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 events:

You can still see the organ recital from Friday, Oct 11, 7:30 pm 
@Third Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh
     watch on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/thirdchurch

picture at right from the piano recital (with friends) on September 29
piano dedication
                                            recital
pianonoise radio
The week's featured recording:


Redeuntes in La from Buxheimer Organ Book
(anon.) 




From the time of the Black Death comes one of the oldest organ pieces in existence. And with an opening that may remind you of something else!


It is a Dark and Stormy Night

 

I'm writing this on a night when the weather is most fowl, dark, and Novemberish, with more than a hint of gloom; wet, and cold. Fit for contemplation from a distance.

Fit for tales from the beyond.

Here's one I like to bring out for Halloween--a musical tale. It was written by someone long dead, and unidentified, intended to be played on the organ, that thunderous instrument that inspires terror in so many who dare not approach any building in which it may be housed, awe in those who do. Be prepared for the former reaction.

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If you live in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, the world is getting colder, the days are getting shorter, the trees will soon be nude and scraggly looking, and all manner of scary things that might happen will begin to seem more likely to happen. Maybe they were just waiting for the darkness to happen in.

What was that?!?

The sound behind you. Didn�t you hear it?

Ok, well, I heard it. You might want to be prepared. It sounded a little creepy. Just saying. Anyway, where was I?

 

�.there it is again.

Well, with whatever time you�ve got left, let�s share a story about some great composers and their not-so-great demises. The way they died. That�s what this season of fear is all about, isn�t it? All things horrible and �possibly fatal.


Read scary article

Today we get to watch a musicologist in action; that is, we shall read his comments and ourselves comment upon them. This is taken from page 558 of Peter Williams' "The Organ Music of J. S. Bach." Commenting upon the prelude and fugue in G minor, he writes of the prelude:

"Only on paper could evidence be found for regarding this movement as an "Italian Courante' (Dietrich, 1931); neither the form (A B A B) nor the figuration (one harmony per bar, decorated) is typical of any courante. Clearly the conventional cadence formulae have been well learnt (bb 16, 22, 36) and the last might easily have been a phrygian half-close had it been conventional for prelude to en in this way. As elsewhere in the Eight, simple one-bar sequences above a basso continuo are so prominent as almost to suggest that their composer was consciously creating a series of samples."


Indeed. 

Read blog
Who Really Wrote the 8 Little Preludes and Fugues?

(an investigative blog series)



part six
Thoughts upon a Toccata



here's something to keep you up at night: what if Bach didn't really write his most famous piece for organ?


I've recently made a recording of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which you can hear by clicking the blue title at the end of this article. You'll recognize the opening: it's one of the handful of classical pieces that everybody knows, or rather, that they know the first ten seconds of, anyway. It will probably also remind you of something right away, too. I'm thinking of a certain autumnal holiday this week. This isn't because Bach wrote the piece with that in mind, it is because somebody in Hollywood thought the piece sounded scary and decided to get some yardage out of it. It's been making the rounds of the scary movies ever since, and poor Bach doesn't get any royalties.

Then again, there are some people who don't think he even wrote the thing in the first place, so why should he? Now, when I first played the piece as a teenager I assumed what I was supposed to assume. The piece was Bach's and that's that. I was also introduced to a group of little preludes and fugues that it turns out Bach didn't write either and now that I am older and know something about Bach's music and have a more developed sense of musical quality I can certainly see why people have their doubts because the pieces aren't really that good. The pieces are pretty slight anyway, so what does it really matter?

But to cast doubt on the Toccata? Now that's shattering.


Read article