Griepenkerl on J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Technique: A Translation and Commentary

Although he was not a professional musician, the German scholar and teacher Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl (1782-1849) studied music theory, organ and piano with Johann N. Forkel, J.S. Bach\u27s first biographer. Throughout his life Griepenkerl actively promoted the performance and study of Bach\u27s keyboard works, and in 1844 he began to issue the first critically corrected complete edition of Bach\u27s organ works, which organists know today as the Peters edition. In the preface to Vol. I of this edition (p. II), Griepenkerl briefly discussed Bach\u27s manner of keyboard performance, and in this regard referred to three sources, each one more detailed than the preceding: 1. C.P.E. Bach\u27s Versuch iiber die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen (1753), Part I, p. 104. 2. J.N. Forkel\u27s Uber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke (1802), pp. 11-14. 3. Griepenkerl\u27s own account, found in his edition of Bach\u27s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (1819). Griepenkerl, then, considered his own account to be the most complete and accurate description of J.S. Bach\u27s keyboard technique. He suggested that, although his remarks refer to performance on the pianoforte, the touch he described is far more advantageous for performance on the organ