Toccata & Fugue

I've never wanted to give a standing ovation to a YouTube video before this one. I think I just cried a little.

Holy Dread

There was an article in The New Yorker about Bach's "holy dread." For me, holy dread is why I love Bach so much, especially his harpsichord and organ music. I also love that Bach can make even secular dance music overflow with this feeling, like this jig, which is so bizarre, upbeat and catchy but dripping in apocalyptic fury.

One of Bach's most beautiful harpsichord pieces

I am biased because the "French Suites" are how I first fell in love with Bach's harpsichord works, and yet we often find in life that where we started out is where we tend to return...

This is the Sarabande from the suite in d minor. I just love how it builds and lifts and then releases in an outpouring of passion.

Christophe Rousset is an amazing harpsichordist.

Klavierbüchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann

J.S. Bach made a keyboard music book for his eldest son, the Klavierbüchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. In it are several early versions of preludes found in the Well-Tempered Clavier. The first prelude, in C major, is one of Bach's most famous pieces, and the piece that initially attracted me to harpsichord music when I was a teenager. The early version found here, performed by Christophe Rousset, is dreamy and mesmerizing, and seems to end abruptly if you're used to the later version. I can't get enough. And then there's the prelude in c minor which follows it, and the transition couldn't be more jolting. This is harpsichord performance at its most expressive. A masterpiece.

Too bad some of Christophe Rousset's CDs are in the $40-$50 range.

Upbeat and Apocalyptic

On the way to work, I listened on repeat to the prelude and fugue in f minor from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, Book II. If I recall correctly, during the Baroque era, f minor was considered the most somber key. As Wikipedia has it: "Schubart described this key as 'Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.'" I don't know who Schubart is, but I like his description.

Bach's prelude and fugue in f minor elicit complex emotions in me. The pieces are upbeat, playful, and - with the prelude - almost silly. And yet I have the impression of impending or actual Doom.

The prelude, as I imagine it, portrays the eve of the end of the world. Two birds perched on a power line tweet at each other under an evil sky. The subject suffers bouts of denial and merry delusions interspersed with awakening realizations of immanent doom. As the prelude reaches its end, the subject gradually comes to face and accept his fate.

The fugue is the apocalypse itself. Each angel pours out his bowl of wrath in turn. Fire rains from heaven; oceans boil; the parched earth ignites; the bowels of the earth spew molten rock. God has brought his judgment and wrath upon the wicked world. Yet, there is a catharsis as the anticipated doom of the prelude actualizes. The end has come. The worst has arrived. The judgment has been delivered. The subject receives the privilege of seeing the world and his wicked self through the eyes and wisdom of God, and declares that God is just.

The theme of this piece, as it speaks to me, is the recognition of sin and evil within oneself and the wrath incurred, and the celebration of God's judgment and victory over evil. It is a call to repentance and sobriety, a call to acceptjust punishment due to one's evil actions.

Music on my mind

This has been on my mind for a few days now. I wake up and it is already playing in my head. I love the combination of this prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier with one of the French Suites.

"Acedia the Hollow Pain" and "Erbarme dich"

I suppose I should catch up on my early music blogging.

I used to follow a channel on YouTube which had the best early music, even better because the man who made the videos must have been insane, giving every piece some colorful, disturbing, arcane title and displaying slideshows of equally esoteric conspiracy-theory-type images throughout (usually Easter Island moai, hoax alien photos, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the like).

For example, to J.S. Bach and those who study him, the following piece may have merely been "Sonata in c minor: I. Largo" (BWV 1017), but this guy named it "Acedia the Hollow Pain", and accompanied it with a slideshow of details from a Hieronymus Bosch painting (The Garden of Earthly Delights - link to image). What marvelous days of YouTube, long gone! His account has disappeared, but the video below contains the same music.

In any case, Bach later modified this piece into "Erbarme dich" in St. Matthew Passion. The piece is poignant for Lent and Holy Week, words given to St. Peter after having betrayed Christ:

German:

Erbarme dich, mein Gott,

um meiner Zähren willen!

Schaue hier, Herz und Auge

weint vor dir bitterlich.

Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

English:

Have mercy, my God,

for the sake of my tears!

See here, before you

heart and eyes weep bitterly.

Have mercy, my God.

Early Music: Lautenwercke

Lautenwercke (plural of Lautenwerck, I think) are harpsichords with gut strings. I think this may be a German word that means something like "lute mechanism". In any case, I think they sound like banjos, a perfect sound for this genre.

J.S. Bach, trio sonata no. 4 in e minor (BWV 528)
Shawn Leopard & John Paul, lautenwerke

Early Music VII: Little Pieces

This is just a little piece by Bach that I've had in my head all weekend.

J.S. Bach, Prelude 1 in C major from Klavierbuchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (BWV 924)

Joseph Payne, clavichord

These pieces are from a practice book Bach compiled for his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedmann.