by Rebecca Cochran
 
Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor (BWV 903) was most likely composed during his tenure in Köthen, around 1717-1723. There are numerous surviving copies of this harpsichord work. It is believed that Bach continued to work on the piece even after he arrived in Leipzig.

The Fantasia is unique in all of Bach’s works. Its improvisatory and virtuosic style is a precursor to music of the Romantic period. Glenn Gould even referred to the work as “a monstrosity!”
 
Enjoy this recording by renowned pianist, András Schiff.

​by Rebecca Cochran
 
With the Presidential campaigns taking center stage here in the U.S., my mind wandered a bit today to this question: Does our current President have an affinity for Bach?
 
After a bit of research, I unearthed a news article that circulated during Obama’s campaign. Supposedly, a reporter asked him what you would typically hear if you were to listen to his iPod. Obama’s response was that we’d hear music by Bob Dylan, Miles Davis and J.S. Bach.
 
Perhaps an appreciation for the music of Bach should be a qualification for office of President of the United States. What do you think?

by Rebecca Cochran
 
I distinctly remember playing under a conductor who prescribed to the so-called notes inégales playing convention. We were rehearsing a Bach Brandenburg Concerto. The conductor explained that he wanted us to treat the written note values unequally, as was commonly done in the Baroque era.
 
My response was something akin to: “But, this is J.S. Bach. Bach wrote exactly what he wanted to hear.”
 
Perhaps the notes inégales movement was simply a passing fad.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
On the morning of July 28, 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach awoke to discover that his eyes could endure strong light again. For several months following his unsuccessful cataract surgery, he had been furiously composing in a darkened room. Even more surprisingly, on this day, he was able to see clearly again.
 
Later the same day, he suffered a stroke accompanied by a strong fever. That evening, at a quarter to nine, J.S. Bach died peacefully. Three days later, he was buried in Leipzig’s St. John’s Cemetery. There was no tombstone.
 
In 1894, when St. John’s Church was under reconstruction, Bach’s remains were exhumed and placed in the vaults of the Johanniskirche. When the church was bombed during World War II, Bach’s remains were eventually moved to the altar room in the Thomaskirche. Bach remains there to this day.
 
And, to this day, Bach continues to share his brilliant light with listeners and learners the world over.

by Rebecca Cochran

This morning, I gave a presentation on the benefits of social media marketing. As I was driving back to my office following the talk and thinking about today’s post, I fantasized about what sort of social media presence Bach might have had if Facebook and Twitter had been available to him.
 
Lo and behold, Classic FM addressed this exact topic in March of 2015. To celebrate Bach’s 330th birthday, the station posted a clever article on what Bach’s Facebook page might have looked like.
 
Offering an accurate (and amusing) timeline of Bach’s life, it’s definitely worth a look! Enjoy the post here.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) was one of the most important guitar composers of the 20th century. Born in Italy, he was greatly inspired by Spanish guitarist, Andrés Segovia.
 
J.S. Bach was also a huge inspiration. In 1962, Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote Les Guitares bien tempérées for two guitars. The work is a set of 24 preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys, inspired, of course, by Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier.
 
Enjoy this recording of Fugue No. 12 in C Major from The Well-Tempered Guitars by the Brasil Guitar Duo.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
I was invited to attend a “house concert” one evening last week. The concert, presented by two rising young stars, was held in the “music room” of a private home. About 20 of us made up the audience. The ambitious program of music for violin and piano included major works by Schubert, Stravinsky and Beethoven. We audience members were able to enjoy an “up close and personal” experience, getting to know the performers first-hand.
 
House concerts seem to be coming back in vogue all over America. In Bach’s time, of course, music was mostly performed in churches, as part of a religious service. During his later tenure in Leipzig, Bach supposedly had an apartment large enough to keep six claviers and many other instruments. He, his sons and visiting musicians would give private concerts in the living room there.
 
Also in Leipzig, for nearly a decade, Bach led a Collegium musicum, consisting of his family members, local students and amateur musicians. They would give weekly concerts at Zimmermann’s Coffee House. During the summer months, these casual concerts moved outside to the patio.
 
I, for one, certainly approve of the house concert format. Another successful modern-day format is the one begun in San Francisco in 2006: Classical Revolution. Today, there are Classical Revolution chapters in cities all over the U.S. and Europe. The musicians and their audiences gather in non-traditional performance venues such as cafés, pubs, art houses and bookstores, offering audiences the chance to connect more closely with the musicians than is typical in concert halls and more formal venues.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
The first complete recording of Cantata BWV 78 (Jesu, der du meine Seele) was made in celebration of the Bach Bicentennial in Leipzig in 1950. The recording featured then Thomaskantor Günther Ramin with his pupil, Thomasorganist Karl Richter at the harpsichord.
 
Hear this historic recording played on the 1946 CAPEHART Radio-Phonograph record changer here.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
It is said that the Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) wrote a fugue every day of his life. He threw most of them away claiming that he would never reach the level of J.S. Bach.
 
After years of writing melodramatic, even tragic operas, Verdi, late in life, revealed his fun-loving side. His opera, Falstaff, is a cheerfully optimistic work. And, fittingly, for the final chorus in what would be his final opera, Verdi composed a brilliant, buoyant fugue!

by Rebecca Cochran
 
I wrote about the opening sinfonia (or instrumental/concerto movement) in Bach’s Cantata 35 in an earlier post. Listening again, recently, to this incredibly beautiful solo cantata for alto, I was reminded that Bach actually included two sinfonias in the work. A second sinfonia presto opens Part II. Cantata 35 is the only cantata in which he included two sinfonias.
 
Bach probably adapted some of this material from his earlier compositions. Nevertheless, Cantata 35 exemplifies Bach at his absolute best!

Enjoy this recording of the sinfonia presto, performed here by the Choir and Orchestra of the J. S. Bach Foundation conducted by Rudolf Lutz.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) began his musical career as an organist in London. He later turned to conducting, eventually coming to the United States. His illustrious career included a long association as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
 
Stokowski orchestrated many of Bach’s keyboard works, most notably the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. He recorded his arrangement with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1927. The work became even more popular when it was included as the opening piece in the Walt Disney film, Fantasia.

Enjoy this archival video of Stokowski conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in his signature work in 1954.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
A few days ago, I had what turned out to be an intimate encounter with J.S. Bach. My intimate encounter actually took place in a very large cathedral.
 
An organist friend who is preparing for a month-long residency in Poland invited me to hear the repertory that she will be presenting over the course of several performances during her upcoming tour. She has prepared both well known and more obscure works, including works of living composers.
 
Of course, one of her selections is by Bach: the Great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542). The Fantasia begins in a free, improvisational style. (Bach was a master of improvisation, after all.) The virtuosic Fugue that follows requires brisk footwork.
 
This work is certainly “Great” in scope, yet my encounter with it was an intimate one. I was the soul listener in the nave, a congregation of one. The effect was awe-inspiring. J.S. Bach has a way of doing that.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
I enjoyed a live performance of Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp last evening. Regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, Debussy (1862-1918) was influenced by many composers who came before him, including J.S. Bach. Some researchers say that Debussy structured parts of his music mathematically, as Bach was known to do.
 
Here are Debussy’s comments on Bach: “And if we look at the works of J.S. Bach — a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity — on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered. And in his works we will search in vain for anything the least lacking in good taste.”

by Rebecca Cochran
 
Cantata 182, Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (“King of Heaven, welcome”), is the first cantata Bach composed following his promotion from organist to Konzertmeister in the court of Weimar in 1714.
 
Comprising eight movements, the cantata opens with a “heavenly” instrumental sonata in the form of a French overture. The recorder and violin share lead roles, accompanied by pizzicato in the continuo.
 
Enjoy this exquisite live recording of the opening sonata featuring soloists, Rachel Podger, violin and Hanneke van Proosdij, recorder as part of this year's Berkeley Early Music Festival.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818) was a German keyboard player and musicologist who had a great interest in the music of J.S. Bach. Forkel wrote the first biography of Bach in 1802. He had the foresight to obtain first-hand information from Bach’s sons, Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann.
 
Forkel, himself a prolific composer, is best known today for his musicological writings. His biography, On Johann Sebastian Bach's Life, Art, and Work: For Patriotic Admirers of True Musical Art, helped to turn Bach into a musical national hero in Germany in the early 19th century. And, without Forkel’s profound admiration of Bach and ongoing correspondences with Bach’s two sons, important details of Bach’s life may well have been lost.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721) was the oldest brother of J.S. Bach. Johann Chrisoph’s so-called Andreas Bach Book is a compilation of early 18th-century keyboard works by French, Italian and German composers including J.S. Bach, Buxtehude, Pachelbel and numerous others.
 
The Andreas Bach Book documents J.S. Bach’s early output from the years 1700-1715. Suffice it to say that Johann Christoph recognized his brother’s genius early on.
 
Included in this set is Bach’s beautiful Aria Variata ‘alla Maniera Italiana’ (BWV 989). It probably dates from 1709 when Bach was not yet 25 years old!

Enjoy this recording by pianist, Glenn Gould.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
In the 2010 documentary film, Desert Fugue, Bach historian, Christoph Wolff and organist, George Ritchie explore Bach’s Art of Fugue in its many facets. They discuss the piece itself, the instrument(s) that Bach may have written it for and the broader aspects of how this work advanced western music.

Enjoy this short clip from the documentary with George Ritchie describing his teacher, the legendary German organist, Helmut Walcha.

by Rebecca Cochran

Today is Bastille Day. I'd like to remind readers that Bach had his own Bastille event: in 1717, he spent a month locked away in the Bastille (or prison) of the Grand Duke’s Residenz Castle in Weimar.
 
Was Bach bored in the Bastille? Most likely! But, of course, the ever creative and hard-working Bach put that boredom to good use! Read more in this earlier post.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
I enjoyed a chamber music recital last evening. It opened with Bach’s 6th Brandenburg Concerto. Among other works, the program also included the Octet for Wind Instruments by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).
 
In an earlier post, I wrote about Bach’s unusual scoring in his final Brandenburg Concerto. Stravinsky’s scoring for his Octet was unusual as well: flute, clarinet in Bb and A, two bassoons, trumpet in C, trumpet in A, tenor trombone and bass trombone. The Octet is generally regarded as the start of neoclassicism in Stravinsky’s music; some even refer to it as Stravinsky’s attempts to go “Back to Bach.”
 
After the 1923 premiere of the Octet in Paris, reviews were mixed. However, following a later performance at the Salzburg Festival in 1924, one reviewer wrote that the Octet is “an ingenuity in counterpoint, a seventh Brandenburg Concerto.”

by Rebecca Cochran
 
The Inventions and Sinfonias (BWV 772-801) are a collection of thirty short keyboard works that Bach composed over the course of several years in Köthen and Leipzig. Also referred to as his Two- and Three-Part Inventions, Bach included this handwritten introduction to the collection:
 
“Honest Method by which the amateurs of the clavichord — especially, however, those desirous of learning — are shown a clear way not only (1) to learn to play cleanly in two parts, but also, after further progress, (2) to handle three obligato parts correctly and well; and along with this not only to obtain good inventions (ideas), but to develop the same well; above all however, to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition.”

by Rebecca Cochran
 
Bach’s Sonata in B Minor for Flute and Harpsichord (BWV 1030) was probably composed during the 1730s in Leipzig. Bach may have written the sonata with his flutist son, Johann Gottfried Bernhard (1715-1739), in mind.
 
This sonata characterizes the type of chamber work that Bach, as director of the Collegium Musicum, would have performed at Zimmermann’s Coffee House. And, since Bach’s family members often took part in those concerts, there is a good chance that Gottfried Bernhard Bach and his father gave the premiere.
 
The first movement, Andante, is one of the most imaginative movements in all of Bach’s chamber works. Enjoy this recording featuring flutist, Jean-Pierre Rampal and harpsichordist, Robert Veyron-Lacroix.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
I recently chanced upon a website which uses photos and illustrations to tell the story of Bach’s life. The site, Bach's Life in Pictures, chronicles Bach’s career and his movements throughout Germany. The images help to bring perspective to Bach’s life and the times he lived in.

View the short chronicle here.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753) and J.S. Bach were good friends and colleagues. Silbermann was a prominent builder of keyboard instruments in Germany, having received the title of Honorary Court and State Organ Builder to the King of Poland and Duke of Saxony at Dresden.
 
Silbermann consulted Bach on ways to improve the design of his early fortepiano prototypes. Once those improvements were made, Bach is known to have aided Silbermann in the sale of at least one of his new pianos.
 
Learn more on this website devoted to the Gottfried Silbermann Society.

​by Rebecca Cochran
 
Christian Friedrich Henrici (1700 - 1764) was a librettist for J.S. Bach. The two began collaborating in Leipzig around 1725 where Henrici worked both as a poet and as the Post Office Commissioner. He wrote under the pen name, Picander.
 
Bach and Picander collaborated on religious works — most notably, the St. Matthew Passion. Bach also used Picander’s poetry in secular works including the Peasant, Shepherds’ and Coffee Cantatas.
 
Bach and Picander must have enjoyed a close relationship for many years. Elizabeth Henrici, Picander’s wife, served as godparent to Bach’s nineteenth child, ten years after the premiere of the St. Matthew Passion.

by Rebecca Cochran
 
I have unearthed several more enlightening facts about Bach’s Coffee Cantata. This particular source was a post that first appeared on the WFMT blog last fall. Written by Stephen Raskauskas, the post is entitled “10 Facts About Bach's Coffee Opera You Need To Know.”
 
I found all 10 facts very interesting. Fact #10, There's *another* "Coffee Cantata" set to the same libretto, was most fascinating to me. And, I found Bach’s use of the term “music dramas” interesting, as well.

Enjoy the interesting blog post here.