Show Notes
Bachian folklore claims Bach used to disguise himself and wander into random churches to play the organ. After a few minutes the warden was frightened it was either the devil himself or Johann Sebastian Bach. I imagine this piece would have given such an impression. Pedal Shoes Anyone?
The Passacaglia BWV 582 appears in the Andreas Bach Book upside down. Its title is in all capitals, spelled like the title of this episode. (Curiously, Buxtehude’s Passacaglia in D Minor BuxWV 16 also appears in all capitals, spelled the same— but it is not upside down.) Have a look: If we rotate the page and zoom in, we see the famous opening bars, played with only the feet: On this theme, Bach pens 20 variations, culminating in a brilliant fugue. The fugue has two countersubjects. Until I made this episode I hadn’t considered the Trinity as a possible vision for the fugue (the nature of countersubjects often demands that they move at different speeds to the theme) but it may be a helpful image: I went long on this episode, so I wasn’t able to feature a full recording of this, I’ll be back in a few days to feature Paul Jacobs. In the meanwhile, here is Ton Koopman’s recording with a score:
We Rely Exclusively on Paid Subscriptions! Help WTF Bach endure:Join at WTFBach.comThis is the only place Evan checks comments regularly.You can also make a one-time donation here:https://www.paypal.me/wtfbachhttps://venmo.com/wtfbachThank you for your help! TRANSCRIPT: Hi everyone evan here thanks for tuning in just a quicker episode today or maybe it will be as long but certainly more spontaneous the few days I usually prepare for the podcast researching and writing the show I will now be busy preparing for and playing my first organ concert. I’m quite excited about that. I wrote about this experience at length and I want to share that piece with you. I’m not sure if I’m going to read it aloud on the podcast, however, as it’s a personal essay. In fact, it’s so personal I’ve really been on the fence about whether I should share it or not since I admit some things about myself. Fears, doubts, hesitation. I really don’t hold back. So anyhow, if you’re listening to this podcast without being subscribed to the Substack, you might miss this. But if you follow the links in the episode description, you will be notified when I publish that essay about playing an organ concert, probably the first week of August or so. Thanks, meanwhile, to all my listeners who write me, who offer their insights or their curiosities. Thanks for those of you who take out a paid subscription on Substack. This support means I don’t have to take that one gig that pays, but I really don’t want to play it because it eats away at my soul. Instead, I can focus on what I love about this gig, which is sharing with people what I love about music. Thanks for the support. So a piece I love, a piece that floored me the first time I heard it, this recital, this organ concert ends with that piece, The Mighty Passacaglia and Fugue BWB 582. It’s about time we discussed this piece on the show. No, this is a piece that if you’re into Bach... You haven’t missed this. If you haven’t heard this piece before, take note of where you’re sitting or where you’re standing or maybe you’re running listening to this podcast. Maybe you’re that one listener of mine who rides a tractor while listening to the podcast. Remember where you are because this is the type of piece that you remember where you were the first time you heard it. So let’s go. It’s an early masterpiece, the Passacaglia. In my opinion, the great triumph of Bach’s youth may be this very piece. It comes down to us in a manuscript in the so-called Andreas Bach book, one of the two major collections of keyboard music that gives us remarkable insight into Bach’s youthful compositions. This is a pre-Weimar work. The bulk, I suppose it’s safe to say, or at least a major creative burst of organ compositions happened in Weimar. This precedes that. This is
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The music at the end is BWV 600, from a forthcoming ‘electrified’ arrangement of Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. The beautiful passage toward the end of my rant— with the koto accompaniment and bird song— comes from one of my absolute favorite books: R.H. Blythe’s writings about Haiku. Blyth considered the three greatest geniuses of time to be Basho, Bach, and Shakespeare— in that order! Wow! What am I missing with Basho!? More than a podcast. This is WTF Bach.
Volume 6 in ‘J.S. Bach: Complete Keyboard Works’ is on presale today! Here are the relevant links: * J.S. Bach: Complete Keyboard Works, Vol. 6 - Arrangements of Albinoni and Reincken(https://modernclassicalx.lnk.to/JSBachCompleteKeyboardWorksVol6FromArrangementsofAlbinoniandReincken) I might call this volume a ‘headphones album’ or perhaps one to listen to in the car: The sonic space shifts throughout the course of these pieces. I describe this process in depth in the episode, but essentially each track is two recordings of the piece, playing simultaneously: one recording is the original live performance, while another is that very same performance, played back through the Disklavier with the dynamics flatlined— as if the piano keyboard were incapable of dynamics — like a harpsichord. The two recordings were then ‘live panned’ during the mixing according to my feeling for the music. The result, while perhaps less extreme than this all sounds, is certainly a noticeable phenomenon, especially in headphones or seated between two speakers as in a car. But enough about that, let’s get to the music. Fugue it:
We’ve now covered the seven surviving earliest vocal works by Johann Sebastian Bach! This episode is a brief tour through the episodes we dedicated to these pieces, refreshing our memories and attempting to identify unifying stylistic features. All the episodes covering the Arnstadt/Mülhausen cantatas can be found at:https://wtfbach.substack.com/t/early-cantatas Wanna Cantata?
“The consummate expressiveness of {BWV 4] has always been marvelled at. Each verse is as if chiselled in music.” -Albert Schweitzer, Vol. 2 Bach’s early Easter cantata remains one of the most beloved in the entire canon. Barely 22 years old, he is already in full command of his tone-painting. Here are three measures particularly packed with symbolism: Filling the music with rests at the word nothing, ‘one death eating another’ through the closest possible canon, crosses both in shape and every note ‘sharped’ (gekreuzt,) dripping blood on the Passover doors with short 8th notes, leaping a diminished 12th (!) in the bass aria at the word death, this cantata is a dictionary of text painting. …und singen Halleluja!
Sometimes an article from the EB strikes me as so amusing, I simply have to share it with you. See you next week (or the week after, latest) for the conclusion of our early cantata survey, with Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4. Thanks for listening! Well, That’s Fascinating!