WTF Bach

Forever paired with the giant Toccata BWV 540, it’s unlikely the two were conceived together. Still, owing to certain sources and the fact that this fugue is a dignified and stately complement to the capricious toccata, the pairing works delightfully.

Now, is this the fugue, BWV 540? Or which piece is this?

And is this not the same music?

Top: Italian Concerto. Bottom: today’s fugue. Seeing such similar vocabulary is as ...

Bach married his second cousin, Maria Barbara, on October 17, 1707, in St. Bartholomäi’s Church (pictured in the cover image) in a charming little village called Dornheim. They were both 22. According to Spitta, some eight months later, Bach and Maria returned to that same church to attend the wedding of the man who had officiated their own: Johann Lorenz Stauber. J.S. Bach carried with him the parts to a cantata, and this wo...

Opsimath Organist

My first trip to Germany (I was 21) I walked into a church in Weimar and heard— by beautiful coincidence— an unseen organist play Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue, BWV 582. This was a piece I heard for the first time only a year before. I remember exactly in which chair I first heard it. If the Chaconne is Bach’s universe tightly wound into a handheld box, the Passacaglia is a different vision o...

“For something to be relevant, is it outside of time, or is it somehow speaking to us directly, now?” -Emma Smith

Today’s guest is Emma Smith! Professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of Oxford. We discuss the Brook and the Bard, what do they have in common? Are there shared philosophies that helped these two figures to become the most influential in their fields?Hope you enjoy the episode! Here are the s...

About four years ago I made an episode about Bach’s ‘longest’ piece:

Somehow I missed a piece which should definitely be in contention for his ‘longest.’ At 437 measures, the Toccata in F, BWV 540, is (I think!)the longest stretch of Bach’s music, in terms of measures. It probably also holds the record for longest single note. Take a look at page one— an inanimate object could play the pedal...

PG-13 Warning

Songs Without Lungs

Of course I’m not worried about AI replacing me. I’m a pianist. No one will ever pay to watch robots perform.

And then we met Sophia.

That’s right. Earlier this year, with the Baptist University Symphony Orchestra in Hong Kong, a robot took the stage and ‘sang.’ She’s called Sophia. She seems so human with a name like Sophia. Much better than C-137. I’m less li...

As part of his new job, the 22-year-old Bach had to provide music for Mülhausen’s city council elections. For the first time, he officially had an occasion to write for a large orchestra: brass, timpani, woodwinds, flutes, strings, two choirs— this is BWV 71, Gott ist mein König. Scoring so largely on the page must have been exciting for the young Bach:

That’s a lot of parts! The first time Bach writes for brass ...

I hope you get something out of this experiment!

Enjoy Paul Jacobs’ beautiful live performance, followed by, at 16:20, an extremely slow MIDI version of BWV 582. The idea is that you, the listener, can adjust the playback speed to alter your perception of the counterpoint.

Perhaps you listen to the slow version at .5x as a three-hour sound bath?

Write That Fugue!

We Rely Exclusively on Paid Subscriptions! Help WTF Bach endure:J...

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 Bookupside down. Its title is in all capitals, spelled like the title of this episode. (Curiously,...

At just 22 years old, Bach set the immortal words of David, ‘Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord.’ From the opening bars, we see depths, cries:

The second and fourth movements already show Bach’s interest in using chorale melodies in his cantatas. To the Psalm text, Bach adds a 1588 Hymn by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt, asking for mercy, Erbarm dich mein. How lucky we are to see seeds of the Matthew Passion planted a...

Who is Doctor Conrad Meckbach, and what is he doing in the middle of cantata 150?!

Using clues from a clever acrostic spread throughout the text, scholars have securely dated this cantata to Bach’s years in Arnstadt. Penitential in theme, it would have been performed during Lent, 1707. It is now considered Bach’s earliest cantata.

You Oughta Cantata!

The finale, an early chaconne, (as I forgot to mention in the episode!) s...

Yeah.Evan.Likewise.What I…? Oh what I do…

Right, well, if you ask me what I do, I’m going to tell you: I breathe, I walk, I sit, I sleep, just like you! Just like you. What I do.

I might venture that I’m an inventor, or no longer need to work, because, right out of university, you see, I came up with a really clever patent for trampolines that has prevented the paralysis of hundreds of bouncing children&mdas...

Last December, I spoke with Peter Wollny, one of today’s most important Bach scholars. We discuss how one becomes a Bach scholar, what it’s like to be in close proximity with Bach’s handwritten manuscripts, using watermarks within the paper to form a compositional chronology, and forming a ‘personal relationship’ with a figure from the past. Here are some of my favorite quotes from our interview:

Q: Is ...

(Fear not the length of this episode: the last 25 minutes or so are three different playings of the piece.)

Having written a prelude and fugue in every possible key, having created a single temperament for all of those pieces, having stretched the thematic growth from a 6-note fugal subject to one with all 12 possible notes, Bach achieves a victory that would become the very foundations of music. At the very end, in one of his laye...

We reach the last note in The Well-Tempered Clavier, B natural. To this point, Bach has climbed chromatically from C, visiting both minor and major modes in every half step, and before the stunning finale in b minor, Bach writes a somewhat simpler prelude and fugue, BWV 868, in B major.

Thank Bach for God!

There are few revisions between the earliest and latest copies, the most striking is the inner voice at measure 11 in the prelud...

“While the c# minor fugue awakens the conception of a mighty cathedral, the two numbers in b-flat minor may be likened to artistically wrought side-chapel’s vaults, in which things most precious are kept.” —Busoni’s remarks on BWV 867.

Things most precious, indeed. We might well wrap up this dark pearl of b-flat minor and guard it in the ‘side-chapel vaults’ of our hearts. What noble sufferi...

César Vallejo (1892-1938) is one of my favorite poets. To define his style is difficult: one doesn’t understand his poems so much as one absorbs them. His words— seemingly impenetrable— have a sense to them which gnaws and tugs at dormant parts of the mind.

Some 12 years ago I holed up in a little shack near the Canada/USA border with nothing but his poetry to keep me sane— but he began unraveling my mind in ...

It’s thrilling to look at the music of Bach’s predecessors. We see the very shape of Bach to come (I say, referencing my own album…) In several of Buxtehude’s works, we find this texture:

Bach tossed the trick into his bag for later deployment:

Notice the ending: subtle, elegant, humble. Czerny didn’t think it was enough:

Be on the lookout for the extra measure in your own edition! Tovey calls Czerny&rsq...

Perhaps before composing the bulk of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach had been challenging himself to create a fugue with real technical daring. This fugue, in a minor BWV 865, represents some of the composer’s most ambitious fugal writing. Have a look at an outline of the subjects alone—you might even follow this image while listening to the episode— this might give you some idea of the task Bach undertook:

From th...