Switched-On Bach

Around 1967, Wendy Carlos asked Rachel Elkind to listen to her electronic compositions. They included compositions written ten years earlier, as well as some from 1964 co-written with her friend Benjamin Folkman at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City. One recording was a rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach's Two-Part Invention in F major for Moog synthesizer, which Carlos described as "charming".^[1]

Soon after, Carlos began plans to produce an album of Bach pieces performed on the Moog. She intended to use the novel technology to make "appealing music you could really listen to", rather than what she considered to be the "ugly" music being produced by avant-garde musicians at the time.^[1] Elkind was impressed with Carlos' recording of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major and became the album's producer. Elkind contacted producer and conductor Ettore Stratta of Columbia Records, who "generously spread his enthusiasm throughout the rest of the company" and assisted in the album's production. Paul Myers of Columbia Masterworks granted Carlos, Folkman, and Elkind artistic freedom.^[2]

First Movement (Allegro) of Brandenburg Concerto Number 3

A sample of "Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major - First Movement".

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Switched-On Bach features ten pieces by Bach available under the public domain^[2] performed by Carlos, with assistance from Folkman, on a Moog synthesizer. Carlos had worked closely with designer Robert Moog, testing his components and suggesting improvements. Most of the album was recorded in a rented studio apartment in which Carlos lived at 410 West End Avenue on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City,^[3] using a custom-built 8-track recording machine constructed by Carlos from components built by Ampex. The initial track created, however, the Invention in F major, was recorded in the spring of 1967 on a Scully tape recorder at Gotham Recording Studios at 2 West 46th Street, where Carlos had brought Moog equipment for a commercial project.

According to Carlos, Switched-On Bach took approximately five months and one thousand hours to produce.^[4] As the Moog was monophonic, meaning that only one note could be played at a time, each track was assembled one note at a time: "You had to release the note before you could make the next note start, which meant you had to play with a detached feeling on the keyboard, which was really very disturbing in making music."^[5] The synthesizer often went out of tune; Carlos recalled hitting it with a hammer prior to recording to obtain correct levels. After several notes were played, it was checked again to make sure the tuning had not drifted.^[5]

Bach provided only the two chords of a Phrygian half cadence for the second movement of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, intending that the musicians would improvise on these chords. Carlos and Folkman carefully constructed this piece to showcase the capabilities of the Moog.^[6]

Switched-On Bach was released with two different covers. The most common features a man dressed as Bach standing before a Moog synthesizer. The first pressing featured the same man seated, as shown above, with no credit to Carlos on the front cover. Carlos and Elkind objected to this original cover and had it replaced, finding it "a clownish, trivializing image of a mugging Bach". They also objected to the fact that the synthesizer was incorrectly set up: "[The headphones] were plugged into the input, not output, of a 914 filter module, which in turn was connected to nothing, [assuring] that silence is all that would have greeted Johann Sebastian's ears."^[7]

In 1968, shortly before the release of Switched-On Bach, Robert Moog spoke at the annual Audio Engineering Society conference and played Carlos' rendition of the third movement of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 at the end of his talk. Moog recalled: "I walked off the stage and went to the back of the auditorium while people were listening, and I could feel it in the air. They were jumping out of their skins. These technical people were involved in so much flim-flam, so much shoddy, opportunistic stuff, and here was something that was just impeccably done and had obvious musical content and was totally innovative. The tape got a standing ovation."^[8]

Switched-On Bach was released in October 1968 by Columbia Masterworks. In 1969, it entered the top 40 on the US Billboard 200 before it reached a peak of No. 10 that year, for a total of 59 weeks on the chart.^[9] From January 1969 to January 1972, the album was No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Albums chart,^[10] and it reached the seventh position of the Canadian RPM album chart.^[11] In February 1974, Columbia estimated that 960,000 copies of the album had been sold in the US.^[3] In June that year, Billboard reported the album's sales surpassed one million, the second classical music record in history to achieve the feat. In August 1969, it was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, for sales in excess of 1 million copies.^[12] It reached Platinum certification in November 1986.^[13]

Reception

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Allmusic	[14]

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Switched-On Bach received negative reviews from some classical music traditionalists, but gained popularity among many younger listeners.^[14] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Bruce Eder noted that Carlos' approach "was highly musical in ways that ordinary listeners could appreciate ... characterized by ... amazing sensitivity and finely wrought nuances, in timbre, tone, and expressiveness."^[14] Pianist Glenn Gould spoke highly of Switched-On Bach, calling it "one of the most startling achievements of the recording industry in this generation and certainly one of the great feats in the history of 'keyboard' performance."^[15] In 1972, Gould participated in the Columbia Records project Switched-Off Bach, which presented the same selection of works acoustically.

In 1970, the album won three Grammy Awards: Best Classical Album, Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist or Soloists (With or Without Orchestra), and Best Engineered Classical Recording.^[16]

Side two

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Switched-On Bach.

• Wendy Carlos (originally credited as Walter Carlos) – Moog synthesizer, synthesizer programming
• Benjamin Folkman – supplementary keyboards
• Rachel Elkind – producer