#bachbirthday

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Bach all day. 

Honourable mentions to the composers who shaped Bach’s formidable output. Antonio Vivaldi, as Charles Rosen explains in this fantastic documentary, showed Bach how to begin a piece with a charismatic theme. Bach would have played Vivaldi’s music and transcribed several of the Italian master’s works for organ. In those days, transcribing a composer’s work was a compliment. Bach was far more generous in acknowledging his influences and themes he had borrowed from other composers (a substantial amount). Here, Bach is lively, but controlled: he keeps most of Vivaldi’s character without adding much of his own more advanced contrapuntal work. (With Reincken’s Hortus Musicus, however, he takes the reins and dashes off!).

Beautiful transcription!

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Bach all day. 

Absolutely love the Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor. So many childhood memories: I learned some of these pieces over 14 years ago on the keyboard. 

Sir Andras Schiff has rightly noted that Bach often writes deeply spiritual pieces in the key of B Minor, but here he can also be ebullient and even frivolous. 

Glad to see other Tumblr users enjoy the “Bach all day” posts! 

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Bach all day. 

A classic, the Double Concerto in D Minor. Bach’s dialogue between the violins is a marvel, executed here by Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh. 

Above all, the second movement is a crown jewel. The intimacy of the violin dialogue here, the beauty of the main theme... Well, I will leave it to you to hear. 

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Bach all day. 

Another Bach favourite from childhood. His Badinerie, from Orchestral Suite No. 2. The sheer joy and energy of Bach’s movements here dispel any criticisms of “dry, mathematical stuff.” In fact, CPE Bach told Forkel that the elder Bach “was no lover” of any such thing. Try humming along to this one! It makes you want to bounce up and down in enjoyment. I know I used to put this on repeat over a decade ago. 

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Bach all day. 

Ich Hatte Viel Bekümmernis, admired by Bach’s contemporaries and recommended by Sir John Eliot Gardiner for those who are grieving. A beautiful Cantata!

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Bach all day.

The ebullient Cum Sancto Spiritu from his seminal Mass in B Minor. What a piece! 

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Bach all day. 

I have not heard this cantata before, but it has a rousing chorus. 

Bleib bei uns (Stay with us)

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Bach all day. 

If you grew up on the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, now of doubtful authorship, and the Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major alone, you were missing out. 

The Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor is by far Bach’s best organ work. Robert Schumann marvelled at it, saying the variations were “intertwined so ingeniously that no one can ever cease to be amazed.”

Bach took the central theme from André Raison’s Trio en Passacaille. The opening chords were most likely influenced by Dieterich Buxtehude’s Passacaglia in D Minor, no less magnificent. 

Upon this simple basis, Bach built what Charles Stanford Terry called “its mighty architecture... a fabric of overpowering grandeur.”

The haunting Passacaglia was used in The Godfather, another reminder of how Bach resonates centuries after his death. The fugue reiterates this theme through a series of ingenious developments ending in a magnificent C Major chord. 

Above all, Bach’s construction of something so magnificent and complex from a borrowed theme lie at the heart of his genius. Charles Sanford Terry said, “As an architect of form Bach is unsurpassed and unapproachable.”