Bach Organ Music
Recent Scholarly Discussions

Recent Scholarly Discussion of Bach Organ Music

William L. Hoffman wrote (February 23, 2019):
Discussion Leader's Note: I have taken the liberty to post the following abstracts from the American Bach Society's recent biannual conference, “Bach Re-Worked—Parody, Transcription, Adaptation” (https://www.americanbachsociety.org/meetings/newhaven2018_abstracts.html) since they describe information relevant to the BCML Discussion on Bach's Organ Music (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/index.htm). Matthew Dirst has a reconstruction of BWV 1053a as another organ concerto. Christine Blanken discusses Nuremberg organ chorale sources in the second half of the 18th century. Bernd Koska reveals little-known, rediscovered works of lesser-known Bach students. Kayo Murata addresses Bach's exploration of contrapuntal techniques with Johann Gottfried Walther in Weimar. David Schulenberg and Mary Oleskiewicz examine the Triple Concerto, BWV 1044 and it models, including the middle movement of the D-minor organ sonata BWV 527. Rusel Stinson discusses six organ chorales (BWV 654, 620a, 740, 614, 622, and 659) transcribed by Johann Nepomuk Schelble, manuscript collector and director of the Caecilienverein in Frankfurt.

Matthew Dirst - Recreating Bach's Organ Concertos

Bach's 1738 harpsichord concertos were long thought to be transcriptions of works originally for violin or oboe before their refashioning, during the third Leipzig Jahrgang, as cantata sinfonias with obbligato organ. But recent research into the early history of these works proposes that a few of them began life as organ concertos in the early 1720s. This paper poses two fundamental questions of these phantom organ concertos: Can plausible musical texts be established? What kind of accompanying ensemble makes the most sense? In addition to the sequences of movements better known as the D-minor and E major harpsichord concertos (BWV 1052 and 1053, respectively), the G-minor keyboard concerto (preserved as BWV 1058) may also have begun life as a concerted organ work: transposition errors in its earlier A-minor version for violin (BWV 1041) suggest an earlier Vorlage for keyboard in G minor. Usefully, the earliest extant layer of the D- minor concerto (BWV 1052a) provides a model for reconstructing the other works: its musical text has more in common with certain 1726 cantata movements than with the eventual harpsichord concerto. My reconstruction of BWV 1053a therefore favors its corresponding cantata sinfonias, whose solo and accompanying parts (like BWV 1052a and its 1726 relatives) are less elaborate than the final version of the work; my reconstruction of BWV 1058a reflects the same priorities. The original ensemble for these concertos may likewise be deduced from scattered clues in the sources. Newly recorded examples from a forthcoming disc will illustrate this presentation's major points.

Christine Blanken - Improvising on Bach's Organ Music in the Eighteenth Century?! What Nuremberg Sources Can Tell Us

Nuremberg sources from the second half of the 18th century show an organist's highly pragmatic usage of Bach's organ chorales. It is Leonhard Scholz (1720‒1798), organist at Nuremberg's main churches St Lawrence and St Sebaldus, who probably arranged several pieces from Bach's Leipzig collections (among them "Clavier-Übung III" and "18 Leipziger Choräle", some of them also in their original versions) as well as other individually transmitted pieces for use on his old and very specific church organs. As the archival records from these churches show, the instruments ‒ most of them from the early 16th and early 17th centuries ‒ lack a range that allows an organist to play those choral pieces by J. S. Bach. As Leonhard Scholz was obviously very fond of Bach's organ music, he adjusted it to be playable on his instruments. Scholz' manuscripts nowadays constitute the largest Bach collection of Southern German provenance, also including keyboard compositions by other composers. The question is whether this usage of Bach's music is a singular phenomenon or an example for a more typical usage in the 18th century. In other words: is this a phenomenon which is more common than we tend to think, due to our 20th-century process of struggling for an 'Urtext'? Did organists of the 18th century regularly improvise on Bach's music? The paper will also focus on some very special details of Scholz' biography. He started his career in 1766 as an assistant organist at St Giles, where the old Lorenz Sichart (a student of Wilhelm Hieronymus Pachelbel) was organist, and where Christoph Birkmann (Bach's recently identified Leipzig librettist in 1725–27) was Diaconus until 1772.

Bernd Koska - Bach as a Model? An Analysis of Some Compositions by Bach's Students

How did Bach influence his students' musical principles, especially in regard to their compositions? It is an alluring question and yet hardly possible to answer in detail. Older studies often avoid answering the question by speaking of "Bach's spirit". This paper seeks to give an overview of the compositional output of Bach's students and to outline some general characteristics. It will address the works of famous Bach enthusiasts like Johann Ludwig Krebs and Johann Friedrich Agricola, who achieved considerable success as musicians and composers in their own rights. The focus, however, will be on musicians who have attracted little attention as composers so far, among them Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber, Johann Georg Schübler, Christian Friedrich Penzel, and Johann Caspar Vogler. Some of their little-known works have recently been re-discovered in connection with new source studies on Bach's students. The origin and transmission of these works need to be explored before the musical structure can be analyzed. Here, it is the aim to uncover Bach's more or less subtle traces as precisely as possible. In a wider sense, this arouses another question: to which degree was Bach's music of importance and relevance for a generation which followed aesthetic ideals clearly different from his own? It seems that Bach, in the eyes of his students, was a "classical" composer, an example of a historical period and of historical genres, rather than as a resource for up-to-date composing techniques.

Kayo Murata - Bach's Reception of Contrapuntal Techniques in Weimar: A Focus on His Cooperative Exploration with Johann Gottfried Walther

This paper does not touch on Bach's adaptations but addresses his reception of other composers. I investigate Bach's stylistic development over 20 years in the realm of counterpoint. The canons in the Weimar cantatas are far more complex than those in the earlier cantatas. The inversion methods in the imitational sections, which have been categorized as "permutation fugues", gradually changed, particularly in regard to their treatment of dissonance. These changes might be attributed to Bach's exploration of contrapuntal techniques together with Johann Gottfried Walther. In Weimar, Walther and Bach copied "strict" compositions by Palestrina and Frescobaldi. Palestrina pursued the techniques of canons in masses and Frescobaldi looked into the contrapuntal possibilities of one theme in Fiori musicali. In 1708, shortly before Bach came to Weimar, Walther compiled Praecepta der musicalischen Composition based on theoretical materials by seventeenth-century composers. He was clearly well acquainted with contrapuntal theories from Italy and northern Germany. In one of these theoretical texts, there were two types of inversion depending on the rigorousness of dissonance treatment; I will argue that Walther followed this distinction in his Praecepta. Although there is no direct evidence that these theoretical materials attracted Bach's notice, they certainly could have, given the circumstantial evidence.

David Schulenberg & Mary Oleskiewicz - Bach's "Triple Concerto" BWV 1044 and Its Models

The concerto in A minor for keyboard, flute, violin, and strings BWV 1044 has alwaysbeen one of Bach's more problematical pieces. Performed less often than his other instrumental works, it was, like probably all his keyboard concertos, a relatively late reworking of earlier music. All three movements exist in other forms, the quick outer ones as the prelude and fugue for harpsichord BWV 894, the central adagio as the middle movement of the D-minor organ sonata BWV 527. The chief questions concerning the work are the identity of the original versions and whether Bach himself was indeed responsible for their reworking as a concerto. Unlike the concertos for a single harpsichord (and one of those for two harpsichords), BWV 1044 survives only in manuscript copies, and these are fewer in number than for the other keyboard concertos, suggesting that it was less often performed. One manuscript, however, is a score by Bach's pupil Agricola, who also copied many other such works, implying their use in the concerts which he was directing at Berlin by 1754. A set of parts by Müthel is the only other source directly from the Bach circle. Both attribute the work to J. S. Bach, but several anomalies raise the possibility that this, like a number of other compositions and arrangements of uncertain origin, was in fact the product of one or more pupils, possibly carrying out the adaptation with the composer's authorization or assistance for concert use during the latter's last decade or two. If so, BWV 1044 would be a further document for Bach's collaborations of various sorts in his later years. The two presenters propose a complete performance of BWV 1044 (with five string players), preceded by talks illustrated by performances of related music including the prelude BWV 894/1 and a reconstruction of the trio movement BWV 527a/2. The talks will consider the sources of the works in question, especially the significance of manuscript copies by Agricola and Johann Bernhard Bach (for BWV 894), as well as musical relationships between the surviving versions of all three movements. In addition, the treatment of the flute in BWV 1044 will be considered in relation to other parts for that instrument by Bach and his pupils.

Russell Stinson - VI VARIIERTE CHORÄLE für die Orgel von J. S. BACH für das Pianoforte zu vier Händen eingerichtet: A Lost Source from the Mendelssohn Circle Recovered

This paper focuses on a neglected Bach source from the early nineteenth century that I will connect to Felix Mendelssohn and his circle. The source in question is a print evidently from around 1831 containing six organ chorales composed by or attributed to Bach (BWV 654, 620a, 740, 614, 622, and 659) and transcribed for piano, four hands. According to the thematic catalogue of Bach's oeuvre prepared by Franz Hauser (1794-1870), the transcriber is Johann Nepomuk Schelble, a good friend of Mendelssohn's who also served as director of the Caecilienverein in Frankfurt. Mendelssohn alludes to Schelble's print in a letter from 1832 that was published for the first time in 2009. It is addressed to Marie Catherine Kiéné of Paris. In this missive, Mendelssohn informs Madame Kiéné that he has just copied out for her two of his "favorite chorales" by Bach, arranged by someone other than himself as piano duets. To judge from how Mendelssohn described one of these works to Madame Kiéné and knowing what we do about his Bach repertory at the time, he copied out Schelble's transcriptions of "Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele," BWV 654; and "Wir glauben all an einen Gott, Vater," BWV 740. I will consider Schelble's transcription methodology as well as the various biographical issues that the letter raises, and I will incorporate a recording of Schelble's transcription of "Schmücke dich." I hope to shed light not only on Bach reception in the nineteenth century, with special respect to the practice of piano transcription, but also on Mendelssohn's life during his grand tour of Europe.