Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750)
Contents
The Masterworks
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565
Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042
Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007
Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F Major, BWV 1046
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, BWV 846
Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147
Violin Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1041
Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225
St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140
Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C Minor, BWV 1060R
Harpsichord Concerto No. 4, BWV 1055
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes, BWV 651-668
Mass in B Minor, BWV 232
Complete Compositions
Index of Bach’s Compositions
The Biographies
Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work by Johann Nikolaus Forkel
Bach by Reginald Lane Poole
Bach by C. F. Abdy Williams
The Culmination of German Protestant Music: Johann Sebastian Bach by Edward Dickinson
John Sebastian Bach by Harriette Brower
Johann Sebastian Bach by Louis C. Elson
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
© Delphi Classics 2018
Version 1
Delphi Great Composers
Johann Sebastian Bach
By Delphi Classics, 2018
COPYRIGHT
Delphi Great Composers - Johann Sebastian Bach
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2018.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
ISBN: 978 1 78656 122 0
Delphi Classics
is an imprint of
Delphi Publishing Ltd
Hastings, East Sussex
United Kingdom
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The Masterworks
Eisenach, a town in Thuringia, Germany, thirty miles west of Erfurt — Bach’s birthplace
Eisenach in 1647
The Masterworks: A Short Guide
In this section of the eBook there are concise introductions for Johann Sebastian Bach’s most celebrated works. Interactive links to popular streaming services are provided at the beginning and end of each introduction, allowing you to listen to the music you are reading about. The text is also accompanied with contextual images to supplement your reading and listening.
There are various options for streaming music, with most paid services charged competitively at the same rate and usually offering a similar range of albums. Various streaming services offer a free trial (Google Play Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and Apple Music) and Spotify offers a free service after you watch a short advertisement. Amazon Prime members can also enjoy a wide range of free content from Amazon Prime Music. If you do not wish to subscribe to a streaming service, we have included YouTube links for free videos of the classical pieces.
Please note: different eReading devices serve hyperlinks in different ways, which means we cannot always link you directly to your chosen service. However, the links are intended to take you to the best option available for the piece of music you are reading about.
High-resolution scores for the music would be too large in size to include in an eBook; however, we have provided links to free scores available at IMSLP, the International Music Score Library Project, which can be accessed from the SCORES links in each chapter.
Now, settle back and relax as you immerse yourself in the music and life of Bach...
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565
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In 1685 Johann Sebastian Bach, the paramount German composer of the Baroque period, was born into a great musical family in Eisenach, Saxe-Eisenach. His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was the director of the town musicians and his uncles were also professional musicians. His mother was Maria Elisabeth Lemmerhirt, the daughter of Valentin Lemmerhirt, a furrier and coachman from Erfurt. It is likely that Bach’s father taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, while his brother Johann introduced him to contemporary music.
Tragedy was to strike early for the young Bach, when his mother died in 1694 — he was aged only nine — and his father died eight months later. Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, the organist at St. Michael’s Church in Ohrdruf, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. There he studied, performed and copied music, while his brother also instructed him on the clavichord. He explored the works of the great composers of the day, including South German composers such as Johann Pachelbel and Johann Jakob Froberger.
In April 1700, Bach was enrolled at the prestigious St. Michael’s School in Lüneburg, some two weeks’ travel north of Ohrdruf. His two years there were critical in familiarising the composer with a wider range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he excelled at playing the School’s three-manual organ and harpsichords. Mingling with the sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, he was to form several important relationships for his later career.
Shortly after graduating from St. Michael’s in 1703, Bach was appointed court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst III in Weimar. During his seven-month tenure at Weimar, his fame as a keyboardist soon spread and he was invited to inspect the new organ and give the inaugural recital at the New Church in Arnstadt. This subsequently won him the position of organist at the church, with light duties, a relatively generous salary and access to a fine new organ, allowing the performance of a wider range of keys.
Ultimately, Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and in 1706 he applied for a post as organist at the Blasius Church in Mühlhausen. A month later his application was accepted and he took up the position in July. It included a significantly higher remuneration, improved conditions and a more accomplished choir.
It is believed that during this formative period, Bach composed his Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565, one of his most memorable pieces of his entire oeuvre. A two part musical composition for organ, it is renowned for its majestic sound, dramatic authority and driving rhythm. It had become famous for modern listeners due to its inclusion in the 1940 Disney classic Fantasia, in which it was adapted for orchestra by the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The piece also shares a strong association in Western culture with horror films and funeral-themed scenes in various media.
The first part is a toccata (from the Italian toccare, ‘to touch’), representing a musical form for keyboard instruments, intended to exhibit the organ player’s virtuosity. Toccatas often served as introductions and foils for fugues, setting the stage for the complex and intricate composition to follow. As found in many toccatas, the piece demonstrates many fast arpeggios (chords played in a series rather than simultaneously) and runs up and down the keyboard, though it is generally composed in free form, allowing the composer much freedom for personal expression.
The fugue, forming the second part, is characterised by the overlapping repetition of a principal theme in di
fferent melodic lines (counterpoint). The subject of the four-voice fugue is composed entirely of sixteenth notes, with an implied pedal point set against a brief melodic subject that first falls, then rises. This technique is typical of Baroque music; however, the answer is in the subdominant key, rather than the traditional dominant. Although only simple triadic harmony features throughout the fugue, there is an unexpected C minor subject entry, followed by a solo pedal statement of the subject — a unique feature for a fugue of that time. After the final subject entry, the fugue resolves to a sustained B flat major chord. Then follows a multi-sectional coda (the passage that brings a piece to an end), marked Recitativo. Although only 17 bars long, the coda progresses through five tempo changes, ending with a minor plagal cadence. Bach would later make much use of the fugue in his compositions, particularly in solo organ pieces and choral cantatas.
Much doubt remains regarding the composition’s first performance or reception, as it scarcely survived its first century in a manuscript written by Johannes Ringk. The first publication of the piece, during the Bach Revival era, was not until as late as 1833, through the efforts of Felix Mendelssohn, who performed Toccata and Fugue in D Minor in an acclaimed concert in 1840. The fame of the piece increased in the second half of the nineteenth century due to a successful piano version by Carl Tausig, though it was not until the twentieth century that its popularity surpassed Bach’s other organ compositions. In recent times scholars like Peter Williams and Rolf-Dietrich Claus have gone so far as to question its authenticity. Christoph Wolff and others have defended the attribution to Bach. Today, it is widely regarded as the most famous fugue by any composer.
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The composer’s father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, 1685
Beginning of the piece in Johannes Ringk’s manuscript, the only extant eighteenth century copy of ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’
Title page of Ringk’s manuscript
The famous beginning of the piece
Program of Mendelssohn’s 1840 organ concert: BWV 565 is listed as the last piece by Bach, before the “Freie Phantasie” which was an improvisation by Mendelssohn.
St. Michael’s from the north-east, Lüneburg, Lower Saxony
Portrait of Felix Mendelssohn by James Warren Childe, 1839 – Mendelssohn greatly popularised Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue in D minor’ in the nineteenth century.
The Wender organ played by Bach in Arnstadt
The church in Arnstadt where Bach had been the organist from 1703 to 1707.
Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042
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While employed as organist of Mühlhausen’s St. Blasius Church, Bach courted Maria Barbara Bach, his second cousin. In August 1707, he received from his maternal uncle an inheritance of 50 gulden, more than half his yearly salary. This unlooked-for inheritance allowed the musician to marry at once. The ceremony took place on 17 October at Dornheim, a village near Arnstadt, Maria’s hometown and Bach’s previous post. Little is known of her life or their marriage, except that they were happy and contented.
The couple left Mühlhausen the following year, returning to Weimar, where Bach had secured the position of organist and from 1714 he became the Director of Music at the ducal court. This post enabled him to work with a large, well-funded contingent of professional musicians. Later the same year, their first child, Catharina Dorothea, was born, and Maria Barbara’s elder, unmarried sister joined them. She remained to help run the household until her death in 1729.
Bach’s fruitful time in Weimar marks the start of a sustained period of composing keyboard and orchestral works. Achieving the confidence to develop the prevailing structures in music composition, he was also keen to include influences from abroad. Bach learned to write dramatic openings, employing the dynamic motor rhythms and harmonic schemes found in the music of Vivaldi and Corelli. He was particularly fond of the Italian style in which one or more solo instruments alternate section-by-section with the full orchestra throughout a movement.
In 1717 Bach had fallen out of favour in Weimar and was, according to the court secretary’s report, jailed for almost a month “for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal”, before being finally dismissed. Nevertheless, a new position did not take long to materialise… Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, employed Bach as his Director of Music (Kapellmeister) in 1717. The Prince himself was a musician and admired Bach’s talents, paying him well and allowing him considerable independence in his composing.
Bach’s two surviving violin concertos were composed during his time employed by the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen. The beautiful Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042 was described by J. N. Forkel, the composer’s first biographer, as “full of an unconquerable joy of life, which sings in the triumph of the first and last movements.” The concerto reveals the influence of Vivaldi’s violin works. Composed in the three-movement Venetian concerto model, it is written for violin, strings and continuo (an accompanying part that includes a bass line and harmonies) in three movements:
Allegro, meter of cut time, in ritornello form.
Adagio, meter of 3/4, with a ground bass.
Allegro assai, meter of 3/8, with an overall structure of a rondo.
The ebullient first movement takes the basic idea of ritornello form — which had been used to such great effect by Vivaldi — and experiments with the motivic processes involved in concerto composition, forming the whole into an accomplished dialogue between soloist and accompanying ripieno group, where neither instrument enjoys supremacy over the other. Yet, a balance between the soloist and the accompaniment is maintained, defined by a powerful arpeggiated triad motif, offering a catalyst for continuous invention and virtuosic embellishment.
Marked Adagio, the second movement provides an impression of solemnity, as the violin’s intricate explorations are woven around a quiet ostinato in the bass instruments. The concluding section is written as a dance-like movement of notable energy. As the contrasting passages increase in complexity, exhibiting the violinist’s advanced skill, the final refrain finishes with an impressive rush of wild thirty-second notes.
There are two extant eighteenth century scores for the piece, though neither is autographed. Bach would turn to the concerto again as the model for his Harpsichord Concerto in D major, BWV 1054, appearing in his 1737–39 autographed manuscript.
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Saint Blaise church in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, where Bach was employed during the time of his courtship with Maria
Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen (1694-1728) was a German prince of the House of Ascania and ruler of the principality of Anhalt-Köthen. Today, he is best remembered for employing Bach as his Kapellmeister between 1717 and 1723.
Bach’s first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818) was a musicologist and music theorist.
Portrait of Bach as a young man (disputed by some) by Johann Ernst Rentsch the Elder
Köthen Castle, Anhalt-Köthen, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire ruled by the House of Ascania. Bach much likely spent much of his time working in the castle.
Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007
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Bach’s new employer, Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, was a Calvinist (a major branch of Protestantism following the practice of Reformation theologians) and so did not use elaborate music in his worship. Accordingly, most of Bach’s work from this period tended towards the secular, including his orchestral suites, sonatas, Brandenburg Concertos and cello suites. The latter are some of the most frequently performed and recognisable solo compositions ever written for the cello.
There are six Cello Suites, BWV 1007 to 1012, which were likely composed from 1717 to 1723. The title given on the cover of the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript was Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso (Suites for cello solo without bass). They were written for unaccompanied cell
o and are celebrated for achieving the effect of implied three- to four-voice contrapuntal and polyphonic music in a single musical line. As usual in a musical suite of the Baroque age, each movement is based on a dance type. Bach’s cello suites are structured in six movements: prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets or two bourrées or two gavottes, and a final gigue. Due to their exacting technical demands, and the non-annotated nature of the surviving copies, the cello suites were little known and rarely publicly performed until they were revived and recorded by Pablo Casals in the early twentieth century. They have since been performed and recorded by many renowned cellists, as well as being transcribed for numerous other instruments.
A precise chronology of Bach’s suites, detailing the order in which they were composed, remains elusive. However, scholars generally argue that they were produced earlier than 1720, the year on the title page of Bach’s autograph of the violin sonatas. No autograph manuscript survives, yet analysis of a hand-written copy by Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, has produced authentic editions, although they are critically deficient in the placement of slurs and other articulation. As a result, the texts present performers with numerous challenges of interpretation.
Scholars now believe that Bach intended the works to be considered as a systematically conceived cycle, rather than an arbitrary series of pieces. Compared to his other suite collections, the cello suites are the most consistent in order of their movements. In addition, to achieve a symmetrical design and go beyond the traditional layout, Bach inserted intermezzo movements in the form of pairs between the sarabande and the gigue. Only five movements in the entire set of suites are completely non-chordal, consisting of a single melodic line. These are the second minuet of Suite No. 1, the second minuet of Suite No. 2, the second bourrée of Suite No. 3, the gigue of Suite No. 4 and the sarabande of Suite No. 5. The second gavotte of Suite No. 5 features only a unison chord (the same note played on two strings at the same time), but only in the original scordatura version of the suite.
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