Sanitized Suites

Jeremy Denk's multipart inspection of an allemande has had me wanting to get to know the Bach partitas better. (Somehow, I've always spent more time with the English/French suites.) I'll admit I hardly had any memory of that remarkable allemande, and I'll refrain from commenting more on its wonders until Denk's 7-part series is finished. OK, one comment. It has to be one of the least danceable stylized dances ever. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) OK, one more. It has to be one of the longest binary-form dance movements ever. Wolfgang Rübsam spends 11:54 ruminating on it - that's almost longer than it takes to read Denk's blog entries.

Anyway, those wanting to expose young children to this and other crazy dances can take comfort in knowing that iTunes has given Maria Tipo's Bach the Clean Lyrics seal of approval. Perhaps that's to clarify that Ms. Tipo doesn't do any Gouldian humming. As I've said before (here, here), neither iTunes nor eMusic has any idea how to present classical music, so such glitches aren't surprising. (Maybe this will help.) Geoff Edgers mentioned the clean Neruda Songs some time back, but this is my first encounter with purged partitas.