Organs......

.....aren't they amazing pieces of engineering........

Ok, striclty this is OT but figure it sat here better than anywhere else.......

This is purely and observation having spent time up on high on the balcony with the local church organist whilst sorting out tunes for our impending wedding.

I spent more time wondering at the pipes / bellows etc than i did choosing the music.......

Amazing engineering - and you have to be some bizarre form a ballet dancer to play the things!

Strictly speaking not my type of music at all, i simply could not help but be amazed by the beast - i'm told the highest / lowest notes the local pipes can put out can only be heard by dogs / elephants respectivley.......

I'll take my anorak and go now!....

 

Damn right they do - awesome things.

And then there's Toccata in fugue or however it's spelt...

Or the one on "Give out but don't give up" by Primal Scream.

Hearing a decent cathedral one is something though - I vaguely remember hearing the York Minster one in 1984 at the age of 9; we visited in October half term - about 2 months before the place burnt down...

 

LOL - toccata and fuge (fink its spelt summat like that )
is our choice of music for leaving the ceremony........i kid you not....

 

Good taste that man!

 

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV565:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccata_and_Fugue_in_D_Minor

Probably the best known of Bach's organ works, indeed of any organ work. He wrote a number of toccatas and fugues. There has been some controversy as to whether it actually is Bach, but most opinion holds that it is.

 

A touch melodramatic for a Wedding?

 

Excellent choice, I'd say - I could definitely see people walking out to the fugue in particular. Makes a change from fecking Widor, anyway.

Organs are pretty cool things though - but organists and serious fans of organ music (the Venn diagram pretty much looks like a circle IME) are a breed apart.

 

Well, we certainly are. There is a very funny book called Bluffing your way in music. There is plenty of good (and extremely funny) advice. But the author says something like this about us: they are a breed apart, their partitions have more comments and footnotes than any other; they have huge and powerful instruments yet they insist on playing endless fugues from mouldy books. And he ends more or less like this: never mess with organists; they are dangerous.

 

Is it so? (this is an honest question, there is no irony involved).
I just think most people take it for Bach just because it is very beautiful and there is really no one to whom one can attribute. But several persons (Peter Williams, for one) claim that it is not Bach.

Now, personally, I always thought it was not Bach at all: the counterpoint is different, even their harmonic sounds odd, and the writing style is most definitely not Bach. Even the way the fingers are positioned on the keyboards is different.

There is an interesting parallel with the 6 small preludes and fugues (the ones one gets in the 5th grade and make one feel one is playing Bach ): they are certainly not by Bach but, oddly enough it took ages for interpreters to acknowledge that. They have been attributed to some pupil, now (I do not remember who it is).

 

I'd say playing the TF d minor is a very ominous beginning in a marriage: all that drama and, above all, the tragic end!! But it may be just the thing... No offense meant. I know how newlyweds are susceptible.

 

An old favourite of mine, and I had it in mind when I made my post above. Details here for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure.

 

Mahler
It was suddenly realised that Mahler had not written big long boring symphonies of the Brahms type which you have to listen to carefully from beginning to end in order not to miss the themes, but had, in fact, simply strung together hundreds of attractive little tunes, and it was possible to go into a coma for a lot of the symphony and still get involved when you came to again.

This is a beauty!

 

Maybe they're planning leaving the Church on roller-skates being towed by a couple of motorcycles?

P.S

Can anyone guess the reference?

 

Gents - many thanks for the comments ref our choice of tune - we had wanted to steer clear of the std wedding fodder so the organist pulled a few things out, the fuge included. Er indoors thought it would be good to come in to - i put my foot down (brave of me i know, especially as the organists gallery is samll and about 20ft above the church floor) and said it was a bit too tongue in cheek to come into, though why not for the exit......! no offence but i think i'll give the rollerskates and motorbikes a miss on the way out - though Mum and her fella will be rolling up on his aged / much loved Gold Wing.......BTW i'm presuming the reference is Rollerball?

Cant rememeber what the entrance music is but its not one of the standards thats for sure...
the backround tunes whilst signing my life away is something to do with 8 (?) Pieces for wallclocks (or some timepiece)............

Chris

edited my atrocious spelling...

 

You'd naturally know much better than I would, ol' bean, but I had the impression that, although there was a reasonable body of opinion that held that Bach didn't write it, most of the organ world held that he did. Of course, this might just be the way of avoiding having to look for the actual writer! A sort of musical version of George Bernard Shaw's settling of the issue of who really wrote Shakespeare's plays: "Shakespeare's plays were not written by Shakespeare, but by another writer of the same name."

 

Dear Tones:
As the French saying goes, 'on ne prête qu'aux riches', that is, one only lends to those who are rich. The TF in d is one of the most flamboyant organ pieces ever (but Buxtehude is often even more flamboyant) and it stems from the Bach circle. However, even if is so uncharacteristic of Bach, it is so striking that it seems probable that when it was noticed people said: that can only be Bach's!

I am firmly convinced it is not Bach. It has almost none of his characteristics and, what is more, the only piece remotely similar is the Chromatic Fantasy which is, again, quite different and does have the Bach touch.

It is curious that the recent release of the 2nd edition of Peter Williams Organ Bach Works again states that in all probability it is not by Bach. I have had this doubt from from youth but it became almost a certainty the first time I tried to play it (it is surprisingly easy). When one plays a certain kind of music for a reasonable time one gets the mood very quickly and, what is more, one's hand recognizes positions, turns, in a word, patterns. They are all absent from the TF. They are very different from Bach's and even more from Buxtehude's.

I don't know who composed it. His son Friedeman, perhaps?

 

Toccata and Fugue in d-minor

To me the idea of the Fugue of the TF initially being a violin piece maybe by old Bach (as demonstrated by Andrew Manze in his excellent recording - open strings, many solo part passages) seems very probable, and the idea that old Bach arranged it for organ very probable too. The Fugue - at least - has got some elements of old Bachs motorical writing (compare the first movement of the d-minor Harpsichord Concerto or the first movement of the Third Brandenburg Concerto). And afterwards old Bach composed the Toccata, which is thematically derived from the Fugue in a way very few others mastered. The only problem with this explanation is, that the TF stylistically is a work from around 1740-50 and that Bach probably didn't compose in that style at that time (the same problem with the Eight small Preludes and Fugues , which artistically though are much inferior to the TF). But it might be a work from his youth, which he reworked and perhaps added the Toccata later. It will forever stay a problem for those, who deny Bachs autorship to the TF, that no other known composer has written anything alike. So it is Bach or an anonymous composer. But is it likely, that a composer writing like this would stay anonymous? Well, maybe he died young. But for Bachs autorship in one way or another counts also, that it was attributed to him in the post-Bach circle.

 

Seeing as we seem to have a number of avid organ lovers here, I am surprised there has been no discussion of this topic:

http://www.pipes4organs.org/

Unless of course I missed it!

 

Dear PeZulu:

The idea that if might be a transcription of a violin piece was stated first, if I am not mistaken, but Peter Williams. He restates that possibility in the 2nd edition of 'The Organ Music of JS Bach'.

He suggests that Kellner or Rinck might have composed it. Rinck was famous for his counterpoint improvisations.

But I agree: Who would have composed that and stayed anon?

The 8 small PFs are clearly composed in a later style: the harmony is different (for instance, Bach would never have composed the F major prelude), the cadences completely different (the end of the pedal solo in the prelude in G).

I am firmly convinced it is not a JSBach work. But then whose work is it? As Tones implied, a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet...

 

This is rather odd, but I take it some way out will be found. It is impossible to ban organ building (or so I hope!). This really is ludicrous.