Toccata in F major, BWV 540 

 

Three chorale preludes on Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (659, 660, 661)

 

Organ Concerto in G Major after Johann Ernst Prinz von Sachsen Weimar, BWV 592 

 

Chorale prelude on Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele,BWV 654 

 

Prelude and Fugue in G major, BWV 550 

 

Notes on the program

According to contemporary accounts, Johann Sebastian Bach was able to play music with his two feet that many musicians struggled to do with their ten fingers. Born on March 21, 1685, ­Bach’s music has captured the minds of audiences for generations ever since. His organ music, in particular, has held a tremendous sway over listeners and performers alike. This is truly music that delights the spirit and nourishes the soul.

 

The concert features original organ works by Bach, including the massive Toccata in F major, which features two extended—and highly virtuosic—solos for the feet alone. It opens with a pedal point (so-called because it is played by the feet, on the pedal keyboard of the organ) over which Bach weaves an energetic moto perpetuo sixteenth-note invention. Despite (and perhaps because of) these strongly identified areas of tonality, Bach modulates to far-flung keys (including a brief appearance of G-flat major, worlds away from the home key of F major) as a means of creating harmonic tension and release.

 

The chorale—a hallmark of Lutheran worship and sacred music—was intrinsic to Bach’s life and work. Bach’s sacred cantatas (some 200 odd survive, though he composed over 300) are all based on chorales. Strophic in design and sung to vernacular texts, they are entirely Luther’s creation, and still define Lutheran worship to this day. Organ treatments, either as chorale preludes or improvisations existed in both improvised and written forms. Bach left as many as fifty chorale settings for organ before 1707 from his time at his first church appointment, St Blasius Church in Mühlhausen. 

 

During the final decade of his life, Bach revisited some of the large-scale chorale-based organ works written during his time in Weimar. Also known as the Leipzig or Great Eighteen chorale preludes, these extended works are greatly varied in style, and may be compared in scope to a later keyboard undertaking, Das wohltemperierte Klavier (“The Well-Tempered Clavier”), two sets of preludes and fugues in every major and minor key (48 in total) that Bach composed during his time at the court in Köthen. Speaking of his father and his Weimar employer, Bach’s son Emmanuel noted that “His grace’s delight in his playing fired him [Bach] to attempt everything possible in the art of how to treat the organ.” The five works taken from this collection this evening include three settings of the Advent chorale, Nun komm, der heiden Heiland in three contrasting styles. 

 

The first is in the form of a highly ornamented cantus firmus (chorale melody) accompanied by an instrumental-style walking bass that one may well expect to see represented in the slow movement of an Italianate concerto. The second is in the form of a trio, where the feet and the two hands perform distinctive and independent musical lines that are woven together with a clear nod to the Vivaldian concerto ritornello style. 

 

The third presents the chorale melody in the pedals over which a massive toccata is developed. This musical material is ingeniously derived from figures of the chorale itself, presented at times in inversion (the musical equivalent of upside down). Such compositional techniques were very much part of Bach’s modus operandi, and characteristic of his contrapuntal genius. In contrast, the chorale prelude on Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (“Adorn yourself, O dear soul”) stands as one of Bach’s most sublime nstrumental works, cast as it is in the style of a sarabande.

 

Bach frequently made organ transcriptions of instrumental works by other composers—as we hear in this program with the transcription of Italian-style instrumental concerto by Prinz Johann Ernst, Bach’s first employer in Weimar. The concerto constitutes the typical three-movement plan. The original is scored for five violins, viola, cello, and continuo. Fascinatingly, Bach takes more liberties to “improve” the music of his employer in these transcriptions than he does in similar transcriptions for organ by a master such as Antonio Vivaldi. The music is, in a word, delightful.