As a celebration of Labor Day weekend — as if we needed an excuse — here is one of the finest musical pieces ever created, the “Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor” (BWV 582) by Johann Sebastian Bach, as performed by Hans-Andre Stamm on the Trost organ of the Stadtkirche in Waltershausen.
The pipe organ is the most sublime technological achievement of the human mind, and the Passacaglia and Fugue provides an appropriate demonstration of what can be accomplished with it:
The two movements appear seamless, and not just because they were written in the same key. The portentous bass-dominated Passacaglia gives way naturally to the more rapid cadences of the Fugue, with its magnificent climax.
A commenter named Matthew Pearson notes:
The organ was the most complex machine on earth from the lifetime of Bach until the 19th century when the telephone exchange supplanted it. This organ is by Trost and has 47 speaking stops, and 6 transmissions. There is no definitive record of Bach playing this organ but he very likely did, and he had played others by Trost and praised the sound of the instruments.
So the organ is a supreme achievement of man.
The composition is nothing less than a revelation of the eternal.
At the end of most of J.S. Bach’s scores was the initials SDG, (Soli Deo Gloria, “To God alone be glory”). The wellspring of his creativity was his Lutheran faith. Something that gets very little mention, if any mention at all, in modern history books about his life and works.
Many thanks. As a Protestant Christian, I get so tired of the twanging of guitars and trite lyrics that mark so many of our services. My tastes run to either a cappella psalmody or the great Lutheran hymns with which Bach did so much.
Thank you. It’s like taking a bath for the soul.
Gorgeous! One of the glories of Christianity has ever been its music.
If my memory serves me well, Oswald Spengler (Decline of the West) cited the organ as the instrument that best expressed Western man’s Faustian spirit. My guess is he’d have put the Space Shuttle in the same bracket.
I was contemplating the tremendous joy music brings us and how recent it is to have it available on command. Back in Bach’s day, there were no easily played ‘recordings’ for mass consumption. To hear this piece, as played, one had to travel to this venue. Think about the miniscule number of people who had the good fortune and pleasure to hear anything performed by Bach, himself. Or, consider how so few heard any of the great classical composers perform live . . .and then imagine the logistics required to gather, house, feed and host such performances during an age before electricity and modern conveniences for the discriminating and privileged elite. I cannot imagine being deprived from hearing these classics. We are very fortunate. Thank you.
DANKE für diese Musik…HERRLICH
to be authentic in German
Actually I have seen the impact classical and sacred music can have in particular on veiled females. If there is a way to solve the problems peacefully it will be trough music.
What is the attitude of the progressive left towards classical music? is it dead old white men’s stuff, or seen as something positive?
I’m interested… what impact does classical music have on veiled females and how does it manifest itself? Thank you.
Thank you, Baron! I enjoyed the Passacaglia so much I teed up Herr Stamm’s performance of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) on the same Trost organ immediately thereafter from the playlist. It is by far my favorite Bach organ piece, one that I have always wanted as the prelude to my funeral service. The Passacaglia would be a close second. Stamm seems to fall into the Virgil Fox “Power Organ” camp. What a lovely way to end my day.
Try the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C. The Adagio is one of the very greatest pieces ever written, though I prefer it a little slower than Herr Stamm plays it. And the Fugue is one of the most joyful things Bach ever wrote.
Abel Gance’s classic silent film “Napoleon” (bear with me!) has a copyright problem; there is a dispute, as I understand it, as to which of two parties owns the rights. I have the US edition, by Coppola’s Zoetrope studios, which has a score by his father Carmine.
In the UK, we have a longer print edited by Kevin Brownlow, which was on tv in the 1990s and is occasionally shown live with orchestra. The (in my opinion) superior score is arranged by Carl Davis; he uses c18th composers for the Ancien Regime, and Beethoven for Napoleon, but Saint-Just (played by Gance) gets the C minor Passacaglia.
I asked Davis why (excuse name-dropping) and he said it was to portray Saint-Just’s implacability. But you can’t get it on dvd because of the wretched dispute!
Slightly off- topic, but I hope interesting- wonderful piece!