Js Bach's Greatest Organ Work?

[Guest Andrew Butler]

I can understand this - not many people find Roseanne Barr attractive....

 

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In the same city as Redcliffe (Angelina) one can find Roseanne......... http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N00975

[Colin Harvey]

Blimey. Difficult question. I love the e minor prelude and fugue BWV 548 - that's probably no.1 for me right now - but i also love 540, 542, 543, 546, 547, 552, 537, 538, 568... Much as I like 564 (T, A & F), I don't think it's the greatest he wrote.

 

I must be honest, I find Orgelbuchlein austere - there's a lot about death in those chorale preludes. In small does, it's wonderful but I can't listen to it from beginning to end.

 

I do love Clavierubung III right now. Just fabulous, especially Wir Glauben, Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, Jesu christus unser heiland, the duetti (strange but wonderful gems) and, of course, the prelude and fugue.

 

BTW, I've just found the Bach Gessellschaft for CU III on the internet at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/sco...42/cov2001.html. If you don't already ahve the Dover Facsimile, here you go...

[Vox Humana]

BTW, I've just found the Bach Gessellschaft for CU III on the internet at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/sco...42/cov2001.html. If you don't already ahve the Dover Facsimile, here you go...

Thanks for that link, Colin. Useful site; I see the sonatas, the Orgelbüchlein and the 18 are also available there.

 

Much (all?) of the Bach Gesellschaft is also available here: http://www.free-scores.com/free-sheet-musi...p?CATEGORIE=220 Clavierübung III is in three files on page 81. The Pachelbel files are well worth having too.

[Vox Humana]

In the same city as Redcliffe (Angelina) one can find Roseanne......... http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N00975

It looks like the Gt Principal and Swell Oboe may have replaced 16ft flue stops too!

[Jeremy Jones]

Blimey. Difficult question. I love the e minor prelude and fugue BWV 548 - that's probably no.1 for me right now - but i also love 540, 542, 543, 546, 547, 552, 537, 538, 568... Much as I like 564 (T, A & F), I don't think it's the greatest he wrote.

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It is quite a poser, really, made more difficult in that there is a world of difference between 'favourite' and 'greatest'.

 

Hence, my favourite work would probably be one from the Prelude & Fugue in B minor, the Fantasia in G or the Prelude & Fugue in E flat "St Anne". They are favourites because I was exposed to them at a young age - the first two on a tape of Richard Seal at Salisbury Cathedral (Meridian) and the St Anne because it made such an impression on me when I heard it played on my school's chapel organ.

 

As to greatest, O Mensch has to be right up there for sheer harmonic development: even now, it has the capacity to shock so think what impact it must have had in Bach's time.

[MusingMuso]

In the same city as Redcliffe (Angelina) one can find Roseanne......... http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N00975

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Nah, if it was Roseanne, everything would be below Double 'F'

 

 

MM

[Vox Humana]

Hmm... The P&F in B minor... today I'm thinking it's greater than the trio sonatas. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

[Pierre Lauwers]

Here is a link that shows between neo-baroque and Wurlitzer

there is something:

 

http://www.orgelrettung.de/hoerprobe/Air-J...astian-Bach.mp3 ( )

 

Pierre from his shelter

[MusingMuso]

Here is a link that shows between neo-baroque and Wurlitzer

there is something:

 

http://www.orgelrettung.de/hoerprobe/Air-J...astian-Bach.mp3 (     )

 

Pierre from his shelter

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Any self-respecting musicologist knows that Bach would almost certainly have played a Wurlitzer!

 

When Bach was alive, the Wurlitzer family business were in Germany busily making violins.

 

 

MM

[Pierre Lauwers]

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Any self-respecting musicologist knows that Bach would almost certainly have played a Wurlitzer!

 

When Bach was alive, the Wurlitzer family business were in Germany busily making violins.

 

 

MM

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Quite interesting!

Here it was a Sauer (Berliner Dom), nothing less.

Pierre

[MichaelDavidson]

I think that the original question is impossible to answer.

 

But ... if you asked me which of JSB's organ works I simply could not bear to be without, then it would have to be the A minor P&F BWV 543.

[John Sayer]

"I believe it is how we approach Bach which matters most. Was he simply a dry, dusty academic with a penchant for invertible counterpoint, or was he the man who could write some of the most beautiful melodies on earth?"

 

(Quote)

 

That is interesting, MM! excellent question.

We should all go to Waltershausen in order

to try some things on the Trost organ with six

(6) 8' flues on the HPTW and "No Plenum" according

to Stephen Bicknell.

 

Best wishes,

Pierre

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Interesting indeed, but a very quirky organ, as is also its smaller sister of a few years later at Altenburg. Trost was experimenting with all sorts of outlandish pipe constructions - a Geigen-Principal with extraordinarily keen stringiness, pipes with double languids, siamesed pipes (a twin rank with a common pipe wall), big flutes, undulating stops etc - at the expense, some would say, of a decent, traditional plenum. The HW chorus with Mixtura 8fach (with 5 1/3 and 3 1/5) is pretty overbearing and palls very quickly. And the mechanical side is equally eccentric, with miles of wind trunking and cumbersome actions running in all directions - not at all easy to play sensitively. I suspect Trost's style was very much a 18cent byway.

 

Neither Waltershausen nor Altenburg is a patch on Hildebrandt's roughly contemporary masterpiece at St Wenzel, Naumburg - the sound is quite stunning. For my money it beats Silbermann at Freiburg Dom and Dresden Hofkirche for sheer magnificence.

 

JS

[Pierre Lauwers]

Indeed, but Bach himself liked and praised Trost organs...

So what we may think of them today we should forget sometimes.

The "outlandish" was not really so; these experimental features

were introduced by Casparini in Germany when he came back from

Italy.

Mind you, what does happen when you try to gather, in the same organ,

dark old-fashion german Prinzipals and light, singing Principale?

The very beginning of the differentiation of aequal voices....And

the train was already riding towards....Towards?

 

My two cent/ Pence: maybe Waltershausen could learn us more about

Bach than many a 20th century neo-baroque organ limited to Gedackts,

Quintadenas, Flutes from 4', Prinzipals, Mutations, Trumpets and Regals

and nothing more ("Light standard menu")...

 

Best wishes,

Pierre

[sprondel]

... Trost was experimenting with all sorts of outlandish pipe constructions - ... pipes with double languids ...

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I was under the impression that double-languid pipes were a development of the Willis family -- didn't Vincent Willis provide a small army of these stops for Atlantic City?

 

In case of Trost, I think he sometimes worked with double mouths rather than double languids. Anyway, it would be great to be left alone with the Waltershausen Trost for a day or two and try it out for colour and with different pieces of repertoire.

 

Best,

Friedrich

[Vox Humana]

Neither Waltershausen nor Altenburg is a patch on Hildebrandt's roughly contemporary masterpiece at St Wenzel, Naumburg - the sound is quite stunning.  For my money it beats Silbermann at Freiburg Dom and Dresden Hofkirche for sheer magnificence.

I have never heard any of these in the flesh, but, if the recorded sound is anything to go by, I have to agree. I'm heretic enough to admit that I've never understood all the fuss about Silbermann organs. But Naumburg: wow!

[John Sayer]

I was under the impression that double-languid pipes were a development of the Willis family -- didn't Vincent Willis provide a small army of these stops for Atlantic City?

 

In case of Trost, I think he sometimes worked with double mouths rather than double languids. Anyway, it would be great to be left alone with the Waltershausen Trost for a day or two and try it out for colour and with different pieces of repertoire.

 

Best,

Friedrich

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Quite right - my mistake. I meant double mouths rather than double languids (my mistranslation of 'doppelt labiert' as in Trost's Flöte Dupla 8). I had 2-3 hours at Walterhausen last May, courtesy of the organist Theophil Heinke, a most obliging man. Fascinating though the organ undoubtedly was, it didn't have, for me, the integrity, the inspirational quality, and sheer 'wow factor' of Naumburg.

 

JS

[biggestelk]

As a limited player I can just about get through the manual parts of the double F major fugue (540) and am waiting for my toaster to arrive so I can learn the feet! I also find most recordings of this too fast, but perhaps the learning and appreciation is better at a slower speed, then let it out when you can detach yourself as a performer?

If I had single out one single piece (other than the Trios) for me it is Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (BWV 659). Exquisite! (I'm sure Bach would be a great Jazz composer if he were around today.....)

Regards,

Oliver.

[J Maslen]

I've been reading the posts on this one, thinking long and hard - and like many of you, I cannot answer the question. I love the F Major T&F, the P&F in G Major, the Passacaglia and F, the Fantasia and F in min - the list goes on. I think the greatness of Bach is that he wrote so much that is wonderful to play, to listen to, to marvel at. Some - 'O mensch' for example - quiet, slow, almost unbearably beautiful, others - perhaps the T&F I mentioned above - thrilling. The wonder, for me, is that one mind could produce both - that is true greatness. What a man.

 

Regards to all.

 

John.