Listening: Book of Ways, Keith Jarrett

Portrait of a master at his art

Keith Jarrett’s solo performances, the ones I’ve heard out of the few that were recorded and published, are unique, each a differently cut gemstone. Book of Ways, this CD being a reissue of a 1987 release that was recorded in one day in July 1986, features Jarrett on the clavichord. I’d never knowingly heard a clavichord. It sounds somewhere inside the triangle formed by placing classical guitar, Japanese koto, and harpsichord, each at a vertex of the triangle. The album was recorded with three clavichords, and at times Jarrett played two at once, with each going to a separate track, and their being divided between left and right stereo positions. One of the two allowed for vibrato, and so for the ability to carry out the microtone bends that remind me of the koto. Some of the strumming on the keys creates a sound that is like that of a lute, which I hear as a sound between the classical guitar and the harpsichord. There is more information about the clavichord here: https://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/19899/excerpt/9780521619899_excerpt.pdf. The entire performance was improvised. There are no liner notes accompanying the 2022 reissue of the CD by ECM.

The album is divided into two divisions, each made up of unnamed, numbered sections, one section per track. The sections flow into each other, without there being noticeable breaks between them. I could not guess which section I am listening to now, after about fifteen minutes or so. Looking, now, I see section eight has just begun, and it sounds as if Jarrett is plucking the strings for some low notes with vibrato. That may just be because I am unfamiliar with the sounds of a clavichord. Vocalizations by Jarrett are few and far between, and on “8,” his muttering is eerie as his playing on low strings brings an ominous tone into the work.

Division II begins with a fugue or fugue-like piece that has hints of modernity but is deeply rooted in the Baroque of Bach. It is during my listening to the second CD that I notice the sections are more distinct than I had initially thought. There is silence between each pair. In this first track of the second disc (numbered “11”), Jarrett is playing on two clavichords at once. A deep inhalation by him, clearly audible, marks a particularly built-up moment on the instruments, with Jarrett nearly mumbling words. It is the most deeply pitched I’ve heard his vocalizations go. The sound of the clavichords is much like that of a harpsichord (or of two!), until the last few notes, when the sound of the last trailing notes becomes lute like. The following section has strumming, and this sounds somewhere between the harpsichord and guitar, and unlike the koto. The clavichord on the left, playing in the mid-range, sounds like a guitar, while the clavichord on the right sounds like a lute or, as it plays higher notes, a harpsichord. And now Jarrett has hit some strummed notes with the left clavichord, which are quite low in the register. And the piece ends, my attention having gone to those low notes and the preceding moan from Jarrett, perhaps, given the culture associated with the musical style as it originally existed, it is like a soul fallen into despair.

Jarrett may be playing the third clavichord at this point, with both hands, as all its sound comes from the center area of the soundstage; or he might be playing two that have been miked differently or mixed differently. I have already come to enjoy clavichord music, though I admit to already having come half-way, through a fondness for Bach fugues played on harpsichord. The next section brings in some of the koto sound through Jarrett’s use of vibrato and note-bending for microtones. He is back to two clavichords now, the right carrying the improvised melody and the left playing a metronomic rhythm, a kind of multi-tone drone. It would be impressive to see Jarrett perform this. It seems as if he has three arms. Jarrett’s low, tortured-sounding groaning builds as an incredibly fast passage builds. Both relax, and the right hand is playing in time with the left, the chord-drone, and the piece ends.

Using two clavichords, one with vibrato capability, allows Jarrett to play notes in unison, and with the ability to bend a note microtonally, this unison can be brought out of tune (in the 12-tone scale model) into a near-unison dyad, and this sounds very much like the koto music I have heard. The ability Jarrett exhibits, to begin and end a note or, more impressively, a chord, with almost no audible attack or decay portions of its envelope is stunning when one considers that this effect is, today, in many types of popular music, typically brought about through digital manipulation of the sound—through sampling, digital synthesis, or whatever means.

I have been listening to what seems like a Bach lute suite during this next track. Two lutes, perhaps, would be needed to perform this one. For most of the work, and I mean the double-CD album, Jarrett’s moans have been low-pitched, and he has used two clavichords at once. Now I realize this “almost-a-lute-suite” has been played on a single clavichord.

An effect, perhaps of the vibrato capability of the clavichord, that emerges in the next track is what sounds like pitch-shifting due to tape-player motor-speed variation, say when a $20 tape recorder is having trouble playing a tape. The tinkling gives the impression of a harpsichord. The strumming, or rolling, of the chords gives the impression of a guitar-like instrument, perhaps a lute. Having played some simple Bach pieces on guitar, including Bach’s “Lute Prelude,” I am particularly fond of that sound. The work ends on a humble Baroque-style flourish, not a grand, loud finishing smashing of the keys.

The purposeful meandering of the fugue-like polyphony reminds me that I think I once read Bach could improvise five-, six-, and maybe seven-voiced fugues. How many voices are concealed in plain “sight,” in these fugue-like pieces by Jarrett? The clavichord, it is said, is in

audible more than a few feet away, and the production was such that the microphones were very near to the instruments. In some sense, we may be hearing Jarrett’s inner voice, the quiet voice of an instrument not designed for performance but for composition and practice. We hear our voices as deeper than they are, I have heard. The deeper vocalizations by Jarrett—it is as though we were inside his ears, between his ears. It is, in any case, an intimate portrait, Book of Ways, of a master at his craft, of an artist creating his artwork.