Bach J. S.: Organ Favourites

Wolfgang

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Cat No: 8550184

Release Date: 12 January 2000

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 4891030501843

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BACH J. S.

Description
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)Organ FavouritesPrelude andFugue in E Flat Major, BWV 552Pastoralein F Major, BWV 590Toccata inD Minor, BWV 565Prelude andFugue in D Major, BWV 532Prelude andFugue in E Minor, BWV 548JohannSebastian Bach was a member of a family that had for generations been occupied in music.His sons were to continue the tradition, providing the foundation of a new style of musicthat prevailed in the later part of the eighteenth century. Johann Sebastian Bach himselfrepresented the end of an age, the culmination of the Baroque in a magnificent synthesisof Italian melodic invention, French rhythmic dance forms and German contrapuntal mastery.Born inEisenach in 1685, Bach was educated largely by his eldest brother, after the early deathof his parents. At the age of eighteen he embarked on his career as a musician, servingfirst as a court musician at Weimar, before appointment as organist at Arnstadt. Fouryears later he moved to Muehlhausen as organist and the following year became organist andchamber musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. Securing his release with difficulty, in1717 he was appointed Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Coethen and remained atCoethen until 1723, when he moved to Leipzig as Cantor at the School of St. Thomas, withresponsibility for the music of the five principal city churches. Bach was to remain inLeipzig until his death in 1750.As acraftsman obliged to fulfil the terms of his employment, Bach provided music suited to hisvarious appointments. It was natural that his earlier work as an organist and something ofan expert on the construction of organs, should result in music for that instrument. AtCoethen, where the Pietist leanings of the court made church music unnecessary, heprovided a quantity of instrumental music for the court orchestra and its players. InLeipzig he began by composing a series of cantatas for the church year, later turning hisattention to instrumental music for the Collegium Musicum of the University, and to thecollection and ordering of his own compositions.In LeipzigBach began work on his Clavieruebung,adopting the title from the work of a predecessor in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau. The third ofthe four volumes appeared in 1739 and consists very largely of organ music for theLutheran Mass. The collectionopens with an impressive and majestic Prelude in Eflat, and the whole collection ends with a fugue in the same key, known to theEnglish as the St. Anne Fugue because of the similarity of the subject to a well-knownAnglican hymn-tune of that name.The Pastorale in F major seems to have been written in1710 or thereabouts and belongs to the period when Bach was employed as organist atWeimar. It opens with an Italian-style pastoral movement, familiar from the Christmas Concerto of Corelli, and continues withthree further, apparently disparate movements for manuals only, with a sequence of keysthat is, at the very least, unusual.The famous D minor Toccata is an early work, probab
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