Reaction to Bach's 'Organ Fugue G Minor'

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was unlike most other composers of his time. “He wrote music for the glory of God, and to satisfy his own burning curiosity, not for future fame.” During the 1700s, people knew him as a talented musician, not as a composer, as we do today. He never left his country to pursue bigger and better things. Bach was content as long as he could play music. Traditions were very important to him. He wanted to carry on the musical tradition of his family, and never opted to change the traditional ways of composing, as did most composers. Bach’s work is vast and unique.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German organist, composer, and musical scholar of the Baroque period, and is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. His works, noted for their intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty, have provided inspiration to nearly every musician after him, from Mozart to Schoenberg.

I found this piece very interesting; it tells a clear story, and has a dissonant accompanist which makes it sound stylistically similar to the music of musical theatre.

Bach’s pieces “combine profound expression with clever musico-mathematical feats, such as fugues and canons in which the same melody is played against itself in various ways.” There are multiple symbols throughout Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor. The two major symbols instituted in the work are the themes of the passacaglia and the fugue. The passacaglia is represented in the first three sections of the piece, while the fugue is present in the last two sections.

The abundance of harmonies never loses the thread to his audience. Furthermore, the opening of the slow movement inspires the imagination and attention of its listeners. All these elements make this piece one of the most successful concertos in the musical history.

Toccata is an unstructured form, where the artist can give free rein to their imagination. Bach’s Toccata can be described as the toccata as a long piece in which both hands alternate, at times complemented by long pedal notes. Toccata can be connected to early baroque music, which was popular in North Germany from the 17thcentury. This fantastic style of composition that had come over from Southern Europe is remarkable, both the toccata and the prelude are paired with the fugue having linked to strict compositional

When Bach was in Arnstadt when he was younger, the organ ordinarily lacked a 16-foot register on the keyboard; consequently, it sounds an octave lower than the normal 8-foot register. Accordingly, in order to create the effect, Bach used octave doubling; consequently, he continued the resounding effect of the opening bars; conversely, there is no octave doubling in any of Bach’s later organ works; moreover, the fugue sounds furious with its uninterrupted series of fast notes. Also, Bach felt embarrassed about his crude style, and he put the work aside; consequently, Bach lost a lot of his other early organ work completely. Conversely, the Tocca and the Fugue has an unstructured form, and that means that keyboard players can let their imagination run wild; as a result, Johann Gottfried Walther described the Toccata as a long piece in which both hands alternate, sometimes accompanied by long pedal notes. For this reason, Bach connected the Toccata’s freedom to the stylus phantasticus; moreover, stylus phantasticus was popular in North Germany from the seventeenth century; in addition, people described this style of composition as “freed from all constraint”. Moreover, it’s remarkable that Bach paired the toccata with the prelude and the fugue because it’s subject to strict compositional rules; nevertheless, the fugue derives its thematic material from the preceding part.

The fugue is often regarded as a genre defined by strict procedural guidelines. It is notable that three historically important composers, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), all employed a closely related fugue subject in three different works. An analysis of each of these works individually, and a comparison of these works collectively reveal numerous latent and salient features, and a reflection of the composers’ style within these works. Analyses also provide an outlook into the fluidity in certain aspects and rigidity in others of the form itself, reflected historically. The three composers analyzed fall closely together in history. J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel were contemporaries, whereas Mozart was born six years after Bach’s death and three years before Handel’s death. Analytically, the angularity of these similar fugue subjects presupposes a treatment regardless of the composer. Because of the shared intervallic content among the subjects of these fugues, despite being written by several different composers, a surprising number of similarities arise. Therefore, it is reasonable to assert that compositional choices made in the construction of the fugue subjects limit the number of results possible.

Finally another common characteristic between the pieces is that the texture of both is polyphonic. Polyphonic texture shows two of more melodic lines competing for attention. The listener would hear the polyphonic texture during the soloist performances in Bach’s work. One instrument would imitate the other leading to the competition of being heard. This is also seen in Corelli’s sonata. The two violins are the showcase for the melodic lines and are imitated by the bass continuo, played by the organ and cello.

Bach’s complex compositional style incorporates religious and numerological symbols that fit perfectly together in a puzzle of musical code. Demanding unfaltering facility in dexterity, precise pitch, particularly in the multiple stoppings, as well as sensitivity to implied polyphonic and harmonic textures. These exceptional works may be the closest thing we have to a “perfect” composition, so why is it that musicians have drastically different alterations and interpretations of his works? It is as if quality, intensity, duration, and even pitch are subject to the performer’s adaptation. By mapping out these alterations performers make to Bach’s music, it becomes possible to map out their respective musical personalities.

He began to write preludes for organs but did not cover large- scale organization, when two melodies interact at the same time. A few years after playing for the church, Bach made a visit to Dieterich Buxtehude in Lubeck. This visit reinforced Bach’s style in music with the works he has made.

During the later years of his life Bach gradually withdrew inwards, producing some of the most profound statements of the baroque musical form. Bach’s creative energy was conserved for the highest flights of musical expression: the Mass in b

The “first practice” was just the style of vocal polyphony that was established in writing by Zarlino. The “second practice” was just Claudio Monteverdi’s way of being adventurous. He said that the first practice was music that the text prevailed, and that the second practice the text overpowered the music. In Monteverdi’s cruda amarilli he demonstrates the use of his second practice. Since Monteverdi used this second practice Composers start to see instrumental music as a different medium from vocal music and because of this they started to see them separately as two components, now borrow vocal idioms in instrumental writing, and vice versa. While trying to express the affections in man, they wanted to bring about the arousal of emotions like excitement, broadness, being a hero, and wonder. While doing this they also focused on a new idea of basso continuo which was a concentration of the bass where the chord was structured on the bass, and later the inversions became known as figured bass. With this new bass a new contrapuntal system was used where the melodic lines now had to fit into the pattern of chords set up by the continuo.

Before looking more closely at the composers’ works, they must be placed in their proper historical contexts. Bach was a great composer of the

They say what’s old is new again. There is nothing new under the sun. What goes around comes around. History repeats itself. These may be just a few banal sayings, but they might hold true for classical music as well. Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is one such example. Written during the neo-classical and neo-baroque movements of the early 1900s, this clever piece ties together French musical traditions, baroque styles, and World War I in just six short pieces. This essay will detail the origins of the suite form and the neo-classical neo-baroque movement, and compare Le Tombeau de Couperin with Bach’s French Suite no. 5 in G Major, BWV 816.