Release Date: 12 January 1999
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 730099462921
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: BACH, J.S.
Description
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685- 1750)Organ ChoralesBWV 714, 717-718, 720, 722, 724-725,733, 734-735, 737-738, 741Preludes and FuguesBWV 551, 533, 569, 575,Fantasia BWV 563 Johann Sebastian Bach was a member of a family that hadfor generations been occupied in music. His sons were to continue thetradition, providing the foundation of a new style of music that prevailed inthe later part of the eighteenth century. Johann Sebastian Bach himselfrepresented the end of an age, the culmination of the Baroque in a magnificentsynthesis of Italian melodic invention, French rhythmic dance forms and Germancontrapuntal mastery. Born in Eisenach in 1685, Bach was educated largely byhis eldest brother, after the early death of his parents. At the age ofeighteen he embarked on his career as a musician, serving first as a courtmusician at Weimar, before appointment as organist at Arnstadt. Four yearslater he moved to Muhlhausen as organist and the following year became organistand chamber musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. Securing his release withdifficulty, in 1717 he was appointed Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold ofAnhalt-C6then and remained at C6then unti11723, when he moved to Leipzig asCantor at the School of St. Thomas, with responsibility for the music of thefive principal city churches. Bach was to remain in Leipzig until his death in1750. As a craftsman obliged to fulfil the terms of hisemployment, Bach provided music suited to his various appointments. It wasnatural that his earlier work as an organist and something of an expert on theconstruction of organs, should result in music for that instrument. At Cothen,where the Pietist leanings of the court made church music unnecessary, heprovided a quantity of instrumental music for the court orchestra and itsplayers. In Leipzig he began by composing series of cantatas for the churchyear, later turning his attention to instrumental music for the Collegium musicumof the University, and to the collection and ordering of his own compositions. In 1705 Bach had visited Buxtehude in Lubeck, walkingthere on foot, anxious to hear the greatest organist of the older generationand perhaps interested in seeking to succeed him, something that would haveinvolved unacceptable marriage to Buxtehude's thirty-year-old daughter, an honourhe preferred to decline. The Prelude and Fugue in A minor are thought,on internal evidence, to pre-date this visit. The Prelude opens withscale-like figuration for the right hand, joined by the left in sixths andthirds, before the entry of the pedals, ending the opening and leading at once,in the twelfth bar, to the Fugue, its subject stated in the soprano,answered in the second soprano, followed by alto, tenor and finally bass, inthe pedals. A slower five-part passage leads to a second chromatic fugalsubject, starting with the descending notes of the tonic triad, beforeascending chromatically. The work is something in the early style of toccata,with its prelude, first f
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yang/Schwabe/Dt So/Wit
Wolf Harden
Wolf Harden
