2
by Dr. Noémie Nours
This 300-years in the making, world premiere recording on clavichord, more than 2 hours and a half long double cd release, sounds like nothing else released this year, because its musical approach does not exist anywhere else than with noemienours records. This release includes reel-to-reel without overdubs recordings of the warmer half of Christoph Graupner’s 1722 engraved/published book „Monatliche Clavir Früchte“, whose original version, used for those recordings in fac-simile is written with a treble clef in C. The clavichord, a development of the monochord, used since at least the 14th century at the court of Burgundy was a very commonly used instrument in 18th century Germany and Sweden, although its use was rather rare in 18th century France or completely ignored at the same time in England, probably because of its domestic virginal tradition.
The 1720’s were the peak of the post-baroque suite’s development, with Haendel’s “Eight great suites” and Johann Mattheson’s “12 Suites pour le clavecin” published in 1720 or Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partitas published between 1726 and 1731, with a new development of the suite already used in the 17th with a more classical form and with more parts than used in the 17th.
Graupner develops in those suites a simpler style that aims at more clarity for pedagogical purposes, a style that enlightens his uniquely subtle melodic approach and makes room for more sensitivity and creativity in the interpretation. Graupner’s music was studied by a composer like Hindemith in the XXth century who was sensibly influenced by Graupner’s music in his own melodic approach, that was very influential in the USA, after Hindemith emigrated there, because of the incomprehension toward his music in post-WWII Germany, to such a point that it melodically played a key-role in the development of post-emo as a music style for musicians like Very secretary, American Football or Matt Pond PA.
Those recordings by noemienours are intentionally raw, like all recordings by noemienours, and mirror their interaction with nature, their interaction with animals and the forest as a reactive audience, while also being the fruit of a 10 year long interpretation of those pieces, through which she also received some advices of former Kenneth Gilbert and Gustav Leonhardt pupils. They are a development of Graupner’s very own poetic approach, that is to some extent very close in its originality to François Couperin’s approach of Orders, developed in his Third Book for the harpsichord published the same year as ”Monatliche Clavir Früchte”, from which some recordings were released by noemienours on the lathe cut album ”Fåglarnas Närhet”. In that extent, Graupner’s approach is intentionally based on sensitivity, exactly like Couperin’s approach in his treatise ”L’art de toucher le clavecin”, that would never sacrifice sensitivity to a strictly technical interpretation. As far as sensitivity is the key principle behind this musical approach, they could not be better recorded than with a lo-fi recording like those of Lou Barlow or Daniel Johnston whose accent is on sensitivity and spontaneity. The usual early music culture that is influenced by classical culture has certainly tried to release recordings of this music, but with a music industry disrespectful of music as art and of the musician’s or composer’s sensitivity, a tendency to over-technical, un-sentient/insensitive interpretations could never make any justice to those compositions who are definitely in touch with a supra-natural, spiritual world, the one of Graupner’s own pietism-influenced spiritual inner experience. Those world-premiere recordings on clavichord aims at being a bridge to this very magical reality, enabled by the clavichord’s sensitive Bebung, which is the very reality, that noemienours experienced in the process of those recordings.