complete Bach for free

[Mark Taylor]

I have just found this site on which James Kibbie has provided Bach’s complete organ works for download; either as single pieces (MP3 or AAC), or in groups as compressed files.

 

There is an interesting selection of organs:

Dresden, Kathedrale - Gottfried Silbermann, Zacharias Hildebrandt and others, 1755

Rötha, Georgenkirche - Gottfried Silbermann, 1721

Rötha, Marienkirche - Gottfried Silbermann, 1722

Großengottern, St. Walpurgis - Tobias Heinrich Gottfried Trost, 1717

Stade, Ss. Cosmae et Damiani - Behrendt Huß and Arp Schnitger, 1675

Stade, St. Wilhadi - Erasmus Bielfeldt, 1736

Waltershausen, Stadtkirche - Tobias Heinrich Gottfried Trost, 1724-1730

[John Robinson]

A belated thanks for this. I have just finished downloading ALL the pieces along with the organ specifications and details of stops used for each piece.

 

A marathon effort, yes, but certainly worth it.

[Contrabombarde]

And annoying they are encrypted (they show up as green text in Windwos Explorer).

 

Meaning apparently, that having spent hours downloading them recently, I have to download them all over again. My only sin was to backup my music onto portable disk whilst I reinstalled Windows for technical reasons over CHristmas. When I copied them back to my PC they refuse to play.

[John Robinson]

And annoying they are encrypted (they show up as green text in Windwos Explorer).

 

Meaning apparently, that having spent hours downloading them recently, I have to download them all over again. My only sin was to backup my music onto portable disk whilst I reinstalled Windows for technical reasons over CHristmas. When I copied them back to my PC they refuse to play.

 

Strange. I didn't have any problems. Did you 'download in groups'?

[Contrabombarde]

I downloaded the thirteen zip files, much as I love Bach I wasn't going to sit and download every single one of his works individually. When I reinstalled Windows I had copied all my music onto a portable disk (as you do) and back again to the hard drive, only to find none of the Kibbie files would play so I had to download them all over again. I subsequently used one of those free programs to convert them into mp3 format from whatever they originally came in, and that seems to have unencrypted them (they show as black and will play from a memory stick), though it's also increased the file size by around 30%! Strange; I can understand why artists would want to copy-protect their performance (though there are p[robably as many hackers with solutions to copy protection as there are artists trying to copy-protect themselves), but I don't recall seeing anything about copy protection on the website. Not that I had any intention of flogging them off, but when downloading files, I do like to know that if I have to reformat a hard drive, all my files will continue to work as before.

[John Robinson]

I'm not sure what caused all this, CB. Just sorry to hear of your problems.

 

It is, of course, expected that files will be much bigger when they have been unzipped.

 

I see nothing wrong with downloading and saving music files if they are for one's own use and there is no attempt to sell them or profit from them. (Now the Performing Arts Police - PAP - will be down on me like a ton of bricks!)

[Contrabombarde]

When I said it had increaed the file size by 30%, I meant the unzipped but somehow encrypted originals, once converted (slightly naughtily, some would doubtless say) into unencrypted MP3s ended up around 30% bigger than the M4A format into which they were recorded and downloaded. Obviously the unzipped folders were bigger than the unzipped originals (though not by much - zipping already compressed files won't reduce their size much but allows multiple files to be downloaded in a single folder) . I've not come across M4A before - can someone enlighten me about this particular file format and how it compares with say MP3 or WMA?

[John Robinson]

I'm afraid we're getting into territory that I don't fully understand here. I believe that when I downloaded and unzipped the files they appeared as m4a files which play correctly on my version of Windows Media Player (without the need to convert them to mp3).

[Justadad]

M4A is an Apple format and will play on Apple products but not necessarily on other digital audio players. I guess that the Apple format is a bit more efficient than MP3, hence the expansion on conversion. Either that, or it may be that in converting the files you've changed the detail/quality from, say 64 kbps to 128 kbps, which would also result in larger files sizes.

 

http://techtips.salon.com/convert-m4a-mp3-itunes-mac-10959.html refers.