Piano Video Lesson: The Difference Between Playing Bach and Mozart

This is LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin with such an important show, the difference between Bach and Mozart.

Two great composers, and you hear them all the time in many pianists, play both composers.

And there are some fundamental differences in the approach to playing Bach and playing Mozart we're going to discuss today.

And the fundamentals come down to two criteria.

Number one, the period styles, and number two, the instruments that they wrote for. So let's start with that, the instruments of the time. Now, Bach lived from 1685 to 1750, and interestingly, he never wrote for the piano.

Did he ever play the piano? Well, yes, there are records of him having played the piano, a very, very early incarnation of what was a piano. Now, what separated the piano from other keyboard instruments of the age was the fact that the piano could play loud and soft, which is how it derived its name, the piano forte, or forte piano.

And he never specifically wrote for the piano. In fact, he never wrote for any particular keyboard instrument other than the organ.

And all his keyboard music other than his organ music was written simply for clavier, keyboard. Now, you might wonder, what instrument did Bach play? He played the clavichord. It was his favorite keyboard instrument because of the expressiveness.

The clavichord, the key, would be able to be in contact with the string to impart vibrato and other expressive elements that the harpsichord could not do.

Yet, the harpsichord was the most popular keyboard instrument because of its robust tone. The clavichord was such a quiet instrument that it really wasn't a performance instrument. So we can presume that most of Bach's music was performed on the harpsichord.

And the harpsichord, as I said, didn't have dynamics. You could push the key with great energy or push it lightly. You'd get the same volume. And this is key for the type of music written for the instrument, the contrapuntal music, which I'll get into in a moment. But first, listen to what the harpsichord sounded like with Bach being played on the harpsichord.

It has kind of a strident sound that cuts through, worked very well with chamber music, with other instruments.

And the clarity allowed the counterpoint to come through, which I'll get into in a minute.

And now, on the flip side, Mozart lived just a little bit after Bach. Bach, born in 1685, died in 1750. Mozart was born in 1756 and lived only for 35 years.

Now, in that time, the fourth -day piano, the early piano, had developed somewhat and had gained popularity.

So indeed, Mozart did write for the piano, although he played harpsichord and piano.

But his music took advantage of the fact that you could play loud and soft, so different parts could be played loud and soft with the two hands, as you can hear in this little demonstration.

So now, let's talk a bit about the different stylistic differences between Bach and Mozart.

Bach lived during the Baroque era, which is noted for its counterpoint. I keep using that word, contrapuntal music. What does this mean? It means that you have separate lines of music intertwining with one another.

And so you get music where everything has an equal importance between the hands and the different lines. As I can demonstrate a little bit, listen to the beginning of the fifth French Suite. And you notice, while there is a melody on top, there are melodies throughout, on the bottom, in the middle. Listen to a little bit of the fifth French Suite, the first movement.

So, you can hear that all the lines have equal prominence. Listen now to a little bit of something else, a little bit of the second movement of Bach's E minor tacata, and you'll hear also this counterpoint.

So, you can hear that all the parts have equal importance.

Now, contrast that with Mozart, where you clearly have melody and harmony.

For example, his famous C major K545 sonata, where you have a melody in the right hand, just broken chords in the left hand. The left hand is in the beginning of this.

There's not much going on, but you have a beautiful melody in the right hand.

Put that together and you end up with this.

So, you have clear melody against harmony in no small part because the instrument itself was capable of playing different dynamics in the different registers.

And the form had evolved from the counterpoint, the interwaving of different lines, like a tapestry of music, to more structured music with different sections. The Sonata Allegro Form, with its recapitulation, development, very structured formal music, where different sections were clearly delineated, rather than the intertwining of different lines in the Baroque era. So, that's why the performance practices are so dramatically different, where you want to show the clear counterpoint and the important lines of subjects in a fugue, for example. The opening statement of a fugue, you want to hear the clear delineation whenever it returns. Whereas in a sonata movement, you want to show the themes that come back in strategic places within the movement. Or in a rondo, the repetition of different sections and the structure is paramount importance.

Listen to a little bit of the second movement of the same sonata and once again it's clear. You have a melody in the right hand and just broken chords in the left hand that wouldn't stand on their own because it's just broken chords that by themselves would be rather boring, actually.

Clearly in one hand and accompaniment in the other hand. And it's the structure of delineating each section that makes the performance alive and digestible for an audience. Where, in the case of Bach, it's the counterpoint and the clarity of the lines being equal in importance and bringing out strategic subjects of fugues or inventions so the listener can make sense of the cacophony that could result if the clarity of those subjects was not delineated clearly. The opening motif of a fugue is called the subject and whenever it recurs, you bring it out so that you can make sense of this, all these notes that are all over the place and you can bring clarity to all of this counterpoint.

Whereas in Mozart, it's the clarity of each delineation of each section that must be clear to the listener so the overall structure of the music can be appreciated.

Remember the different instruments they were written for and while Mozart did write for the piano, it wasn't like a modern piano. Fewer octaves, didn't have nearly the power or the range of expression of a modern piano because the action was very simple. You push a key in a modern piano, you're putting hundreds of parts, actually dozens of parts in motion whereas the simple mechanism of a Mozart era piano is not capable of the incredible repetition, the power, the amount of force I just exerted on that A. If I were to do that on the forte piano you heard me play on earlier, it would break. It couldn't even handle that kind of energy.

It's a totally different instrument but it has the same aspect of forte piano, piano forte, loud and soft that the harpsichord lacked and that's one fundamental difference of the performance of Bach and Mozart along with the period styles of the flourishing counterpoint in Baroque and the structure of the music of the classical era of Mozart. I hope this is enlightening for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano store. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you enjoy videos like this. If you do, a thumbs up and subscribing to the channel would be awesome. See you next time.

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Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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