We invite you to read through Michael Allsen’s program notes for the March 31st Organ Concert Series No. 4.
Program Notes
Johann Sebastian Bach as an Organist
We know Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) today as one of the supreme composers of the Baroque. However, his own day, Bach’s primary reputation was as a great organist, renowned throughout Germany for his phenomenal playing and for his skills as an improviser. At several points in his career, he was called on to consult with German churches on new organ projects.
Bach’s earliest professional position, at age 17, was in Weimar, at the court of Duke Johann Ernst III. Bach later described his position as a “court musician,” but the court records actually describe him as a “lackey”—low-ranking musicians were apparently also expected to perform more menial work. It is probably not surprising that Bach left Weimar after only six months to take a much more attractive position as a church organist in Arnstadt, where he worked from 1703-07. One of the prime influences on many of his early organ works was the style of his acknowledged master, Dieterich Buxtehude. In 1705, the 20-year-old Bach took a leave from his church position in Arnstadt to travel to Lübeck, where he hoped to study with Buxtehude. Many of his organ works over the next several years clearly show his admiration for Buxtehude’s music.
After serving in a second organ position in Mühlhausen (1707-08), Bach was lured back to Weimar. The court organist, Johann Effler, had finished extensive renovations to the organ in the Duke’s chapel, but his health was failing. Knowing Bach’s growing reputation as an organ virtuoso and as an expert on organ construction, Effler invited Bach to Weimar to inspect the instrument and play an inaugural recital for the Duke in June of 1708. Bach was immediately offered the position of court organist. (Don’t worry: old Johann Effler was able to retire comfortably, with his full salary!) By July 1708, Bach was in Weimar, where he would remain until 1717, eventually serving as Konzertmeister (music director). In his early years at Weimar, Bach concentrated primarily on keyboard works. The court chapel had a fine renovated organ, and the Duke was apparently a great fan of Bach’s organ works. According to Bach’s obituary, the Duke’s encouragement “fired him with the desire to try every possible artistry in his treatment of the organ.” Many of the 24 preludes and fugues later published as The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 were written there, as were all but three of the 46 Lutheran chorale preludes published in his Orgelbüchlein.
During the years 1717-1723, Bach served as Kapellmeister to the Cöthen court of music-loving Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Cöthen. Leopold’s musical establishment included a fine orchestra, and Bach was encouraged to create instrumental music in the latest style. Though he continued to perform on organ, much of his music from this period was secular. Half of the famous “Brandenburg” concertos were written for the Cöthen court, as was the lion’s share of Bach’s surviving orchestral music.
In 1723, Bach arrived in Leipzig to become Kantor at the Thomaskirche: a challenging position that involved not only leading the music at Leipzig’s central church but also supervising the music at all of the city’s main churches and teaching the boys at the city’s choir school. Bach threw himself into the position with tremendous vigor, most notably completing five annual cycles of cantatas for the Thomaskirche, some 300 works in all. By 1728, however, his enthusiasm for the weekly grind of work as Thomaskantor seems to have faded. That year, he became the director of the Leipzig collegium musicum, a group of amateur musicians who gave informal concerts in one of the city’s coffee houses. Bach clearly relished the chance to return to secular music-making, and he devoted much of his compositional energy to this group, writing new works, and adapting pieces he had written during his tenures in Cöthen and Weimar. At the same time, he also became more active as a recitalist. Though he was not employed specifically as an organist in Leipzig, Bach already had a reputation as one of Germany’s great organ virtuosos, and he occasionally played out-of-town concerts through the rest of his career. Though they are not well-documented, he probably gave public organ recitals in Leipzig as well, most likely on the relatively new organ at the Paulinerkirche. At least some of the masterful organ works he wrote late in his career, including the truly impressive Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548, composed sometime between 1727 and 1732 (and performed at these programs in 2023 by guest organist Ken Cowan) may have been written with these public concerts in mind.
Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543
The Prelude and Fugue in A minor seems to date either from Bach’s years as organist in Weimar, or from his early years in Leipzig a decade later, though its style shows a bit of his early fascination with Buxtehude. The Prelude begins with a winding, subtly chromatic line in the manuals, eventually joined by a long-held pedal. The pedals and manuals then begin to explore the opening material together, all the way through to a dramatic conclusion. The Fugue is set in 6/8, lending a dancing quality to this intensely complex work. In the opening exposition, the fugue subject is presented four times, lastly by the pedals. The fugue includes some long, chromatic episodes—typically passages without the fugue’s opening subject, though Bach subtly manages to work in fragments of this theme. The ending is dramatic: the writing for the manuals fades away, leaving the pedals exposed for a final showy passage. The work ends with a brilliant flourish from the manuals.
Prelude in B minor, BWV 855a (arr. Siloti/Widor)
The 48 preludes and fugues of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Books 1 and 2 were among Bach’s only well-known works in the period between his death and the revival of his music by Felix Mendelssohn and others in the early 19th century. Mozart, Beethoven, and many others avidly studied the “WTC” fugues as examples of masterful contrapuntal writing, and 19th-century pianists frequently adapted the emotional preludes. In 1722, Bach published WTC Book 1, 24 preludes and fugues in all 24 Major and minor keys, intended “for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.” WTC Book 2, a further collection of 24 preludes and fugues in all 24 keys, was published in1742. [NOTE: “Well-Tempered” is a reference to equal temperament, a tuning system that divides the octave into 12 exactly equal intervals. Without getting too far into the musicological weeds here, I’ll just say that it makes it possible to perform works in all 12 Major and minor keys. Though “Clavier” later came to be synonymous with the piano, a newly invented novelty in Bach’s time, he clearly used the word to mean any sort of keyboard instrument, including harpsichord and organ. – JMA] The Prelude in B minor, BWV 855a was originally written as part of the Prelude and Fugue No. 10 in E minor from WTC book 1. The Russian pianist Alexander Siloti (1863-1946) adapted it for piano, romanticizing the harmonies and phrasing a bit, and transposing the whole thing to the key of B minor. This quickly became a popular recital piece among pianists, and great French organist Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) subsequently published the organ adaptation of the B minor version heard here. [Greg: I hope I’ve reconstructed this correctly: I was unable to find publication dates for either the Siloti or Widor versions. Please let me know if I’ve got this wrong.] The musical form is eminently simple and effective: one hand plays a constant flow of 8th-note figuration, while the other performs a melancholy chordal melody.
Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564
This bravura work was probably written during Bach’s tenure at Weimar in the early 1710s. The Toccata begins with a couple of surprisingly hesitant opening gestures, before Bach launches boldly into an extended passage of winding, stop-and-start 32nd-note writing for manuals. But the real star of the show is the organist’s feet: showcased in a fierce passage for pedalboard alone and continuing throughout the denser closing section. Bach’s early years in Weimar saw a tremendous interest in the works of the latest Italian composers, particularly the concertos of Vivaldi (probably with the encouragement of the Duke himself). This was the period when Bach arranged several solo “organ concertos” cribbed from concertos by Vivaldi and others. It’s hardly surprising, then, that he should have inserted a slow movement—in the manner of an Italian concerto—into this showy organ solo. The Adagio features an expressive and lyrical line set above a relaxed strolling bass. At the end, he inserts a change of mood: a Grave section filled with suspensions and gnarly harmonies and eventually gives way to a glowing C Major chord. The closing Fugue is an energetic piece in 6/8, based upon a playful stop-and-start main subject that takes its cue from the opening Toccata. This is one of Bach’s most harmonically adventurous fugues, working its way to surprisingly distant keys before closing with an extended coda that returns to the texture of the Toccata.
Pedal-Excercitium, BWV 598
Siciliano from Flute Sonata in E-flat Major BWV 1031
“Little” Fugue in G minor, BWV 578
Next comes a set of three works, beginning with the slightly mysterious Pedal-Excercitium, BWV 598. It is not known exactly when or why Bach composed this t his “Pedal Exercise.” Like much of Bach’s music, it survives in a copy by someone else, in this case, by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788). Indeed, some authorities credit this brilliant little piece to C.P.E. Bach, rather than his father, though most seem to agree that Bach intended this work, which was probably initially an improvisation, as a practice piece for his son. What is clear is that Bach had some serious pedal chops. In 1732, for example, he visited Kassel, to test out and inaugurate a new organ at Saint Martin’s Church. (As Germany’s leading organist, he was frequently called on as an expert to check out newly installed or refurbished organs.) A local musician, Constantin Bellermann, wrote that Bach “ran over the pedals so quickly that his feet appeared winged, with a thundering fullness of sound, and penetrated the ears of the listeners like a bolt of lightning.” A “bolt of lightning” in fact describes this brief piece perfectly: it starts with a repeated figure and expands through multiple modulations to different keys in the course of about a minute and a half. Interestingly, the piece is in G minor, but ends on the “wrong” note, D—possibly as an invitation to the organist to improvise more!
Once again, the Flute Sonata in E-flat Major presents a bit of mystery: This is a piece whose date and attribution to Bach are both under question. There is clearly a strong case to be made that Bach composed this work for one of his Leipzig collegium musicum performances in the early 1730s. However, in a 1995 article, UW-Madison musicologist and Baroque flutist Jeanne Swack pointed to many similarities between this sonata and a Flute Sonata in E-flat Major by contemporary Prussian court composer Johann Joachim Quantz (1607-1773); she suggests either that BWV 1031 was also written by Quantz, or that Bach closely modeled it upon the Quantz piece. (The second possibility seems likely given his propensity to borrow his own and other composers’ music.) Whoever wrote this sonata, it is a masterful piece! At this program, we hear an adaptation for solo organ of the middle movement, a lovely Siciliano in G minor. This gently lilting rhythm was intended to conjure up pastoral associations in Baroque listeners. (Sicilianos, for example, are fixtures in the dozens of Italian “Christmas concertos”—where they stand for the shepherds of the Christmas story.)
An early work, Bach’s “Little” Fugue in G minor, BWV 578 (so-named to distinguish it from the slightly longer “Great” Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542) was composed sometime before 1707, when Bach was in Arnstadt, serving as organist in in the Neukirche (“new church”) there. Bach at age 18 had taken a position as musician at the court of Weimar, but he quickly found a better post at Arnstadt. A small city in central Germany, about 40 miles from Bach’s hometown of Eisenach, Arnstadt was a provincial and rather dull place at the time, but it proved to be a good initial position. Bach had a particularly fine new organ to work with and set about composing an impressive set of works for the instrument, including this famous fugue.
Air from the Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 (arr. S. N. Penfield)
The precise dates of composition for Bach’s four orchestral suites cannot be determined, but most scholars agree that they were probably written during the years 1717-1723, when Bach served as the Kapellmeister to the Cöthen court of Prince Leopold. The orchestral suites were probably written for musical programs at Cöthen, and reflect popular French style, a lengthy and rather pompous overture followed by a series of French courtly dances. The most famous section of the suites—and one of Bach’s most beloved melodies—is the Air from the Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068, often known as the Air on the G String. In the original, which seems to have been inspired by vocal style, it is a lovely violin duet above a quietly plodding bass. The Air is played here in an arrangement for solo organ by the great American 19th century organist Smith Newell Penfield (1837-1920).
Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
Bach was not a well-travelled or cosmopolitan musician: he spent virtually his entire professional career within about 125 miles of his hometown of Eisenach. The only long journey ever took was in 1705, when the 20-year-organist took a leave from his position in Arnstadt to walk some 280 miles north to Lübeck. Though he was not exactly AWOL from Arnstadt, when he finally returned, his employers complained that Bach had requested a four-week leave but stayed away for “about four times that long.” The reason for his trip was to meet and study with the greatest organist of the day, Dieterich Buxtehude, organist at Lübeck’s grand Marienkirche—a musician whom the young Bach seems to have admired above all others. Buxtehude’s music had a strong influence on the organ works Bach wrote over the next several years, including the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor heard here. There is no agreement on exactly when this work was written, other than it was composed early in his career: whether for one of his church positions at Arnstadt or Mühlhausen (1703-08), or when he served as court organist at Weimar (1708-17). This is a brilliant example of the intensely contrapuntal style Bach adapted from Buxtehude. The Passacaglia begins with the theme laid out in the pedals. This is then played 20 more times as the basis for increasingly imaginative variations. Along the way, the theme migrates from the pedals to the manual—and back again—and Bach introduces subtle quotations of hymn tunes that would have been recognized by his Lutheran listeners. This leads directly into a magnificently complex double fugue, in which both the main subject and more active countersubject are based upon the Passacaglia theme.
program notes ©2026 by J. Michael Allsen
To view current and past program notes, please visit Michael Allsen’s website.