WTF Bach

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 Subsc...

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...

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 Matthe...

— 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...

Am I the only one who hates when people ask what I ‘do?’ Composed first as a dialogue, I decided to make this more stream of consciousness, as today is Bloomsday (though this is not the least bit Joycean.) With which Evan will you sympathize? I imagine many of my colleagues have experienced similar thoughts… or am I the worst…? Are musicians, ‘artists?’ Or perhaps, are artists that make music, mus...

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:...

(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....

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 inn...

“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 suffering, wh...

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...

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 Cze...

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...

Remember this image from the E-flat Major Prelude and Fugue epsiode, where Bach puts a double fugue at the half within the half ? Bach does it once more in today’s episode. We’ve arrived at the other double fugue in this collection, BWV 864 in A major. Bach begins the prelude by juggling three ideas: The ordering of these ideas will switch. A few bars later we see the same three ideas shifted arou...

Back to Bach next week! In the meantime, I thought you’d appreciate a story I wrote after I ‘discarded’ the majority of my possessions— mostly books. Whereas I easily tossed things like clothes, artwork, komono , plates, pens, et cetera, getting rid of my massive library took months and was an emotional rollercoaster. I haven’t ever looked back! …mostly. Sans Eyes, Sans Books, Sans Everything If y...

I don’t blame us for preferring our rather clean, modern Bach editions to this: But are we so confident in our own interpretations that we can throw out the likes of Hans Bischoff, Carl Czerny, Ferruccio Busoni (pictured) and Donald Francis Tovey? These heavily annotated performance editions, while, yes, they should be read alongside a ‘cleaner’ modern edition, can certainly still teach us some be...

Happy Birthday Johann. Today, March 21st, not March 31st. Let me repeat that for those of you feeling clever or citing google without thinking: Happy Birthday Johann. Today, March 21st, not March 31st. Why are people confused about this? How did this become a thing? And what extremely boring person got so frustrated with a toccata they started tampering with Bach’s wikipedia page? There were two m...

I was always jealous of jazz musicians, simply learning music off recordings— no sheet music necessary. Why couldn’t I do that? Why don’t classical musicians have this skill? It seems like all musical cultures in the world learn this way, so what was I missing? About 12 years ago I decided I wanted to be part of this tradition. After some trial and error, I hit upon a method that allowed me to lea...

Analysis starts at 17 minutes. Sorry, I got carried away talking about the possible peculiar paradox of being a pianist. Just before making this episode, my harpsichord forced upon me a change of interpretation, so I started thinking about how and why this happens. I spoke about the way classical musicians are ‘bred,’ asking the following questions: How can we spend our lives playing music from th...

“The discontent of being between two notes; the urge to break free of a single note.” -Lionel Party (Paraphrased ca. 2005) What an opening: In this episode we listen to at least 14 different interpreters play this expressive trill. Such a simple idea, but how many different ways this idea can be realized! At an even speed or speeding up? With a turn at the end or a turn at the beginning or no turn...

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” -Politics and the English Language Thanks for reading W.T.F. Bach?! This post is public so feel free to share it. Enjoying your contrapuntal journey? Here’s how you can help: We encourage our listeners to become a paid subscriber at wtfbach.substack.com Free subscriptions are also beneficial for our numbers. You can make a one-...

G Major: Bach’s key of virtuosity, celebration, exuberance (with his occasional contented reflections on mortality.) The passion music and death in the previous prelude and fugue is conquered by this G Major set, BWV 860 from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book One. The fugue is a brilliant model of contrapuntal technique. The three-voice fugue begins: But after only a few bars, Bach is ready to bring...

A new type of episode, Quodlibets ! Quod (what) + libet (it pleases) or, ‘whatever you like,’ ‘anything at all.’ This episode centers on a beautiful chorale prelude, but first, my, Ode to the Negroni: The Meeting of Etymology and Entomology at the top, then some Bach, and finally, how Paradise Lost was written, as explained by the English scholar, John Carey. Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott , BWV 7...

“It’s not that Bach writes music and then sits in an armchair and thinks about God... Bach writing music is Bach thinking about God.” Individual keys are often loaded with personal significance to the composer. To what extent was Bach thinking of the double sense of Kreuze — both as ‘cross’ and the musical sign for a sharp? As discussed in the episode, f# minor wasn’t necessarily the key signature...

The Well-Tempered Clavier … what does it actually imply? In this episode I seek (in 18 minutes) to demonstrate mathematically pure intervals, alongside ‘tempered’ intervals. The circle of fifths is in fact a spiral of fifths — it is infinite. We seek to make it a circle for convenience, but this means that the distance between what would be mathematically pure intervals must be altered (!) in orde...

A double canon from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein ! A bit late, but Bach’s take on this Christmas tune is really wonderful. See how both melodies combine to make a double canon: German mystic, Heinrcih Seuse , author of ‘In Dulci Jubilo’ English composer R. J. Pearsell’s setting of the melody . Spread the Love, Doubly Canonic: N.B. I’ve been wanting to make this rebrand for a while: The title of this podca...