mastery and appreciation for J.S. Bach with Warhol-esc pop art aesthetics. His WTF Bach pursuits also include a comprehensive podcast on all things Bach, which can be found here.
This innovation has led him to become one of the 21st Century’s leading figures in the realm of Bach interpretation.
Today, on May 17, 2024, Shinners has released the first 3 of what will be over 20 albums spanning the entirety of J.S. Bach’s keyboard works.
Here, we’ve had the privilege of hearing from Shinners all about the inspiration for this massive endeavor. Let’s jump in!
The Impetus Behind The ‘Complete’ Works
“A few years ago, in the face of some major large life changes, I started questioning what life is, or should be, or could be all about. It began during the pandemic when I took nearly six months away from my instrument, asking myself if I wanted to continue being a musician. The answer came back, not in a flash or with a profound stroke, but in a subtle, almost nagging way: The question had been incorrectly asked. One doesn’t become a musician at any point, so one cannot continue being a musician. You are a musician or you are not. Admitting that I indeed am a musician, the question was then reframed to the more answerable, for how long did I wish to continue being a musician that was “out of shape.”
Once this became clear to me, I realized I needed to develop a goal that would steer the focus of my career for a long time, something that I could hang my hat on. I needed to find a project big enough, where, should it be the only thing I accomplish, I could stand back and point to it, and say, with a sense of accomplishment, “I did that. I recorded the complete Bach.”
Now, today, on Friday, May 17th, I will release the first three albums in that very project: ’The Complete Keyboard Works of J.S. Bach.'
I spent several years planning the albums, organizing the repertoire: The finished project will contain at least twenty albums, will span several instruments (piano, clavichord, harpsichord, organ… even lute-harpsichord-like instruments that sound like guitars or lutes) in many tunings (equal-tempered, well-tempered, even some meantone tunings) and the entire project should easily occupy me for over a decade.
But ‘complete’ begs many questions: what music would that encompass? The Goldbergs, the Well-Tempered, all the suites, yes, these are a must for any 'complete' set. But what about organ repertoire? While most sheet music editions print the 'Organ Music' separately from the 'Keyboard Music,' the Baroque did not understand the distinction so cleanly. The problem of dividing a ‘keyboard’ piece from an ‘organ’ piece would make for its own essay. If you played a keyboard instrument in the baroque, you played all keyboard instruments in the baroque. Still, there is a more nuanced differentiation that the Baroque understood which is where my project seeks to make the divide: my project will include any organ works where the pedals are not obligato.
And even without the problem of where to divide organ from keyboard, there is a range of other problems in establishing a ‘complete’ edition.
Are There ‘Bad’ Bach Pieces?
About ten years ago I bought Bärenreiter’s four-volume boxed-set of ‘The Complete Piano Works’ of J.S. Bach. I suggest anyone with 250$ wanting to become a serious baroque musician do the same. I say piano instead of ‘keyboard’ because this is how Bärenreiter themselves translates ‘Klavierwerke.’ Each volume is some 800 pages and divides thus:
Volume 1: The Well-Tempered Clavier, both volumes, in two versions of each volume. At the end, one finds some early versions of ‘Book Two’ and the miscellaneous preludes and fugues that were culled by Bach himself from inclusion into ‘Book Two.’
Volume 2: Any works published in Bach’s lifetime: The six partitas, Italian Concerto, French Ouverture, Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, the Ricercari from A Musical Offering. The Art of Fugue makes up more than half this volume as it’s printed in both manuscript and printed versions— twice: in open score and in closed score. Bärenreiter also curiously includes the Four Duets which are organ pieces for hands alone (but they publish no other pieces in this genre which is indeed a significant portion of Bach’s organ music.)
Volume 3: Suites and pieces for his family: the English and French Suites, the two suites composed simultaneously with the French Suites, The Inventions and Sinfonias, the two notebooks for his wife, and the notebook for W.F. I like to think of this volume as the family volume as most of the pieces within have their origins in his family.
Volume 4: Everything else.
Now, what is ‘everything else?’ Naturally famous pieces like the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, the Capriccio on the Departure of the Beloved Brother, these are found in this volume. What about the concerto transcriptions? Yes, they are there. The volume even tries to put a stamp on ‘completion’ by adding the solo movement for Harpsichord from the final Violin/Harpsichord sonata.
As many of the pieces in this volume were foreign to me, I spent months in this volume. My experience was like that of one of Schweitzer’s 'early Bach prophets:’
When Rochlitz met with these [pieces] at the beginning of the nineteenth century, only a few of them really appealed to him. He placed a tick against these, and was astonished to find how the number of these ticks increased as he played the works. If someone had told this first of Bach prophets that in another hundred years every musically-minded man would have regarded each piece in the collection as perfectly easy to comprehend, he would hardly have believed it.
This was my experience entirely. I would sit down to read through a piece I hadn’t seen before, and quickly put it down with thoughts of, 'it’s not so great.' or, 'it must be an immature work.' Strikingly modern pieces, such as the Fantasie über ein Rondo BWV 918, I could play only half a page before giving up. The early suites and ouvertures (BWVs 820, 821, 822, 832, 833) struck me as so early in Bach’s career, I felt they could have been penned by any baroque composer. The lute music too, also in volume four, held only a minor curiosity for me: this was the 'leftover Bach' played by those unfortunate percussionists and guitarists who didn’t have Bach to write for their own instruments. In short, volume four, apart from a few famous exceptions, was filled with pieces I considered less-than-great.
Persistence led to elucidation, however, and just like Rochlitz, I became slowly convinced that every piece in volume four was not only comprehensible, but a masterpiece. These pieces, due to the fact that they are less frequently heard, but more probably due to their more elusive personalities, had thoroughly expanded my knowledge of Bach, and as such, had completely changed my relationship with every other piece in the more ‘standard’ repertoire. I could no longer play The Well-Tempered Clavier the same. I had seen from where it came. I had seen where it led.
The Beginnings of the Problems of ‘Complete’
I wanted to record some of this experience, and it found output in the fantasies. The fantasies are at every period in his career, early, middle and late. This would be a perfect way to summarize the experience of my newly broadened perspective. Yet when preparing this recording, I noticed that Henle prints a fantasy that does not appear in Bärenreiter. Why could this be? Today the fantasy BWV 919 is considered not by J.S. Bach, but by a relative. But my curiosity was piqued, how many other works did Henle publish that Bärenreiter withheld, or the other way around?
Henle publishes the Sonata BWV 965, the d minor transcription of Bach’s a minor violin sonata. Bärenreiter does not. Bärenreiter publishes the fugue BWV 949, but Henle does not. When I turned to the 19th century Bach Gesellschaft, matters only grew worse as an entire slew of pieces I’d never seen in either edition were present.
My first conclusion was to assume that Bärenreiter was the more scholarly— hence more ‘correct’— edition. They, after all, are responsible for the Neue Bach Ausgabe, the most officially professional of Bach publications. Still, only a few years after issuing these ‘Complete Piano Works,’ Bärenreiter issued yet another volume of ‘Works of Doubtful Authenticity.’ Ah! I thought. Now we will get to the bottom of it.
I figured the volume of ‘Works of Doubtful Authenticity’ would contain all the works which were erroneously considered authentic in the Gesellschaft, Henle, et cetera, but I was frustrated. I read the preface over and again:
The following volume contains all the works previously withheld from publication by Bärenreiter that no longer have reason not to be counted among the authentic works by J.S. Bach.
What does one make of that statement!? The Neue Bach Ausgabe has a scholastic standard by which to accept/rule out certain pieces. This standard must necessarily consider little to nothing of the stylistic features of a work, but rely solely on the ‘source tradition.’ The volume of doubtful pieces (mostly completely unknown to me upon opening) were pieces that were, at one point in history, ‘of doubtful authenticity’ because of stylistic features, but through this more modern standard relying solely on a source tradition, they can no longer claim to be ‘inauthentic.’ In a sense, it would seem that even a publication like the Neue Bach Ausgabe is expanding its horizons of what they understand as Bach’s style. We shouldn’t be surprised either: Throughout every era, people have doubted the authenticity of Bach’s works because they felt the music went beyond Bach’s time and place. Why shouldn’t this continue for another few generations?
The Implication of Today’s ‘Complete’ Collection
If you’ve listened to my podcast, or have read my recent essay about Bach’s lost works, you know that the majority of the music Bach composed at Anhalt-Köthen is missing. Herr Wolff even says that 'most' of it is missing. Bearing this in mind, there would be no way of bringing any collection to completion— nor, I should emphasize, would Bach be interested in such an idea. The 'complete works' is a convenient modern frame we demand upon a more nuanced older culture.
The implications of the word ‘complete’ in my project, therefore, have mostly to do with the line that modern scholarship has drawn: which surviving works are considered by Bach, and which are not. Irrespective to the playing, it will be different from all other previous attempts simply due to my modern position in the line of Bach scholarship. We are now in a better position to examine which works are considered authentic than we ever were.
Bridging the Break Between Pianist and Keyboardist
Tradition seems to be favoring the tradition of harpsichordists in considering The Art of Fugue as part of the standard pianist repertoire. Twenty years ago it seems the only pianist who played it was Zoltan Kocsis (that and the famously awkward partial-recording by Gould.) Now, everyone plays it. In this wake, Schiff seems to be approaching the piece— at least publicly— for the first time in his career. Hewitt’s ‘complete solo works of J.S. Bach’ is glaringly incomplete without its inclusion.
The lute works, a staple for harpsichordists, usually make no appearance in the pianist’s repertoire. I predict this too will change. While the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro made an appearance in S. Richter’s later career, none of the other lute music did— and not for any good reason— the rest of the ‘lute’ compositions are equally fine. The c minor lute suite is a masterpiece of his late style, while the much earlier e minor lute suite is every bit as good as any of the English Suites.
The beginnings of this project therefore will try to tie up loose ends. The listener to the first several volumes of my edition will be pleasantly surprised by several hours of Bach’s music they probably never heard before.
The first album, for example, in my project are the five earliest suites I mentioned, BWVs 820, 821, 822, 832, & 833. Bärenreiter did not publish BWV 821 until 2006(!), and they maintain that BWV 822 might be a transcription by Telemann. Not only the NBA, these works historically eluded pianists: Gould/Schiff/Perahia never went near them. Hewitt recorded only two of the five.
Again, the need for completion is a modern goal, and just as I am filling in the gaps of the keyboardists before me, I too will eventually be corrected or refined by future generations. The task of recording Bach to completion is not definite like recording the 32 Beethoven sonatas— although we note with chagrin Barry Cooper’s scholarly edition of Beethoven, which now boldly calls itself the '35 Beethoven sonatas.' Our work is never complete.”
Listening further
Be sure to listen to the first entries of this project, available on every major streaming platform:
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/04CdyTmqeST1McT6Vitd2Q?si=0TKDC1olRbaLy4cYDLjuFQ
Apple Music
https://music.apple.com/us/album/j-s-bach-complete-keyboard-works-vol-1-five-early-suites/1742017750
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwqJGdjt8CY&list=OLAK5uy_nGnnciTn4D5ZL2TBMB_5xWcQKeitCDzXA
Learn from Evan Shinners
Evan Shinners teaches several courses on tonebase Piano, which you can find here:
Bach - Prelude and Fugue in D Minor BWV 875:
https://www.tonebase.co/piano/courses/evan-shinners-teaches-bach-bwv-875-i-prelude-in-d-minor
Bach - Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue BWV 903:
Bach - Fantasia and Fugue in C minor BWV 906:
Watch these courses and hundreds more on tonebase Piano, which you can access here with a 14-day free trial.
