Mark Edwards

via @bachverenging

It was already clear in the eighteenth century: Bach made high demands on the keyboard player.

This first partita in Bach’s series of six keyboard partitas appeared in print in 1726. The rest followed in subsequent years and the complete set of six was reprinted in 1731. As early as 1739, music connoisseur Lorenz Christoph Mizler wrote in a review of the repeatedly reprinted organ method or Wegweiser for “the art of playing the organ correctly” that “he who cannot move his fingers better than this will scarcely be able to learn to play the Partitas for the clavier by our famous Herr Bach of Leipzig”. This remark says something about the basic standard aimed at in this method in Mizler’s review, but also about Bach’s partitas.

The Partita in B-flat major immediately lives up to that reputation of above average ‘finger movements’. It becomes apparent in the Praeludium, when the theme we hear at the beginning in the upper part then appears in the left hand with trills and all. And there is something in every movement where a mediocre or careless keyboard player might mess up the fingering. Sometimes it simply concerns a stream of fast arpeggios and leaps in both hands, as in the Corrente. In the slow Sarabande, the challenge lies more in the elegant phrasing of the ornaments and flourishes that are in full view, due to the sparing accompaniment. One small mistake is immediately noticeable.

When the keyboard player then arrives at the two minuets, it appears that the worst of the danger is over, as here Bach does not demand particularly difficult struggles for the fingers. But it was not without reason that Mizler took the partitas as an example. The Gigue that closes the first partita is a tour de force of keyboard technique, which was unparalleled in Bach’s day. With the right hand continually jumping over the left hand, here it is not just the fingers in motion, but the whole hand!

2022-05 Nederlandse Bachvereniging All of Bach (Netherlands Bach Society) : Advanced Keyboard Technique

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Marc or Mark Edwards may refer to:

Arts and entertainment

• Mark Edwards (actor) (born 1942), Australian actor
• Mark Edwards (British writer), (born 1970), British fiction writer
• Marc Edwards (drummer) (born 1949), American jazz drummer
• Mark Edwards (harpsichordist) (born 1986), Canadian
• Marc Edwards (Home and Away), fictional character on the Australian soap opera Home and Away
• Marc Edwards (TV presenter) (born 1980), Welsh television presenter on China Central Television

Sports

• Marc Edwards (American football) (born 1974), American football player
• Mark Edwards (boxer) (born 1963), British boxer
• Mark Edwards (skier), New Zealand Paralympian

Others

• Mark Edwards (British businessman), British CEO of MDS
• Mark Edwards (boatbuilder) (born 1954), English traditional boatbuilder
• Mark Edwards (bishop) (born 1959), Australian Roman Catholic prelate
• Marc Edwards (professor) (born 1964), professor of civil and environmental engineering
• Mark Edwards (theologian)

See also

• Mark Edward (born 1951), American psychic entertainer and mentalist

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