this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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He was! But he overused the harpsichord, in my very humble and unfounded opinion, and it hurts my ears to listen to a lot of his creation. I get why he did (the piano was still a very new creation, and the harpsichord could be more easily heard in concert halls), but it sure does pierce the eardrum these days.
To provide a dissenting opinion, I've always preferred harpsichords to pianos, which is one of the reasons I love Bach so much.
Pianos somehow sound simultaneously harsher than harpsichords with the off-putting initial clunk of the keys, and boringly muted in comparison.
Harpsichord always seems so frilly and thin. Piano has more depth and range of emotion, more dynamics.
I do love a lot of his music. It’s just difficult to hear the shrill of the harpsichord, for me.
Hmm, what percentage of his stuff was written for organ, I wonder? Wikipedia says that was his claim to fame while still alive, and there's an instrument that still holds up.