Salami

Some of his preludes are fantastic pieces, some are also very easy and enjoyable to play (Prelude in C major).

Then there's "Toccota & Fugue" in D, to this day my favourite piece for the organ.

Guybrush

Some scholars think Toccata and Fugue in D Minor has been falsely attributed to Bach and that it was actually written by someone else.

Summary for the layman : A haunting tune, but is it really Bach's?

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Something Completely Different

Salami

What an interesting article! Although it should be taken with a pinch of salt, they are correct in observing that it is a piece that could easily have been written for violin.

Burning Down

Okayyyyy, I'll offer some recommendations. Bach is certainly a great way to start listening to Baroque music. Handel as well. If you like it and you're ready to move away from Bach, I can suggest other, lesser-known Baroque composers.

There are so many pieces I could suggest to you, but I'll try to keep this short and sweet for right now, so you're not absolutely bombarded with stuff to listen to. There has been some great suggestions made in here already, like his Cello Suites. Definitely check those out.

I suggest:

• All the Partitas (BWV 825-830 - those are catalogue numbers. All these pieces have been catalogued for easy reference)
• The Well-Tempered Clavier (you may also see the German title Das Wohltemperierte Klavier), BWV 846-893, both Volume I and II
• The 6 Brandenburg Concertos, BWV 1046–1051
• The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080
• Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
• The 15 Inventions and 15 Sinfonias, BWV 772-801
• The English and French Dance Suites, English: BWV 806-811, French: BWV 812-817

That's all I can think of for now. All of these should be available on YouTube so you can check them out before purchasing anything. Let me know what you think!


What I want to know is this: Where are these people getting their information from? The article by Peter Williams from a 1981 publication of the journal Early Music is the only source that I can find in my school's extensive music history archive, both in online form and printed form. In fact, I'm in the library now and just for kicks I pulled out the printed copy of Williams' article. He doesn't make too many citations himself which makes the article sketchy to me. Williams' article is also available online if anyone wants to check it out, but you might have to pay to view it - I'm not authorized to hand out my password so you can see it for free.

The article's author also did a terrible job of clearly citing any hypotheses being presented, especially in the last section:

Where is this idea documented? I know the article isn't a scholarly piece of writing from an academic journal, but the author could have provided a simple citation of where he found that information.

Many of Bach's original manuscripts have been unfortunately lost, that is true. Especially in regards to the cantatas he wrote as Cantor for the St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches in Leipzig, Germany. Every Sunday, he had to have a different cantata prepared for that day's service. Approximately 200 of them have survived, and those are the only ones we know of today.

The author also fails to mention what a toccata actually is, which makes me assume he doesn't actually know or understand what a toccata is. A toccata is a work composed for keyboard (sometimes also plucked string instruments like the guitar or the harp), which features virtuosity and fast moving sections that highlight the dexterity and talent of the performer. Toccatas also have a "looser" structure than was common at the time. They can be very intense pieces, and not all that complicated in terms of contrapuntal motion. Bach was a master of counterpoint, and his Toccata and Fugue in D minor certainly has counterpoint in it, but it's not as complicated or tightly structured as with his other pieces (most notably The Well-Tempered Clavier), because it doesn't have to be. The article does not state that Bach was also highly influenced by his predecessors in toccata composition, most notably by the toccatas for organ by Dietrich Buxtehude. Bach followed a Buxtehudian model for improvisatory composition, which includes toccatas.

The author mentions that there are certain compositional features in the piece that are not "typical" of Bach's work, but he fails to mention that Bach often went against his own rules for composition - most of the time those deviations were small, and so have gone largely unnoticed.

He also fails to mention that many of Bach's original manuscripts were further transcribed by his children for widespread publication after he died.

Just so you know, Tore, I'm not ragging on you for sharing this article. Rather, I'm just simply bothered by the article. I think the claims made in this article, and by Peter Williams in his 1981 article, are completely ridiculous.

Edit: Many original manuscripts by Renaissance and early Baroque composers (before Bach's time) no longer survived. Of course, mass printing was still fairly new at the time, and printing music for mass publication was extremely expensive and time consuming. Based on this fact, I think I'm going to go write a poorly cited, non-academic article stating that Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli or Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo may have been composed by somebody else

Howard the Duck

I'm proud to say that Toccata & Fugue is one of my first transcriptions by ear to the guitar, without any aid of tablature or sheet music

it doesn't sound very good on guitar, though

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Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.

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