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GRAND PIANO

Bad Tempered Electronic Keyboard

    • Based on 6 reviews
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Description

Anthony Burgess, the world famous author of A Clockwork Orange, had been steeped in music since childhood, and during army service in the Second World War worked as a pianist and dance-band arranger. He wrote prolifically in many genres. His 24 Preludes and Fugues, called The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard, were written to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. This ingenious and inventive piece, with its brief romantic and music hall elements, not only pays homage to Bach but also references the modernity of Shostakovich, whose own set of Preludes and Fugues had been written in 1950. This is the world premiere recording of these works. These pieces are performed by renowned contemporary music interpreter Stephane Ginsburgh.


Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.59 x 0.39 x 4.92 inches; 3.53 Ounces


Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Grand Piano


Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2018


Date First Available ‏ : ‎ January 24, 2018


Label ‏ : ‎ Grand Piano


Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1


Best Sellers Rank: #451,125 in CDs & Vinyl (See Top 100 in CDs & Vinyl) #19,634 in Chamber Music (CDs & Vinyl)


#19,634 in Chamber Music (CDs & Vinyl):


Customer Reviews: 4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 6 ratings


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Preludes and fugues, from a musician who writes novels
Anthony Burgess was always just on the brink of breaking through as a musician, but his day job as a writer always pulled him back into a more prosaic life. He began life in a musical family; his father played the piano for the silent cinemas, while his mother was "the Beautiful Belle Burgess", a music-hall star singer/dancer of the day. As a musician he always had a foot in both the popular and the classical worlds. He played piano and wrote dance-band arrangements during his time in the British Army in World War II, and wrote quite a few classical pieces after the war, without any special success or recognition until later in his life when he was famous as a man of letters. Looked at from that period one might think of his music in the tradition of the great British "amateur", but he was actually more of a working musician, and considering his problems in getting his music heard, a very typical one at that. As Burgess wrote in his 1986 book But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?, "If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of the petrarchan sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered." This is grounded music, it's well-crafted and real, if not always especially inspired. In 1985 Burgess purchased a Casio Synthesizer, an early home keyboard called the Casiotone 701. At the same time he was writing his prose on a new Apple computer, he took advantage of the instrument to write The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard: 24 Preludes and Fugues. Of course he didn't have the same capabilities available to him that Wendy Carlos had when she put together the synthesized score for Stanley Kubrick's movie of his own A Clockwork Orange fifteen years earlier, but this was still at the beginning of a revolution for electronic music in the home. There are certainly some banal passages amongst these 48 short pieces, but there are also some charming ones as well. They're perhaps the most charming when they're the most Bachian. Actually, the music isn't "electronic" in anything more than name; it actually sounds as if designed for no instrument at all, but rather for the mind to play, though at times the music becomes quite pianistic. After Bach its primary model is Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, written in 1950/51. Burgess's simplified version is stripped down, with not so many fugal devices, and with the odd music-hall turn or jazz flavour in place of the awe-inspiring emotional content of the Russian master. But there are similarities in tone and the same heart-felt nods to the genius of Bach. "I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels," Burgess once said, "instead of a novelist who writes music on the side." Thanks to Naxos's Grand Piano label for their excellent package, including well-recorded, non-Casiotone sound and well-written, informative liner notes; and to the fine pianist Stephane Ginsburgh for providing the best possible way for us to think of Anthony Burgess in this way. Kudos should also go to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for their support. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2018 by Dean Frey
    • Homage to Bach
I teach music theory and composition at a university in Hong Kong. Often I have my students study Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier and write their own fugues, and I’ve written many myself. Writing fugues has been compared to doing crossword puzzles but I think it’s a lot more like making up crossword puzzles--figuring out how to interlock words and create clues that make the audience think. It’s a challenge but also a lot of fun. So when I saw The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard: 24 Preludes and Fugues, I knew I had to hear it! And when I saw the composer’s name, it only got better—Anthony Burgess! Sadly, that name means little now, but those of us who are children of the 60’s and 70’s will remember him as the author of the horrifyingly dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Although Burgess is known to us as a writer, he in fact originally worked as a music arranger and composer, and described himself as “a composer who accidentally fell into writing”—far from being a mere dabbler, he composed over 250 pieces, many of them quite substantial. While listening to Burgess’s Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard, I glanced over my bookshelf and found his posthumous novel, The End of the World News. In the foreword of that book, Burgess’s friend and literary executor discusses several of his unpublished works, which include a set of 12 stories called The Bad-Tempered Clavicle, described as attempts to assimilate fugal into narrative form. In reference to his literary writing, Burgess is recalled ‘muttering, and occasionally shouting ‘Counterpoint!”. Indeed, The End of the World News itself is a jaw-dropping work of contrapuntal fiction. It continually weaves three seemingly unrelated—wildly unrelated--stories and genres—a science fiction story about the literal end of the world caused by a giant planet striking the earth; a biographical recounting of the life of Sigmund Freund and the invention of psychoanalysis; and most absurdly, a Broadway libretto for a musical comedy about the socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s exile in New York before the Russian Revolution of 1917—for which Burgess actually composed the music in short score, although sadly it’s not included in the book. At first the reader is completely flummoxed, but as the book progresses, the links become clear. All of the stories are about the end of one world—the physical Earth, the dogmatically religious view of man, and the authoritarian rule of the Czar. But they are also about the birth of new worlds—humanity escaping into space, Freud’s theories of the mind, and socialism; with hints that each new world will be as flawed as the ones they replace. In spectacular fashion Burgess brings all three stories together in a final scene that ends with the remains of mankind in a spaceship, watching the destruction of the Earth while listening to the last movement of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony—not coincidentally a quintuple fugue itself. So clearly, Anthony Burgess is a man who knew and loved his counterpoint! The liner notes of The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard tell us that the piece is titled after a Casiotone 701, one of the first very simple synthesizers for home use, although the performances on this recording, probably very wisely, are performed on a grand piano. The set was composed in a very short time for the 300th Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, and are apparently influenced not only by the Baroque composer, but also by the 24 Preludes and Fugues of Dimtri Shostakovich, themselves composed as an homage to Bach. We’re not told whether The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard has any other performance history, or whether Burgess ever had the chance to hear anyone else play them. I hope that he did, because they are quite wonderful pieces—not so much imitations of Bach or Shostakovich, but an interesting fusion of the two with additional unique elements. As one would expect from someone obviously obsessed with counterpoint, the fugues are rigorous and some quite complex. As with Bach, the preludes vary widely but are all very pianistic and fascinating on their own. As the piece was composed in December, Burgess gives us an extra Christmas present--a fugue based on the carol Good King Wenceslas. The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard is lovingly performed by the young Belgian pianist, Stéphane Ginsburgh. Ginsburgh is an advocate for contemporary music, especially the music of Belgian composers, and has recorded the complete piano music of Morton Feldman. Burgess’s music is as far from the incredibly sparse, pulse-less music of Feldman, where the interest is not in melody or harmony, but instead the simplicity of the sound of a single note in a particular space. Burgess’s music is strongly melodic, richly contrapuntal and harmonic, resolutely pulsed and metered. I very much enjoyed this disc, and along with Burgess’s book The End of the World News, I give them both my highest recommendation! ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2018 by Dr. Christopher Coleman

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