In July 2018, András Schiff gave a performance of the Well-Tempered Clavier by J. S. Bach. During the recital, the idea overcame me that could play this master piece myself—but on the computer.
By that time, I didn’t have much experience with sounds on computers. I was more in the domain of graphics, and my initial idea was to describe the performance of musical pieces by lines and curves.
I had played the piano for many years, but when a problem with a finger of the left hand became apparent, I finally gave up practicing the instrument.
Due to my background, I decided to create a web app for my musical project. I called it Clavier and I improved the app whenever there was a need for my interpretation.
Getting the digital scores of the Well-Tempered Clavier was not a big effort. I spent more time on the search for a good instrument. In the end, I was quite happy with a recording of a Yamaha piano with 16 velocity steps.
I created a line editor to draw lines for the tempo, the velocities, and the articulations. There was also a graphical editor for ornaments. In order to precisely define the curves, I had placed the editor right below the staffs of the score. Two years after I had started the project, I was happy to present my first recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Since then, I realised some more digital interpretations of Bach’s keyboard work, but not all of them are finished.
Although I had 16 different velocities, it was often not possible to produce the sound I imagined. The browsers sound capabilities turned out to be rather limiting and also required much programming effort. I finally added a MIDI interface to further improve the sound. My favourite instrument actually consists of two instruments, the sound of the Yamaha Piano combined with the recordings if a Neupert harpsichord.
Unfortunately, the Clavier app is rather static. A user finds himself in a cycle of drawing and listening. There is little interaction and no real-time performance. I discontinued the development of the Clavier app in favour of a musical conductor app.
The Clavier app remains as it is. Feel free to try it out.