JS Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor

[The Real MC]

Very good performance, and very neat camera work showing how a real pipe organ is played.  I wished I had learned to play organ and pedals when my piano teacher offered to teach me when I was young, I started to enjoy listening to stuff like this when I was 30.  I envy musicians who can play bass pedals without looking at their feet!!!
 

 

[Old No7]

Cool.  That hit my YouTube feed recently too -- just gave it a listen & look here now.

 

(For those who didn't see my post months ago, I once sat INSIDE the pipe room of the oldest 3 manual pipe organ in New England -- while the Priest played this -- as that was my reward for helping him tune the hundreds of pipes in that beast.)

 

WOW.  Loved it, thanks!  That was one of the best renditions of this I've ever heard -- or seen.  The Cathedral and the organ are both beautiful, and she's rather easy on the eyes as well.

 

(But no fair -- she had a helper to pull the stops?  Have never seen that done before... I guess he gets a pass with the keyboard tie...)

 

Old No7

[The Real MC]

3 minutes ago, Old No7 said:

(But no fair -- she had a helped to pull the stops?  Have never seen that done before...

 

That organ is very old, probably pre-dating piston actuators at the feet to change registrations.  Combined with mechanical coupling, your digits had to be pretty strong.

Remember, pipe organs during the baroque era required humans pedaling compressors to pump air into the pipes..!!!

[KuruPrionz]

My brother brought home an album when I was about 14 that had an excellent performance of this piece on a vintage European pipe organ in a lush sounding cathedral. 

Always loved this music, still do. It's been decades since I heard it, I played the entire piece.

 

Thanks for sharing!

[bfields]

I'll never be a real organist, but just once I want to sit at one of those things and play a really big cadence and listen to it reverberate.  That's gotta be a feeling.

[Old No7]

15 hours ago, The Real MC said:

 

That organ is very old, probably pre-dating piston actuators at the feet to change registrations.  Combined with mechanical coupling, your digits had to be pretty strong.

Remember, pipe organs during the baroque era required humans pedaling compressors to pump air into the pipes..!!!

 

Interesting info, thanks for sharing.

 

If I recall, the "bellows" of the pipe organ I helped tune was 12' x 12' square and was in a room of its own below the main pipe room.  The 64-footer, of course, wasn't in the room -- it sure took a lot of air too.

 

Old No7

[Lindaru]

Bagpipes and pipe organs absolutely fill my soul!  This piece filled my soul.

The closest I ever got was 17 when I was taking classes to become a youth minister waiting for the minister to show up to take my classes.

I wandered up to the church organ and was playing (not really well but it was fun) Inagaddadavida.  I wish I had thought of playing this piece.  The closest I got to this was a short clip I played on my Roland E-16 and put on a pod-cast Halloween opening for a show.  I did a great job narrating the clip in Edgar Allen Poe meets Vincent Price.

😱

 

[timwat]

Ahhh. The D minor. I first heard it as a child, in Fantasia. Later, in Rollerball. Learned the piano adaptation in classical lessons.

 

But it was an entirely different, very emotional experience hearing it in person on pipe organ at College Church in Wheaton, IL. 

 

Very moving, and brought me to tears.

 

For me, the beauty of the fugue is unsurpassed, and the opening majesty and austere grandeur of the Toccata provides the preamble to that masterwork. 

[timwat]

An older reading, from E. Power Biggs. As I'm not classical music expert, I always find interesting the various phrasing and tempo decisions different musicians make.

 

 

[CyberGene]

It's funny (actually kind of sad too) Bach is most widely known for exactly this work (Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565) while its authorship has been seriously disputed by modern Bach scholars. I still love it though.

 

My favorite Bach organ work is the Fantasy and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537:

 

[mate stubb]

I used to have the Toccata and Fugue under my fingers (and toes.) Back when I was an organ student it was one of the first pieces I learned. I had the finger chops already from years of piano study, but pedals were a whole new thing.

 

It's not the most difficult show piece i learned, but the hard thing for me was controlling my excitement when the fugue builds near the end, because I would try to go off to the races.

 

The other two show pieces I could play well were the Widor Toccata and the Mulet Tu Es Petra, which was the most technically challenging of the three. The Widor was an endurance test - fast never ending arpeggios until your hand cramped.

 

My favorite organ piece (which I never mastered before quitting music school for rock and roll) is Bach's 5 part St. Anne's Fugue. When the pedal reenters carrying the melody near the end with the 32' stops pulled... I still get goose bumps thinking about those late night practice sessions on a fine organ in an empty church.

[Floyd Tatum]

I love this piece!  I used to have the E Power Biggs record, too.

 

Lindaru, I can just picture the minister coming over and asking you....

 

Minister:  " That's an interesting piece, Lindaru.  What's it called?"

Lindaru: "Innagoddadavida, minister."

Minister: "Innagodda....   wha-wha_whaaaat?"

 

This thread calls to mind the harpsichord one.   A lot of digital pianos and synths have pipe organ patches.   Listening to, and looking at this, you really have to ask,  Why Bother? 

[niacin]

10 hours ago, mate stubb said:

The other two show pieces I could play well were the Widor Toccata and the Mulet Tu Es Petra, which was the most technically challenging of the three. The Widor was an endurance test - fast never ending arpeggios until your hand cramped.

 

I had much the same experience as you with the Bach Toccata and the Widor (which I played for an end of term recital in high school in the small school chapel), but this is enlightening: it's not supposed to sound like a runaway merry-go-round 🤣:

 

 

 

 

[niacin]

As far as keyboard porn goes you can have your synths, this is it for me:

[Spider76]

13 hours ago, CyberGene said:

It's funny (actually kind of sad too) Bach is most widely known for exactly this work (Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565) while its authorship has been seriously disputed by modern Bach scholars.

Hahaha, things that happen when a piece was written centuries ago.

Like Fur Elise, that most probably wasn't written for any "Elise" at all.

 

Or probably the most famous example, Albinoni's Adagio...which has nothing to do with Albinoni and is a hoax from centuries later!

[niacin]

14 hours ago, CyberGene said:

It's funny (actually kind of sad too) Bach is most widely known for exactly this work (Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565) while its authorship has been seriously disputed by modern Bach scholars. I still love it though.

I’d never heard this so went searching, Wikipedia has a useful summary that includes the following: 

 

It has been deemed too simplistic for it to have been written down by Bach, and too much a stroke of genius to have been composed by anyone else but Bach. 🤣

 

and this: 

 

In his 1999 Bach biography, Klaus Eidam devotes a few pages to the Toccata and Fugue. He considers it an early work, probably composed for testing the technical qualities of a new organ. He feels that the crescendo that develops through arpeggios, gradually building up to the use of hundreds of pipes at the same time, can show exactly at what point the wind system of the organ might become inadequate. In his view, some of the more unusual characteristics of the piece can be explained as resulting from Bach's capacity as an organ tester.

 

I’m gonna second this. On the occasions i sat down at a church organ I hadn’t played before BWV565 was always my ‘let’s see what this thing can do’ go to 😎

[CyberGene]

@niacin I'm no Bach scholar but he is my favorite composer and I started my piano journey as a kid when I heard Bach for the first time and it was a love from first listen. For the first few years I played and listened ONLY to Bach, all day long 😀 With that in mind, I also tend to believe the BWV 565 might be an early piece by Bach because he also has a book of early keyboard toccatas that are kind of simplistic and not very typical of his later output, so he was not always about complication. Everything is possible. But I can also believe it's not his work and frankly I would be even somehow relieved because there are moments in it that I find slightly cheesy 😀 That being said, as a kid I used to love it and had memorized the entire piano transcription of it. Nowadays I rarely listen to it though and might be able to play only the toccata by heart.

[EscapeRocks]

Way back when I lived in Arizona, I had a friend who's dad was the MD and Organist for a church that had a beautiful Pipe Organ

LOUD, and booming.

 

We went there one day and his dad let me play it.   I don't think he was prepared to hear Green Onions bouncing off the walls and stained glass.    It was really cool for this then 19 year old to feel that power under my fingers.

 

[allan_evett]

I all but grew up at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Park Ridge, IL. Though my first memories of organ music there were from an advanced, Allen Organ (One of their first digital models, I recall), the eventual replacement instrument was a Jaeckel pipe organ.  I attended the dedication concert, which was inspiring to say the least. When I spoke with David Schrader, the resident organist, he clued me in to the history and design concepts of Dan Jaeckel’s instruments. 

 

I haven’t formally studied organ, though I did cover a church organ gig for three years, in the early 2000s. I was a part-time piano accompanist/MD for an area Lutheran church, and the organist for the traditional service had retired - with no one to replace her.  Though my self-taught pedal chops were very basic, the gig was offered and I gradually grew into it.  Unfortunately that wasn’t on a pipe organ, though I have messed a little with one or two of those. And man, the energy I felt under my hands was slightly reminiscent of the high-powered 1975 Pontiac Grand Am I owned during college. Heady stuff!

 

I was listening to THEO - Jim Alfredson’s album - earlier this week. This thread reminded me of a ‘making of’ video he posted:

 

 

[stoken6]

On 2/1/2023 at 7:12 PM, Lindaru said:

I wandered up to the church organ and was playing (not really well but it was fun) Inagaddadavida. 

 

14 hours ago, Floyd Tatum said:

Lindaru, I can just picture the minister coming over and asking you....

 

Minister:  " That's an interesting piece, Lindaru.  What's it called?"

Lindaru: "Innagoddadavida, minister."

Minister: "Innagodda....   wha-wha_whaaaat?"

 

This thread is not complete without: 

Cheers, Mike

 

[ksoper]

Regarding the OP, that's a lovely performance. It's hard to take a piece as worn out as the D minor and make it sound fresh but she does it. That instrument must've been a bear to play.  

 

I may have posted this before.  It's the only existing video of me playing a pipe organ.  I was really out of practice and a close friend asked me to play her wedding, some time in the early 2000s. I didn't want to but she insisted. The organ is a tracker so this is about as fast as I could play it and it's pretty clammy. 

 

 

[Old No7]

1 hour ago, stoken6 said:

 

 

This thread is not complete without: 

<In the Garden of Eden>

Cheers, Mike

 

 

Video of the week!!! Luv it.

 

I used to play Phantom of the Opera Overture whenever I got near a pipe organ -- that's a great one too!

 

Old No7

[Floyd Tatum]

Re:  The Simpsons - In The Garden Of Eden:

 

"Wait a minute, that sounds like Rock and/or Roll" !    Haaa-Haa

 

[Lindaru]

55 minutes ago, ksoper said:

Regarding the OP, that's a lovely performance. It's hard to take a piece as worn out as the D minor and make it sound fresh but she does it. That instrument must've been a bear to play.  

 

I may have posted this before.  It's the only existing video of me playing a pipe organ.  I was really out of practice and a close friend asked me to play her wedding, some time in the early 2000s. I didn't want to but she insisted. The organ is a tracker so this is about as fast as I could play it and it's pretty clammy. 

<Widor Toccata>

 

I loved that!  You did great!

 

1 hour ago, stoken6 said:

 

 

This thread is not complete without: 

<In The Garden Of Eden The Simpsons>

 

Yes, Mike!  That was great!

 

 

16 hours ago, Floyd Tatum said:

I love this piece!  I used to have the E Power Biggs record, too.

 

Lindaru, I can just picture the minister coming over and asking you....

 

Minister:  " That's an interesting piece, Lindaru.  What's it called?"

Lindaru: "Innagoddadavida, minister."

Minister: "Innagodda....   wha-wha_whaaaat?"

 

This thread calls to mind the harpsichord one.   A lot of digital pianos and synths have pipe organ patches.   Listening to, and looking at this, you really have to ask,  Why Bother? 

I think if he would have asked, I would have said that it translated to "In God There Is Life".  🤣
 

[Floyd Tatum]

45 minutes ago, Lindaru said:

I think if he would have asked, I would have said that it translated to "In God There Is Life".  🤣

Wow - a quick thinker, huh?

 

I'm pretty sure 17-year-old me in that situation would have replied  "uuhhh...."  🤪

[Radagast]

On 1/31/2023 at 9:47 PM, The Real MC said:

 

That organ is very old, probably pre-dating piston actuators at the feet to change registrations.  Combined with mechanical coupling, your digits had to be pretty strong.

Remember, pipe organs during the baroque era required humans pedaling compressors to pump air into the pipes..!!!

 

Pipe organs also have thumb pistons below the manuals.  I noticed them and wondered why someone was “helping” with the registration changes.  The man who was helping clearly pressed one of the thumb pistons below one of the manuals.

[Radagast]

14 hours ago, niacin said:

As far as keyboard porn goes you can have your synths, this is it for me:

Don’t forget the table for it and the pedals and the bench.

[mate stubb]

My fave "naughty" piece to play on pipe organ was always "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken."