Prelude in E-flat Major, St. Anne, BWV 552a

The fugue subject is adapted to the pedal as a vigorous striding bass with alternate footwork; its quasi- ostinato character has been consistently interpreted as representing a "firm faith in God": During each occurrence of the semiquaver part of the subject in the pedal, the music modulates into a different key while the three upper parts play in invertible counterpoint , so that the three different melodic lines can be freely interchanged between the three voices.

These highly original transitional passages punctuate the work and give a coherence to the whole movement. In the final manualiter episode the ostinato pedal figures are taken up briefly by the tenor part before the movement draws to a close over a final extended restatement of the fugue subject in the pedal.

The subject paraphrases the first line of the chorale; the two-bar passage later in the movement leading to two dramatic diminished seventh chords is constructed over the second chorale line. Although not strictly a French ouverture, the movement does incorporate elements of that style, in particular the dotted rhythms. It also complements the preceding chorale prelude by following an Italian style with a contrasting French one. Although still evidently written for organ, in style it most resembles the Gigue for harpsichord from the first French Suite in D minor BWV Our Father in the heaven Who art, Who tellest all of us in heart Brothers to be, and on Thee call, And wilt have prayer from us all, Grant that the mouth not only pray, From deepest heart oh help its way.

Vater unser im Himmelreich BWV in E minor has long been considered the most complex of Bach's chorale preludes, difficult at the levels of both understanding and performance. Through a ritornello trio sonata in the modern French galante style, the German chorale of the first verse is heard in canon at the octave, almost subliminally, played in each hand together with the obligato instrumental solo.

Bach had already mastered such a compound form in the choral fantasia opening his cantata Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV The canon could be a reference to the Law, the adherence to which Luther saw as one of the purposes of prayer. The galante style in the upper parts is reflected in their lombardic rhythms and detached semiquaver triplets, sometimes played against semiquavers, typical of French flute music of the time.

Below, the pedal plays a restless continuo, with constantly changing motifs. On the technical side, the suggestion of the German musicologist Hermann Keller that BWV required four manuals and two players has not been accepted. As Bach emphasised to his students, however, articulation was all-important: The theme in the upper parts is an elaborate coloratura version of the hymn, like the instrumental solos in the slow movements of trio sonatas or concertos.

Its wandering, sighing nature has been taken to represent the unsaved soul in search of God's protection. It has three key elements which are developed extensively in the prelude: Bach already used lombardic rhythms in the early s, in particular in some early versions of the Domine Deus of the Mass in B minor from his cantata Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV The mounting lombardic figures have been interpreted as representing "hope" and "trust" and the anguished chromaticism as "patience" and "suffering".

At the climax of the work in bar 41, the chromaticism reaches its most extreme in the upper parts as the lombardic rhythms pass to the pedal:. The otherworldly way in which the solo parts weave around the solo lines of the chorale, almost hiding them, has suggested to some commentators "groanings which cannot be uttered"—the mystical nature of prayer. After its first statement the ritornello recurs six times but not as a strict repeat, instead the order in which the different motifs are heard constantly changes. The cantus firmus is played without interruption in the uppermost part, accompanied by three-part counterpoint in the lower parts.

The accompaniment uses two motifs: The first motif is also inverted. The quiet and sweetly harmonious nature of the music is evocative of prayer and contemplation. Its intimate scale and orthodox style provide a complete contrast to the previous "larger" setting in BWV At the beginning of each line of the chorale, the musical texture is pared down, with more voices added towards the end of the line: The prelude comes to a subdued conclusion in the lower registers of the keyboard.

Below is the text of the first and last verses of Luther's hymn " Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam " with the English translation by Charles Sanford Terry: The eye but water doth behold, As from man's hand it floweth; But inward faith the power untold Of Jesus Christ's blood knoweth. Faith sees therein a red flood roll, With Christ's blood dyed and blended, Which hurts of all kinds maketh whole, From Adam here descended, And by ourselves brought on us. The chorale prelude Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam BWV has a trio sonata like ritornello in C minor in the three parts of the manuals with the cantus firmus in the tenor register of the pedal in the Dorian mode of C.

Bach specifically stipulates two keyboards to give different sonorities to the imitative upper parts and the bass part. The undulating semiquavers in the bass, usually interpreted as representing the flowing waters of the Jordan, imitate a violine continuo, according to the model of Kauffmann's Harmonische Seelenlust. The musical content of the ritornello contains explicit allusions to the melody of the chorale, sometimes hidden in the semiquaver passage work and motifs.

The manualiter chorale prelude BWV , despite being only 27 bars long and technically speaking a three-part fughetta, is a complex composition with dense fugal writing. The subject and countersubject are both derived from the first line of the cantus firmus. The compact style, imitative contrapuntal writing and sometimes capricious touches, such as repetition and the ambiguity in the number of parts, are features that BWV shares with the shorter chorale preludes in Kauffmann's Harmonische Seelenlust.

Williams has given a precise analysis of the fughetta:. There have been many attempts to interpret the musical iconography of BWV Albert Schweitzer suggested that the subject and countersubject gave the visual impression of waves. Hermann Keller suggested that the three entries of the subject and countersubject, and the three inversions, represent the three immersions at baptism. Others have seen allusions to the Trinity in the three voices. The subject and countersubject have been seen as representing Luther's baptismal themes of Old Adam and New Man.

Whatever the intended symbolism, Bach's most probable compositional aim was to produce a shorter chorale prelude contrasting musically with the preceding longer setting. Below is the text of the first and last verses of Luther's hymn with the English translation by Charles Sanford Terry: Bend down Thy gracious ear to me, Let my prayer come before Thee! If Thou rememberest each misdeed, If each should have its rightful meed, Who may abide Thy presence?

And thus my hope is in the Lord, And not in mine own merit; I rest upon His faithful word To them of contrite spirit; That He is merciful and just— Here is my comfort and my trust, His help I wait with patience. The fact that the setting in BWV flows more easily, has more countersubjects, has more novel features and has typically organ figurations in the final section has suggested that in this case the whole of Luther's text was taken into account and that it is a purer version of the stile antico.

Following the huge scale of the opening, Bach highly inventively incorporates motifs from the cantus firmus into the countersubjects of the seven sections counting the repeat , resulting in a constantly changing musical texture. The widest range in pitch between upper and lower parts occurs exactly halfway through at bar At the end of each line the cantus firmus is taken up in the left lower pedal, which, without break, then plays the countersubject while above the right upper pedal concludes the section by playing the cantus firmus in the tenor register in augmentation i.

Williams has given the following analysis of the seven sections:. The strict contrapuntal writing is denser than that of BWV , although it adheres less to the stile antico and has a more uniform texture. Commentators have suggested that the continual responses to the fugue subjects by their inversion signify confession followed by forgiveness. Williams has pointed out the following musical features in the seven sections of BWV Dieser Tisch auch dir nicht gilt, So du selber dir helfen willst.

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Die Frucht soll auch nicht ausbleiben: Christ Jesus, our Redeemer born, Who from us did God's anger turn, Through His sufferings sore and main, Did help us all out of hell-pain. That we never should forget it, Gave He us His flesh, to eat it, Hid in poor bread, gift divine, And, to drink, His blood in the wine. Who will draw near to that table Must take heed, all he is able. Who unworthy thither goes, Thence death instead of life he knows. Have this faith, and do not waver, 'Tis a food for every craver Who, his heart with sin opprest, Can no more for its anguish rest.

Such kindness and such grace to get, Seeks a heart with agony great. Is it well with thee? He doth say, Come hither, O ye Poor, that I may pity show ye. No physician th' whole man will, He makes a mockery of his skill. Hadst thou any claim to proffer, Why for thee then should I suffer? This table is not for thee, If thou wilt set thine own self free.

If such faith thy heart possesses, And the same thy mouth confesses, Fit guest then thou art indeed, And so the food thy soul will feed. But bear fruit, or lose thy labour: Take thou heed thou love thy neighbour; That thou food to him mayst be, As thy God makes Himself to thee. The chorale prelude Jesus Christus, unser Heiland BWV is a trio sonata with the upper voices in quavers and semiquavers the manuals and the cantus firmus in minims in the pedal in the Dorian mode of G, like a Gregorian chant.

The eccentric angularity of the keyboard subject with its great widening or narrowing leaps is derived from the melody. It has prompted much speculation as to its iconographic significance. I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: It has similarly been suggested that the semiquaver passages are a reference to the flowing wine-blood of the communion. Visually, the quaver theme might contain a cross motif and might form an elongated Christogram on the Greek letters iota and chi in certain sections of the score.

Whatever the religious significance, the musical development from the motifs is ingenious and subtle, constantly varying. The material in the semiquaver codetta bar 6 of the fugue subject and of the countersubject bars 7—9 is used and developed extensively throughout BWV , sometimes in inverted form.

The theme itself is transformed in all sorts of ways, including inversion, reflection, reversal and syncopation, the variety increased by how the two upper voices combine together. Once started, the semiquaver figures form a moto perpetuo. At some points, they contain hidden versions of the quaver fugue subject; but as the work progresses, they gradually simplify to scale passages.

Even the ending is unconventional, with a simulated ritardando in the last bars with the pedal silent. The chorale prelude is thus composed from a few organic motifs heard already in the first few bars. The unprecedented novelty and musical originality of such a self-generated composition might have been Bach's main intention. In contrast to the previous fughettas in the previous five manualiter settings of the catechism hymns, it is a long and complex fugue of great originality, a tour de force in the use of stretti.

The fugue subject is derived from the first line of the chorale. This change also allowed Bach to introduce dissonances, imbuing the work with what the French organist and musicologist Norbert Dufourcq called "tormented chromaticism". The inversion of the countersubject in bar 5, omitting the first note, plays a significant role later in the fugue bar The stretti occur at intervals of varying length; in addition to the fugue subject, there are also imitations and stretti both for the semiquaver figure in the subject and its inversions and the figure above derived from the countersubject.

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Williams has given the following summary of the stretti for the fugue subject:. The last entry of the fugue subject in the tenor voice gives the impression of the return of a conventional cantus firmus ; the coda over the tenor's sustained F is built on the motifs of the countersubject. The different types of stretti result in a large variety of harmonisations of the theme and musical textures throughout the chorale prelude.

Kerman has given a detailed analysis of BWV from the perspective of Bach's keyboard fugues:. Their purpose has remained a source of debate. Like the beginning prelude and fugue BWV they are not explicitly mentioned on the title page and there is no explicit indication that they were intended for organ. The pieces can nevertheless be played on any single keyboard, such as a harpsichord or fortepiano. The use of the term duetto itself is closest to that given in the first volume of the Critica Musica of Johann Mattheson: It was Mattheson's view that "a composer's true masterpiece" could rather be found in "an artful, fugued duet, more than a many-voiced alla breve or counterpoint".

In choosing the form of the compositions, which go considerably beyond his Two part inventions BWV —, Bach might have been making a musical contribution to the contemporary debates on the theory of counterpoint, already propounded in the tracts of Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg and of Johann Fux , whose Gradus ad Parnassum had been translated by Bach's friend Mizler. Yearsley has suggested that it may have been a direct response to the ongoing argument on musical style between Birnbaum and Scheibe: Bach combines the simple and harmonious styles advocated by his critics Mattheson and Scheibe with a more modern chromatic and often dissonant style, which they regarded as "unnatural" and "artificial".

Despite many proposed explanations—for example as accompaniments to communion, with the two parts possibly signifying the two sacramental elements of bread and wine—it has never been determined whether Bach attached any religious significance to the four duets; instead it has been considered more likely that Bach sought to illustrate the possibilities of two-part counterpoint as fully as possible, both as a historical account and "for the greater glory of God".

The first duet in E minor is a double fugue, 73 bars long, in which all the musical material is invertible, i. The first subject is six bars long broken up into one bar segments. It is made up of one bar of demisemiquaver scales leading into four bars where the theme becomes angular, chromatic and syncopated.

In the sixth bar a demisemiquaver motif is introduced that is developed later in the duet in a highly original way; it also serves as a means of modulation after which the parts interchange their roles. The contrasting second subject in quavers with octave leaps is a descent by a chromatic fourth. The first section has 37 bars and the second 75 bars, so that with repeats there are bars. There is a sharp contrast between the two sections, which Yearsley has suggested might have been Bach's musical response to the acrimonious debate on style being conducted between Scheibe and Birnbaum at the time of composition.

Section A is a conventional fugue in the spirit of the Inventions and Sinfonias , melodious, harmonious and undemanding on the listener—the "natural" cantabile approach to composition advocated by both Mattheson and Scheibe. Section B is written in quite a different way. It is severe and chromatic, mostly in minor keys, with dissonances, strettos, syncopation and canonic writing—all features frowned upon as "artificial" and "unnatural" by Bach's critics.

Section B is divided symmetrically into segments of 31, 13 and 31 bars. The first subject of section A is heard again in canon in the minor key. The character of the first subject undergoes a complete transformation, from bright and effortless simplicity to dark and strained complexity: The third duet BWV in G major, 39 bars long, is the simplest of the four duetti. Light and dance-like, it is the closest in form to Bach's Two Part Inventions , of which it most closely resembles the last, No.

The bass accompaniment in detached quavers of the subject does not appear in the upper part and is not developed. With very little modulation or chromaticism, the novelty of BWV lies in the development of the semiquaver passagework. Apart from a contrasting middle section in E minor, the tonality throughout is resolutely that of G major. The use of broken chords recalls the writing in the first movements of the sixth trio sonata for organ BWV and the third Brandenburg Concerto BWV BWV is a fugue in strict counterpoint in the key of A minor, bars long.

The 8 bar subject starts in minims with a second harmonic half in slow quavers. Bach introduced further "modern" elements in the semitone drops in the subject and later motifs bars 4 and Although all entries of the subject are either in A minor tonic or E minor dominant , Bach adds chromaticism by flattening notes in the subject and sharpening notes during modulating passages. Despite being a rigorous composition with carefully devised invertible counterpoint, i.

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There are three episodes which move between different keys and combine three new pairs of motifs, either 2 bars, 4 bars or 8 bars long, in highly original and constantly changing ways. The first episode starts in bar 18 below with the first pair of new motifs, the upper one characterised by an octave drop:. The third pair of motifs, which allows significant modulation, appears for the first time in the second half of the second episode and is derived from the second half of the subject and countersubject:. His comments represented a change in contemporary musical aesthetics: Bach's musical contributions, however, could only be properly assessed at the beginning of the 19th century, when his works became more widely available: From onwards a small group of ardent supporters became active in Berlin , keen to preserve his reputation and promulgate his oeuvre.

The group centred around his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach , who in at the age of 24 had been appointed court harpsichordist at Potsdam to Frederick the Great , then crown prince before his accession to the throne in Bach remained in Berlin until , when he was appointed Kapellmeister in Hamburg in succession to Georg Philipp Telemann. His brother Wilhelm Friedemann Bach moved to Berlin in , although not to general acclaim, despite his accomplishments as an organist.

Other prominent members of the group included Bach's former pupils Johann Friedrich Agricola , court composer, first director of the Royal Opera House in Berlin and collaborator with Emanuel on Bach's obituary the Nekrolog , , and more significantly Johann Philipp Kirnberger.

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Kirnberger became Kapellmeister to the court in and music teacher of Frederick's niece, Anna Amalia. Not only did Kirnberger build up a large collection of Bach's manuscripts in the Amalien-Bibliothek , but with Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg he promoted Bach's compositions through theoretical texts, concentrating in particular on counterpoint with a detailed analysis of Bach's methods. The first of the two volumes of Marpurg's Treatise on fugue Abhandlung von der Fuge , — cites the opening segment of the six-part fugal chorale prelude Aus tiefer Noth BWV as one of its examples.

Kirnberger produced his own extensive tract on composition Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik The true principles for the practice of harmony , twenty years later, between and In his treatise Marpurg had adopted some of the musical theories on the fundamental bass of Jean-Philippe Rameau from his Treatise on Harmony in explaining Bach's fugal compositions, an approach which Kirnberger rejected in his tract:.

Rameau filled this theory with so many things that had no rhyme or reason that one must certainly wonder how such extravagant notions can have found belief and even champions among us Germans, since we have always had the greatest harmonists among us, and their manner of treating harmony was certainly not to be explained according to Rameau's principles. Some even went so far that they preferred to deny the soundness of a Bach in his procedure with respect to the treatment and progression of chords, rather than admit that the Frenchman could have erred. This led to an acrimonious dispute in which both claimed to speak with Bach's authority.

Bach, Capellmeister in Hamburg, thinks of the excellent work of Mr. Marpurg, is shown by some passages from a letter that this famous man has written to me: Marpurg towards you is execrable.

Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major, BWV 552 (Bach, Johann Sebastian)

Through Bach's pupils and family, copies of his keyboard works were disseminated and studied throughout Germany; the diplomat Baron van Swieten , Austrian envoy to the Prussian court from to and afterwards patron of Mozart , Haydn and Beethoven , was responsible for relaying copies from Berlin to Vienna. The reception of the works was mixed, partly because of their technical difficulty: Sie gefallen mir nicht ".

Because of its high price, this edition did not sell well: Bach was still trying to dispose of copies. Before , there are very few reports of performances of Bach's works in England or of manuscript copies of his work. Later that year in a letter to Christoph Daniel Ebeling , the music critic engaged in translating this work into German, Burney made one of his first references to Bach:. I was no less surprised than pleased to find Mr. It was, however, only in the following year, during his tour of Germany and the Low Countries , that Burney received a copy of the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier from C.

Bach in Hamburg; according to his own reports, he was only to become familiar with its contents over thirty years later. The book contains the first English account of Bach's work and reflects the views commonly held at the time in England. Burney compared the learned style of Bach unfavourably with that of his son, whom he had visited:. How he formed his style, where he acquired all his taste and refinement, would be difficult to trace; he certainly neither inherited nor adopted them from his father, who was his only master; for that venerable musician, though unequalled in learning and contrivance, thought it so necessary to crowd into both hand all the harmony he could grasp, that he must inevitably have sacrificed melody and expression.

Had the sone chosen a model, it would certainly have been his father, whom he highly reverenced; but as he has ever disdained imitation, he must have derive from nature alone, those fine feelings, that variety of new ideas, and selection of passages, which are so manifest in his compositions. All the present organ-players of Germany are formed upon his school, as most of those on the harpsichord, clavichord and piano forte are upon that of his son, the admirable Carl.

As it is known that at the time Burney knew hardly any of Bach's compositions, it appears that his opinions of Bach came second-hand: In Germany Burney's book was not well received, infuriating even his friend Ebeling: Later that year, to Fanny's horror, the Queen requested that Fanny show her copy to her daughter Princess Elizabeth.

The book was viewed by both the King and Queen, who accepted Fanny's hastily invented explanations of the markings; she similarly managed to excuse herself when Princess Elizabeth later read all the marked passages assuming them to be Fanny's favourites. Burney was aware of George III's preference for Handel when in he wrote in his account of the Handel Commemoration that "in his full, masterly and excellent organ- fugues , upon the most natural and pleasing subjects, he has surpassed Frescobaldi, and even Sebastian Bach, and others of his countrymen, the most renowned for abilities in this difficult and elaborate species of composition.

Writing anonymously in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek in , C. Bach angrily responded that "there is nothing to be seen but partiality, and of any close acquaintance with the principal works of J. Bach for organ we find in Dr. Burney's writings no trace. The very terms of Canon and Fugue imply restraint and labour. Handel was perhaps the only great Fughuist, exempt from pedantry. He seldom treated barren or crude subjects; his themes being almost always natural and pleasing. Sebastian Bach, on the contrary, like Michel Angelo in painting, disdained facility so much, that his genius never stooped to the easy and graceful.

I never have seen a fugue by this learned and powerful author upon a motivo , that is natural and chantant ; or even an easy and obvious passage, that is not loaded with crude an difficult accompaniments. An active correspondent with both of Bach's sons in Berlin, he published the first detailed biography of Bach in , Bach: For Patriotic Admirers of True Musical Art , including an appreciation of Bach's keyboard and organ music and ending with the injunction, "This man, the greatest orator-poet that ever addressed the world in the language of music, was a German!

Let Germany be proud of him! Yes, proud of him, but worthy of him too! Among his criticisms of Bach in the s, Scheibe had written, "We know of composers who see it as an honour to be able to compose incomprehensible and unnatural music. They pile up musical figures. They make unusual embellishments. Are these not truly musical Goths! In his entry for "harmony" in the influential Dictionnaire de Musique , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , a fierce critic of Rameau, described counterpoint as a "gothic and barbaric invention", the antithesis of the melodic galante style.

In , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gave a fundamentally different view of "gothic" art that would achieve widespread acceptance during the classical-romantic movement. In his celebrated essay on the cathedral in Strasbourg , where he was a student, Goethe was one of the first writers to connect gothic art with the sublime:. The first time I went to the minster I was full of the common notions of good taste.

From hearsay I respected the harmony of mass, the purity of forms, and I was the sworn enemy of the confused caprices of Gothic ornament. Under the term gothic, like the article in a dictionary, I threw together all the synonymous misunderstandings, such as undefined, disorganized, unnatural, patched-together, tacked on, overloaded, which had gone through my head. How surprised I was when I was confronted by it! The impression which filled my soul was whole and large, and of a sort that—since it was composed of a thousand harmonizing details—I could relish and enjoy, but by no means identify and explain.

How often have I returned from all sides, from all distances, in all lights, to contemplate its dignity and magnificence. It is hard on the spirit of man when his brother's work is so sublime that he can only bow and worship. How often has the evening twilight soothed with its friendly quiet my eyes, tired-out with questing, by blending the scattered parts into masses which now stood simple and large before my soul, and at once my powers unfolded rapturously to enjoy and understand.

In , Johann Friedrich Reichardt , since the successor to Agricola as Capellmeister in the court of Frederic the Great, quoted this passage from Goethe in the Musicalisches Kunstmagazin to describe his personal reactions to the instrumental fugues of Bach and Handel. He prefaced his eulogy with a description of Bach as the greatest counterpuntalist "harmonist" of his age:. There has never been a composer, not even the best and deepest of the Italians, who so exhausted all the possibilities of our harmony as did J. Almost no suspension is possible that he did not make use of, and he employed every proper harmonic art and every improper harmonic artifice a thousand times, in earnest and in jest, with such boldness and individuality that the greatest harmonist, if called upon to supply a missing measure in the theme of one of his greatest works, could not be entirely sure of having supplied it exactly as Bach had done.

Had Bach had the high sense of truth and the deep feeling for expression that animated Handel, he would have been far greater even than Handel himself; but as it is, he is only much more erudite and industrious. The unfavourable comparison to Handel was removed in a later reprinting in , following adverse anonymous remarks in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek. Reichardt's comparison between Bach's music and the Gothic cathedral would often be repeated by composers and music critics.

His student, the writer, composer and music critic E. Hoffmann , saw in Bach's music "the bold and wonderful, romantic cathedral with all its fantastic embellishments, which, artistically swept up into a whole, proudly and magnificently rise in the air. Another musician in C.

Bach's circle was his friend Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch , son of the violinist and composer Johann Friedrich Fasch , who, on the death of Kuhnau in , had turned down the post, later awarded to Bach, of kantor at the Thomaskirche , where he himself had been trained. He briefly succeeded Agricola as director of the Royal Opera in for two years. Three years later in , Fasch started an informal group in Berlin, formed from singing students and music lovers, that met for rehearsals in private homes.

In , with the introduction of a "presence book", it became officially known as the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin and two years later was granted its own rehearsal room in the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin. As a composer, Fasch had learnt the old methods of counterpoint from Kirnberger and, like the Academy of Ancient Music in London, his initial purpose in founding the Sing-Akademie was to revive interest in neglected and rarely performed sacred vocal music, particularly that of J.

Bach, Graun and Handel. The society subsequently built up an extensive library of baroque music of all types, including instrumental music. More significant for the 19th-century English Bach revival was the presence of a younger generation of German-speaking musicians in London, well versed in the theoretical writings of Kirnberger and Marpurg on counterpoint but not dependent on royal patronage; these included John Casper Heck c. Heck in particular promoted fugues in his treatise "The Art of Playing the Harpsichord" , describing them later as "a particular stile of music peculiar to the Organ than the Harpsichord"; in his biographical entry for Bach in the s in the Musical Library and Universal Magazine , he gave examples of counterpoint from Bach's late period Canonic Variations , The Art of Fugue.

Calcott corresponded with Kollmann about the musical theories of the Bach school. In , he was one of the founding members of the Concentores Society , a club with a limited membership of twelve professional musicians, dedicated to composition in counterpoint and the stile antico. Forkel and Kollmann corresponded during this period: No complete authorized English translation was produced at the time.

The son of a mason, he himself had been brought up as a master mason, but had cultivated his musical interests in secret, eventually taking composition classes with Fasch. He had been linked to the Sing-Akademie for years and had acquired a reputation as one of the foremost experts on Bach in Berlin.

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In , he started a correspondence with Goethe on the aesthetics of music, particularly the music of Bach, which was to last until both friends died in Although Goethe had a late training in music, he considered it an essential element in his life, arranging concerts at his home and attending them elsewhere. In , he wrote:. On this occasion I recalled the good organist of Berka; for it was there, in perfect repose without extraneous disturbance, that I first formed an impression of your great maestro.

I said to myself, it is as if the eternal harmony were conversing with itself, as it may have done in God's breast before the creation of the world; that is the way it move deep within me, and it was if I neither possessed or needed ears, nor any other sense—least of all, the eyes. The organ is Bach's own peculiar soul, into which he breathes immediately the living breath. His theme is the feeling just born, which, like the spark from the stone, invariably springs forth, from the first chance pressure of the foot upon the pedals. Thus by degrees he warms to his subject, till he has isolated himself, and feels alone, and then an inexhaustible stream passes out into the ocean.

Zelter insisted on the pedals as the key to Bach's organ writing: Zelter was instrumental in building up the Sing-Akademie, broadening their repertoire to instrumental music and encouraging the growing library, another important repository for Bach manuscripts. Zelter had been responsible for Mendelssohn's father Abraham Mendelssohn becoming a member of the Sing-Akademie in As a consequence, one of the major new forces behind the library became Sara Levy , the great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn , who had assembled one of the most-important private collections of 18th-century music in Europe.

An accomplished harpsichordist, Sara Levy's teacher had been Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and she had been a patroness of C. Bach , circumstances which gave her family close contacts with Bach and resulted in his music enjoying a privileged status in the Mendelssohn household. Felix's mother Lea, who had studied under Kirnberger, gave him his first music lessons.

In , Zelter was appointed as the composition teacher of Felix and his sister Fanny ; he taught counterpoint and music theory according to the methods of Kirnberger. Bach , who had himself studied musical theory under Zelter. Mendelssohn's organ lessons were conducted on the Wagner organ, with Fanny present; they commenced in and lasted for less than two years. It is probable that he learnt some of J. Bach's organ works, which had remained in the repertoire of many Berlin organists; his choice would have been limited, because at that stage his pedal technique was still rudimentary.

In autumn the twelve-year-old Mendelssohn accompanied Zelter on a trip to Weimar , stopping on the way in Leipzig where they were shown the cantor's room in the choir school of the Thomaskirche by Bach's successor Schicht. They stayed two weeks in Weimar with Goethe, to whom Mendelssohn played extensively on the piano each day. All Mendelssohn's music lessons stopped by summer when his family left for Switzerland. In the s, Mendelssohn visited Goethe four more times in Weimar, the last time being in , a year after his resounding success in reviving Bach's St Matthew Passion in Berlin, with the collaboration of Zelter and members of the Sing-Akademie.

On this last trip, again by way of Leipzig, he stayed two weeks in Weimar and had daily meetings with Goethe, by then in his eighties. He later gave an account to Zelter of a visit to the church of St Peter and St Paul where Bach's cousin Johann Gottfried Walther had been organist and where his two eldest sons had been baptized: One day Goethe asked me if I would not care to pay a compliment to craftsmanship and call on the organist, who might let me see and hear the organ in the town church.

I did so, and the instrument gave me great pleasure The organist gave me the choice of hearing something learned or for the people But it was not much to be proud of. He modulated around enough to make one giddy, but nothing unusual came of it; he made a number of entries, but no fugue was forthcoming. When my turn came, I let loose with the D minor toccata of Bach and remarked that this was at the same time something learned and for the people too, at least some of them. But see, I had hardly started to play when the superintendent dispatched his valet downstairs with the message that this playing had to be stopped right away because it was a weekday and he could not study with that much noise going on.

Goethe was very much amused by this story. In , Mendelssohn was appointed director of the Gewandhaus Orchester in Leipzig , a post he held until his death in at the age of He soon met other Bach enthusiasts including Robert Schumann , one year his junior, who had moved to Leipzig in Having been taught piano by J. Kuntsch, organist at the Marienkirche in Zwickau , Schumann's seems to have started developing a deeper interest in Bach's organ music in In his diary he recorded sightreading the six organ fugues BWV — for four hands with Clara Wieck , the twelve-year-old daughter of his Leipzig piano teacher Friedrich Wieck and his future wife.

Schumann later acknowledged Bach as the composer who had influenced him most. One of the main contributors was his friend Carl Becker , organist at the Peterskirche and in the Nikolaikirche. Schumann remained as editor-in-chief until , the year in which Mendelssohn became the founding director of the Leipzig Conservatory. Schumann was appointed professor for piano and composition at the conservatory; other appointments included Moritz Hauptmann harmony and counterpoint , Ferdinand David violin and Becker organ and music theory. One of Mendelssohn's regrets since was that he had not had sufficient opportunity to develop his pedal technique to his satisfaction, despite having given public organ recitals.

Mendelssohn explained later how difficult gaining access to organs had already been back in Berlin: The English organist Edward Holmes commented in that Mendelssohn's recitals in St Paul's Cathedral "gave a taste of his quality which in extemperaneous performance is certainly of the highest kind August saw the fruits of Mendelssohn's labour: The proceeds from the concert were to go towards a statue of Bach in the vicinity of the Thomaskirche.

Most of the repertoire in the concert had been played by Mendelssohn elsewhere, but nevertheless as he wrote to his mother, "I practised so much the previous eight days that I could barely stand on my own two feet and walked along the street in nothing but organ passages.

In the audience was the elderly Friedrich Rochlitz , founding editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung , a journal that had promoted the music of Bach: Rochlitz is reported to have declared afterwards, "I shall depart now in peace, for never shall I hear anything finer or more sublime. At about the same time the publishing house of Peters in Leipzig produced an edition of Bach's complete organ works in nine volumes edited by Friedrich Griepenkerl and Ferdinand Roitzsch.

In , while Robert was recovering from a nervous breakdown and a few months prior to the completion of his piano concerto , the Schumanns rented a pedalboard to place under their upright piano. As Clara recorded at the time, "On April 24th we got on hire a pedal-board to attach below the pianoforte, and we had great pleasure from it. Our chief object was to practice organ playing. But Robert soon found a higher interest in this instrument and composed some sketches and studies for it which are sure to find high favour as something quite new.

Before composing any of his own fugues and canons for organ and pedal piano, Schumann had made a careful study of Bach's organ works, of which he had an extensive collection. The project was completed in It was published in , with Becker as editor. Like Schumann, perhaps even more so, Brahms was deeply influenced by Bach's music. Three months after Brahms' visit, Schumann's mental state deteriorated: From its inception, Brahms subscribed to the Bach-Gesellschaft, of which he became an editor in An organist himself and a scholar of early and baroque music, he carefully annotated and analysed his copies of the organ works; he made a separate study of Bach's use of parallel fifths and octaves in his organ counterpoint.

Brahms' Bach collection is now preserved in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna , of which he became musical director and conductor in In , a year before he died, Brahms composed his own set of eleven chorale preludes for organ, Op. Like Schumann, who turned to Bach counterpoint as a form of therapy in during his recovery from mental illness, Brahms also viewed Bach's music as salutory during his final illness.

As Brahms' friend and biographer Max Kalbeck reported: He complained about his situation and said 'It's lasting so long. The piano remained closed: He pointed to the piano, where on the music stand, which stood on top of the closed cover, lay a score of Bach. Max Reger was a composer whose dedication to Bach has been described as a "monomaniacal identification" by the musicologist Johannes Lorenzen: During his life, Reger arranged or edited of Bach's compositions, including arrangements of 38 organ works for piano solo, piano duet or two pianos, starting in At the same time he produced a large number of his own organ works.

Already in , the organist and musicologist Heinrich Reimann , reacting to modernist trends in German music, had encouraged a return to the style of Bach, stating that, "Beyond this style there is no salvation Bach becomes for that reason the criterion of our art of writing for the organ. The original intention was a sonata in three movements: In the final version, Reger inserted an intermezzo a scherzo and trio as the third movement and expanded the adagio to contain a central section on the Lutheran hymns Aus tiefer Not and O Haupt voll Blut und Bunden.

In , Reger sent a copy of the suite to Brahms, his only contact. In the letter he asked permission to dedicate a future work to Brahms, to which he received the reply, "Permission for that is certainly not necessary, however! I had to smile, since you approach me about this matter and at the same time enclose a work whose all-too-bold dedication terrifies me! It has a similarly dense texture of six parts, two of them in the pedal.

The suite was first performed in the Trinity Church, Berlin in by the organist Karl Straube , a student of Reimann. According to a later account by one of Straube's students, Reimann had described the work as "so difficult as to be almost unplayable," which had "provoked Straube's virtuosic ambition, so that he set about mastering the work, which placed him before utterly new technical problems, with unflagging energy. In , Straube was appointed organist at the Thomaskirche and in the following year cantor; he became the main proponent and performer of Reger's organ works.

Apart from prevailing musical tastes and the difficulty in acquiring manuscript copies, a fundamental difference between the design of English and German organs made Bach's organ output less accessible to English organists, namely the absence of pedalboards. Handel's principal works for organ, his organ concertos Op. Until the s, most church organs in England did not have separate pedal pipes and before that the few organs that had pedalboards were all pull-downs , i. Pedalboards rarely contained more than 13 keys an octave or exceptionally 17 keys an octave and a half.

Pull-down pedalboards became more common from onwards. It is for this reason that the Bach awakening in England started with clavier compositions being played on the organ or organ compositions being adapted either for piano duet or for two or sometimes three players at an organ. The newfound interest in Bach's organ music, as well as the desire to reproduce the grand and thunderous choral effects of the Handel Commemoration , eventually influenced organ builders in England. By the s, after a series of experiments with pedals and pedal pipes starting around in the spirit of the industrial revolution , newly constructed and existing organs started to be fitted with dedicated diapason pipes for the pedals, according to the well-established German model.

The organ in St Paul's Cathedral commissioned in from Father Smith and completed in , with a case by Christopher Wren , had exceptionally already been fitted with a key pedalboard two octaves C-c' of pull-down German pedals in the first half of the 18th century, probably as early as , on the recommendation of Handel. The four-manual "monster" organ in Birmingham Town Hall , constructed in by William Hill, had three sets of pedal pipes connected to the pedalboard, which could also be operated independently by a two-octave keyboard to the left of the manual keyboards.

Hill's experiment of installing gigantic foot pedal pipes, some currently still present, was only partially successful, as their scale did not permit them to sound properly. The organist, composer and music teacher Samuel Wesley — played a significant role in awakening interest in Bach's music in England, mostly in the period — In early Wesley visited Charles Burney in his rooms in Chelsea where he played for him from the copy of Book I of the '48' that Burney had received from C.

As Wesley later recorded, Burney "was very delighted In the introduction, after commenting that Bach fugues were "very difficult of execution, profoundly learned and highly ingenious", he described their "prevailing style" as "the sublime". In , the E flat fugue had been arranged for organ or piano duet by Jacob and was even performed bair y three players two years later on the organ in St. James, Bermondsey, where the pedal could be played on a supplementary keyboard.

It had also been used for auditions for organists: Wesley's son Samuel Sebastian Wesley himself played it in , when seeking employment unsuccessfully. By , pedal technique on the organ had developed sufficiently in England that the composer and organist Elizabeth Stirling — could give concerts in St Katherine's, Regent's Park and St. In the same year Wesley and his daughter were invited to the organ loft of Christ Church, Newgate for a Bach recital by Felix Mendelssohn.

As Mendelssohn recorded in his diary,. Old Wesley, trembling and bent, shook hands with me and at my request sat down at the organ bench to play, a thing he had not done for many years. The frail old man improvised with great artistry and splendid facility, so that I could not but admire. His daughter was so moved by the sight of it all that she fainted and could not stop crying and sobbing. Prior to the concert, he confided in a letter to his mother:. Ask Fanny, dear Mother, what she would say if I were to play in Birmingham the Bach organ prelude in E flat major and the fugue that stands at the end of the same volume.

I think she will grumble at me, but I think I would be right all the same.

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The prelude especially would be very acceptable to the English, I would think, and both in the prelude and in the fugue one can show off the piano, pianissimo, and the whole range of the organ—and it is not a dull piece either in my view! Wesley died the following month. Mendelssohn made a total of 10 visits to Britain, the first in , the last in His first visit, when he stayed with his friend the pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles , had been a resounding success and Mendelssohn had been embraced by all strata of British musical society.

On his fourth trip to Britain in he was accompanied by his father and heard the seventeen-year-old pianist-composer William Sterndale Bennett performing his first piano concerto. A musical prodigy like Mendelssohn, at the age of 10 Sterndale Bennett had entered the Royal Academy of Music , where he had been taught by Crotch.

He was also an accomplished organist, familiar with the works of Bach. After brief appointments as organist, he subsequently practised on the organ in Hanover Square Rooms, later surprising his son with his mastery of the harder pedal passages on a pedal-piano. Mendelssohn immediately invited him to Germany. Reportedly when Sterndale Bennett asked to go as his student, Mendelssohn replied, "No, no, you must come to be my friend. There he made friends with Schumann, who became his soul mate and drinking partner. Sterndale Bennett made only two further trips to Germany during the lifetimes of Mendelssohn and Schumann, in — and , although he retained their friendship and helped arrange Mendelssohn's visits to Britain.

He became a firm proponent of Bach, organising concerts of his chamber music in London. He was one of the founders in of the original Bach Society in London, devoted to the performance and collection of Bach's works, principally choral. In , he staged the first performance in England of the St.

Matthew Passion in the Hanover Square Rooms. Already in , Mendelssohn had become friends with Thomas Attwood , who had studied with Mozart and since had been organist of St Paul's Cathedral. Through Attwood Mendelssohn gained access to the organ at St Paul's, which was suitable for Bach, despite the unusual alignment of the pedalboard. In , however, during a recital at St Paul's, just before playing to Wesley, the air supply to the organ had suddenly been interrupted; in a later account, that he had to retell annoyingly often, Mendelssohn related that George Cooper, the sub-organist,.

Three or four clerics appeared and tore into the beadle furiously in front of all the people, threatening him with dismissal. Cooper's son , also called George, became the next sub-organist at St Paul's.

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Mendelssohn's eighth visit occurred in after the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne. Her husband Prince Albert was a keen organist and, under his influence, the music of Bach started to be performed at royal concerts. On the second of his two invitations to Buckingham Palace , Mendelssohn improvised on Albert's organ and accompanied the queen in two songs by Fanny and himself. Between these two visits, he once more performed the St Anne prelude and fugue, this time before an audience of 3, in Exeter Hall in a concert organized by the Sacred Harmonic Society.

In London there were few church organs with German pedal boards going down to CC: Peter's, Cornhill , where Mendelssohn frequently performed solo recitals. One of the main names in organ building in England in the second half of the 19th century was Henry Willis. The manner in which the organ for St. George's Hall, Liverpool was planned and constructed marks the transition from what Nicholas Thistlethwaite calls the "insular movement" of the s to the adoption of the established German system.

Planning formally started on the organ in He worked in consultation with a panel of university professors of music, who often disagreed with his eccentric suggestions. When Wesley tried to argue about the range of manual keyboards, justifying himself by the possibility of playing octaves with the left hand, he was reminded by the professors that the use of octaves was more common among pianists than first-rate organists and moreover that when he had been organist at Leeds Parish Church, "the dust on the half-dozen lowest keys on the GG manuals remained undisturbed for months.

The completed organ had four manual keyboards and a thirty key pedalboard, with 17 sets of pedal pipes and a range from CC to f. The instrument had unequal temperament and, as Wesley had stipulated, the air supply came from two large underground bellows powered by an eight horse-power steam engine. Among the innovations introduced by Willis were the cylindrical pedal-valve, the pneumatic lever and the combination action , the latter two features being adopted widely by English organ builders in the second half of the 19th century.

The organ was inaugurated in by William Thomas Best , who later that year was appointed resident organist, attracting crowds of thousands to here his playing. In , he had the organ retuned to equal temperament. In France, the Bach revival was slower to take root. Before the late s, after the upheaval caused by the French revolution , Bach was rarely performed in public concerts in France and it was preferred that church organists play operatic arias or popular airs instead of counterpoint.

One exception was a public performance in the Paris Conservatoire in December , repeated two years later in the Salons Pape, of the opening allegro of Bach's concerto for three harpsichords BWV , played on pianos by Chopin , Liszt and Hiller. Berlioz later described their choice as "stupid and ridiculous", unworthy of their talents.

Charles Gounod , having won the Prix de Rome in , spent three years in the Villa Medici in Rome , where he developed a passionate interest in the polyphonic music of Palestrina. He also met Mendelssohn's sister Fanny, herself an accomplished concert pianist and by then married to the artist Wilhelm Hensel: Gounod described her as "an outstanding musician and a woman of superior intelligence, small, slender, but gifted with an energy which showed in her deep-set eyes and in her burning look.

At the end of his stay in , the twenty-five-year-old Gounod had become a confirmed Bach devotee. In , after a seven-month stay in Vienna, with a letter of introduction from Fanny, Gounod spent 4 days with her brother in Leipzig. Mendelssohn played Bach for him on the organ of the Thomaskirche and conducted a performance of his Scottish Symphony by the Gewandhaus orchestra , specially convened in his honour.

This virtual performance was created with the Garritan Classic Pipe Organs software. Editor Carl Ferdinand Becker — Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe , Band 3 Leipzig: Orgel-Compositionen, Band II pp. This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project. Arranger Max Reger Arranger Leonard Borwick Arranger Ferruccio Busoni — Dover Publications , Maybe from Busoni's Hofmeister's Monatsbericht , p.