WTF Bach

One of the most important documents we posses about J.S. Bach— indeed the first biographical writing— is his obituary, written by his son, C.P.E., and his student, Agricola. Also referred to as the ‘ Nekrolog ,’ the obituary appeared in Mizler’s (yes, the Society of Musical Sciences gentleman) publication, Musikalische Bibliothek , in its very last installment. In this brief portrait of the greate...

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 mi...

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 thro...

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? Here’s an image tha...

“ 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 not...

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! We Rely Exclusively on Paid Subscriptions! Help WTF Bach endure: Join at WTFBach.com This is the only place Evan checks co...

Q: If, after you attended a Bach concert, someone told you that your favorite piece on the program was not, after all, by Bach… how would you feel? Does this cantata actually fail to move us? Or does it fail to move us when we know its authenticity is up for debate? Can we truly hear some compositional weaknesses? If we are to ascribe this music to Bach, it was probably from the years 1709-1711. N...

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...

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 pa...

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 differ...

“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 epis...

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 par...

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 likel...

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 w...

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...