IU professor Don Freund to immerse listeners in Bach and his own works

Connie Shakalis
Special to the H-T
Don Freund

In 2019 local musician Lennie Newman died, then Herald-Times music columnist Peter Jacobi. Johann Sebastian Bach had died long before (1750), and as Bloomington composer Don Freund contemplated these losses, it became time to ponder his own mortality.

"It's terrifying," he said in a Zoom interview.

Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier" has been Freund's life work. In his 20s, Freund memorized the entire first book. But then people started asking, "Well what about the second book?" Freund got to work.

As of five years ago, he has the whole book memorized.

He's modest. "I've had 60 years doing this."

He plays piano about two hours a day, four or five days a week. And he teaches.

Don Freund

"Indiana University's composition students are the best in the world," he said. (And Freund came from Eastman School of Music, so that is saying something.) "And they are the greatest people to be around."

"The Well Tempered Clavier" is  48 preludes and fugues by J.S. Bach that make up two books, published in 1722 and 1742. Bach analyses the 12 major and 12 minor keys, and the books are the dominant and grandest-scale endeavor for solo keyboard in the Baroque period.

"Well Tempered" is not Bach jotting notes while chuckling; it's a reference to a tuning method that could now apply to all major and minor keys. "Clavier" means that it was suitable for any keyboard. (The piano was new.) 

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As Freund prepares for his Friday recital in Auer Hall, he hopes attendees will heed his mission: to really hear the music, to absorb it. Freund will help us; he is presenting the pieces the way Leonard Bernstein used to: play something, talk about it, play it again. Then, he'll play all the pieces once more, all the way through.

"I don't want people to feel oppressed by it. Like, 'Oh no, I'm back in class!' But you can't hear something just once. It won't become part of you. Music is abstract, and sometimes the listener needs a little help."

What he refers to as "heavy listening" allows a listener to understand what Freund means when he says, "The most beautiful thing about life is listening hard to music."

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Among the pieces he will play is Bach's knuckle- and cerebrum-challenging "Prelude and Fugue in C# Major."

The C-sharp major key has seven sharps, and even Freund had to admit that in his mind he keeps going back and forth between flats and sharps. After all, Bach could have written it in D flat!

"I want people to recognize the wonderful thing that Bach does." In this instance, Freund referred to Bach's use of repetition, which allows a listener to notice how the music changes. He urges us all to seek a composer's patterns.

What's crucial to Freund, and most of his students, is how a listener responds to a piece. That, he said, is why they are writing music. 

Don Freund poses with a statue of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Since 1990, Freund has written a prelude every year. He has 32 now. He names them, keeping a file of (300) name ideas. The last three in his September recital are from 2019, 2020 and 2021. He's also playing the one from 2000, "For Lennie and Lou," written in honor of the 50th anniversary of then Bloomingtonian musicians Lennie and Louise Newman.

His mellow, jazzy 2020 prelude, "The Strangest Year," reflects the craziness of our welcome-to-a-pandemic months. A surprise singer will perform, using lyrics she wrote for the piece. Upon hearing Freund's music she informed him, "I have to write words for this."

Composers are sensitive by nature, and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, propelled Freund's imagination to close his recital in, wait for it, 1/6 time. Prelude 2021 is a premiere of "constituent contusions (insurrection echoes)." The evening's very last irrational measure will be, yes, a single sixth note (think triplets, kind of).

If you go

WHAT: Don Freund’s "Music for Heavy Listening" recital, an inside look at four J.S. Bach preludes and fugues from "The Well Tempered Clavier," Book II plus four piano preludes written and played by Don Freund.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday.

WHERE: Auer Hall, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, 200 S. Jordan Ave.

TICKETS: Free. Masks please. Freund said: "For those who have tickets to (Jacobs') "The Magic Flute," trade them in! You can still see the opera twice, with each soprano, and my recital!"

MORE: Find Don Freund teaching composition at https://bit.ly/3njYjQu. Find Freund's piano prelude 2020, "The Strangest Year," at https://bit.ly/3ttICHb.