You're Playing Bach Wrong

Or, I mean, at least there's some history to consider.

Everyone knows what Bach's music sounds like, right? We've all heard his stuff played thousands of times in all sorts of places, from concert halls to TV shows to your own piano lessons, but even so, do you *really* know what it sounds like? Or is there something missing from all these renditions, something that would make the whole experience complete? Well, that... I mean, that depends what you're looking for, but maybe!

Huge thanks to our Elephant of the Month Club members:

Susan Jones
Jill Jones
Duck
Howard Levine
Brian Etheredge
Khristofor Saraga
Len Lanphar
Ken Arnold
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Luke
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Symmetry
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Kobalent
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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold for proofreading the script!

[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) First and foremost, I'd like to formalize apologize to the Jabberjaw fans out there. I'm sure at least some of you exist.

2) Will the xenharmonic crowd get mad at me for calling just intonation "a popular idea in Baroque-era European music"? Yeah, probably. Am I ok with that? Also yeah, probably.

3) If you're wondering why my list of primary intervals didn't include the perfect 4th, it's because you can build its ratio, 3:4, by going up an octave, then down a perfect 5th, so a system that has those two intervals gets the 4th for free. We don't have to worry about it separately. Likewise, the minor 3rd, or 5:6, can be built by going up a perfect 5th, then down a major 3rd, so we don't need to include it either.

4) Werckmeister tunings are actually numbered in two different ways. I went with the easier one, but you may find the thing I called Werckmeister I referred to as Werckmeister III and the thing I called Werckmeister III as Werckmeister V. It's kind of a mess, sorry about that, historical tuning systems are complicated.

5) If the major 3rd that I said was really sharp didn't sound bad to you, don't worry, your ears aren't broken, it's just that equal temperament also uses a fairly sharp major 3rd, so you're already used to it. To someone more familiar with meantone, though, it would've sounded pretty out of tune.

6) One thing I couldn't really fit in the flow of the script is that the most common meantone tuning shrinks all its fifths by 1/4th of a pythagorean comma, so in the loop doodle system, even the flattest 5ths are wider than many listeners would be used to. (And, as such, all the 3rds are slightly sharp as well, although some more than others.)

7) Bach was known to enjoy cryptograms and puzzles, so it is possible that the doodles were meaningful and he just chose not to tell his students about it, but a) Lehman's historical theory relies on the idea that the doodle was a known teaching aid, and b) if wasn't communicating his intent then he was likely prepared for the possibility that people wouldn't follow it.

8) One of the most interesting approaches I've seen on this is going through the entire Clavier and counting which specific major 3rds he uses most often. According to the sources I've found, there do appear to be biases toward certain ones across keys, which implies his tuning system likely made those 3rds sound particularly good, but I couldn't find any straight-up list to examine myself so I'm not entirely sure which ones.

[pentalarclikesit]

Time Traveller: Mr. Bach, how should I tune my clavier?
Bach: Tune it until you like the way it sounds.
Time Traveller: Oh. . .

[Melaheidi]

Bach: *scribbles a bit to make sure the ink is good*

Theorists hundreds of years later: "WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?!?"

[e-vl]

Printed score of this piece is literally less than a meter away from me right now on a music stand. You've got my attention.

[prodcdebeatz]

Sees title, “You’re Playing Bach Wrong” => haha, jokes on you. I can’t play Bach.

[femthingevelyn]

12tone "you're playing Bach wrong"
me, who has never touched an instrument: oh do tell me more

[toblexson]

I don't know anything about Bach as a person, but if he was so invested into tuning his instruments himself maybe he passed that onto his students. Maybe his rather cryptic illustration was an attempt to show the tuning in a way that only his students would understand, and maybe he encouraged his students to work on their own systems that suited their own ears. This is just the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned that his students had different styles of his doodle.

[astian_sebus]

I once had the oppertunity to tune a piano with a tuner, a very precise piano tuner. You even could tune to different tuning-systems, not only equal temperament, but all sorts of things. Of course Werckmeister and Kirnberger, even Meantone, but very exotic things like the pure Pythagorean-System.
So I chose the Werckmeister III System, because it's not to far away from standard equal temperament. It took a few hours before it was finished.
What did I play? This prelude, of course! It sounded warmer than usual. With equal temperament you have such a cold sound. This was gone, the sound lived. If you get the chance to try another tuning system, take it. It widens your musical horizon.

[beatrixwickson]

Melancholy Womanliness is gonna be my new band name.
Every song: Dm

[craig]

It would have been nice to hear the simple phrase played in a couple of the different tunings.

[shiragoldmusic]

12tone: You're playing Bach wrong
Also 12tone: Bach's dead, he doesn't care.

[johnlindholm]

My teacher always told me I played wrong, didn't believe her until watching this video
Thanks 12Tone!

[makoto_]

Its interesting that the damn title of the book explicitly states how its intended to be tuned and yet not only does it not give a lot to work with, but also nowadays we just more or less interpret it to be like "Oh thats a nice adjective bach put for his cute pieces", when the entire point of the book was that each key sounds different - the exact opposite to how we tune today

[hawtaro]

I’ve always wondered how Bach would sound with his well tempered system so this video is amazing to me. Great work!

[PaulDeCamp]

Call your premise "The Loopy Postulate" and beat your trolls the the punchline.

I will agree that most of us were mislead, either unintentionally or not, to the notion that "well tempered" was a synonym for "even tempered". I THANK YOU for disabusing us.

I have studied music informally for 58 years. It wasn't until three years ago I was made aware of all these tunings. I finally wrote a program to provide me with all the pitches needed given a proscribed middle A to produce a even tempered scale.

[VladdViever]

Love the collaboration with Tim. Always cool to hear different creators voices.

[feasible]

I always love your videos, but this one is especially pertinent to me: I'm a professional public historian, and I really appreciate how you illustrate (literally and figuratively) how historic research and rigour works. Both the fun and frustrating parts of it. Love the reference to the "past is another country", but this quote at the end is poignant and well-said: "The answer is just an answer; the fun part is asking the questions." That's how I feel about history. Thank you so much.

[miketate]

11:00 Battletoads. Battletoads is your doodle for "difficult". Dude, you're the best.

[jasminethenoob]

I think censoring "sh*t" with the wolf fifth is comedy gold, 10/10

[subjectline]

Digital pianos usually have a choice of these different tuning systems and you can change the frequency of your concert A in seconds. It's fun to try different combinations.