Recently discovered Bach organ composition premieres in Montreal

During his career Joel Kuznik has served as a college organist and professor, a church musician, a pastor, and as a business executive on Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and at MetLife. After several years of retirement from business, he resumed writing for professional journals, something he had done since his college days. After attending the Bachfest 2003 in Leipzig, he again began writing articles and reviews. With over 60 pieces in print ranging from reviews of concerts and festivals, travelogues, books on church music, concert hall organs, CDs and DVDs, he was recognized and named to the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) in May 2005. He is also a member of the American Bach Society and serves on the board of the Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity in New York City, where he has lived for 32 years. His organ teachers were Austin C. Lovelace, Frederick Swann, Ronald Arnatt, David Craighead, Jean Langlais, Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier, and Anton Heiller. As a member of the AGO, he has served as dean of the Ft. Wayne chapter, on the executive board of the New York City chapter, and on the national financial board. He holds a BA summa cum laude from Concordia Sr. College (formerly at Ft. Wayne), a Min.Div and STM from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and a MM from Eastman School of Music.

Latest Bach manuscript discovery:
Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält, BWV 1128
The discovery of a Bach manuscript always raises curiosity and excites expectant interest. This latest work, an organ chorale fantasia just discovered in March, is a reminder that new revelations can come at any time from any source.
Bach’s copy of the Calov Bible was found in an attic in Frankenmuth, Michigan in 1934, but forgotten until after WWII, in 1962. More recently in 1999, after a 20-year detective hunt worthy of a spy mystery and with a tip from an East German librarian, Christian Wolff tracked down C.P.E. Bach’s estate, with 5,100 musical manuscripts, to Kiev. Originally in the Berlin State Library, the Russian army absconded with this treasure trove of manuscripts after the war. Included were works by Johann Sebastian, among which were his last work, a motet he apparently prepared for his own funeral.
In 2004 an aria by Bach was found in Weimar in a box of birthday cards among holdings of the Anna Amalia Library, just months before it was destroyed by fire. Two years later in 2006 from the same Weimar library, researchers also found Bach’s oldest manuscripts in his own hand: organ works by Buxtehude and Reinken he copied at the age of fifteen. Most recently in March of 2008, a newly discovered organ work was found in an estate sale in Leipzig, in a sense, right under the nose of the musicians at St. Thomas!
This is a double review. The first discusses the organ score and reveals a fascinating history of teacher-student transmission, estate sales, alert and not-so-alert librarians, savvy editors, guesswork and unanswered questions. Much like studies in genealogy, one can trace documented history back only so far and, in this case, only to the mid-nineteenth century, 100 years after Bach. The second review on the CD, featuring both the organ fantasia and the cantata based on the same chorale, was released on June 13, 2008 at the opening concert of the Leipzig Bachfest and shares Ullrich Böhme’s experience of studying and preparing a first performance of a Bach work. How many have had that opportunity!
Obviously this is not the end of the story. No doubt surprises and discoveries still await detection by sharp-sighted scholars and through pure serendipity.

Bach, Johann Sebastian, Choralfantasie für Orgel [2 Manuale und Pedal] über “Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält,” BWV 1128, First Edition, edited by Stephan Blaut and Michael Pacholke with a foreword by Hans-Joachim Schulze. 2008, Ortus Musikverlag, Kassel, 24 pp., €13.50; <www.ortus-musikverlag.de/&gt;.

Contents
Prologue by Schulze, musicologist and former director of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. Critical report on Source A (Halle, Martin Luther University, University-State Library of Sachsen-Anhalt, with signature) and Source B (Leipzig, Bach-Archiv, no signature) with score variants noted. Chorale melody from Wittenberg (1533, perhaps 1529) and eight-verse text by Justus Jonas (1493–1555) based on Psalm 124. Facsimiles of cover page and first page of musical score. Critical edition, based on Source A: 85 bars, pp. 1–9.

History
How is it that an organ work by Bach was just discovered and authenticated March 15, 2008 after it had passed through so many hands, including collectors, musicians, editors and auction houses?
According to Schulze’s foreword, this is what is known to date. The first public record of this chorale fantasia is 1845, almost 100 years after Bach’s death, listed among organ pieces by “Sebastian Bach” in the estate auction for Johann Nicolaus Julius Kötschau (1788–1845), once organist at St. Mary’s in Halle/Salle. According to public record, he acquired the pieces in an 1814 auction along with the “Clavier-Büchlein of Wilhelm Friedemann” (1720), Bach’s son and once an organist in Halle, who had passed the scores on to his distant relative and student Johann Christian (1743–1814), known as the “Clavier-Bach.” Kötschau, who apparently was reluctant to share his prize collection, eventually relented, first loaning it to Mendelssohn (1840) and then Leipzig publishers C. F. Peters (1843). However, there is no evidence that anyone recognized the significance of what they saw.
In the 1845 auction of Kötschau’s estate, the manuscript, along with other Bach works, was acquired by Friedrich August Gotthold (1778–1858), a former member of the Sing-Akademie Berlin and then director of the Collegium in Königsberg, East Prussia. In 1852, in order to preserve his collection, he donated it to the Königsberg Library, but it only drew attention 25 years later when Joseph Müller, in spite of opposition from superiors, prepared a catalogue, which on p. 93 lists “24 books of organ compositions by J. S. Bach,” of which fascicle No. 5 lists “Fantasia Sopra il Corale ‘Wo Gott der Herr nicht bey uns hält’ pro Organo à 2 Clav. e Pedale.”
This got the attention of Wilhelm Rust (1822–1892), who had it sent on a library loan to Berlin, where he copied it. This transcription of September 8, 1877 has become “Source A” of this edition, and it is unknown whether Rust, as editor of 26 volumes of the 46-volume Bach-Gesamtausgabe, intended to include it. He resigned over conflicts, particularly with Philipp Spitta, but got even in 1878, in a sense, by sharing the composition with Spitta’s rival Carl Hermann Bittner, whose Vol. IV of his second edition of
“J. S. Bach” (Dresden 1880 / Berlin 1881) includes “141. Wo Gott der Herr nicht bey uns hält. Fantasia sopra il Chorale G-moll. (Königsberger Bibliothek.)” For whatever reason the chorale fantasia was not included in the Gesamtausgabe, so Wolfgang Schmieder in his Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Leipzig 1950) put a fragment of it in an appendix (BWV Anh. II 71).
After Rust’s death in 1892, a large part of his collection went to his student, Erich Prieger (1849–1913), who wrote an extensive essay in 1885 on “Wilhelm Rust and His Bach Edition.” Prieger’s collection in turn was put up for auction after WW I in three sections, one of which went in 1924 to the Cologne book dealer M. Lempertz and refers to many copies of “Bachiana” from the 18th and 19th centuries, including in Lot No. 157 with Rust’s collection of manuscripts.
In summary, the transmission was from Wilhelm Friedemann to Johann Christian to Kötschau, and then from Gotthold to the Königsberg Library to Rust to Prieger, and ultimately from Cologne to . . . .

Discovery
When on March 15, 2008 the Leipzig auction firm of Johannes Wend offered Lot No. 153 with “manuscripts from the estate of Wilhelm Rust. Mostly compositions of his own or arrangements of works by Bach . . . ,” no one could have anticipated that this included parts of Prieger’s collection and the chorale fantasia BWV Anh. II 71. The Rust items were acquired by the University-State Museum of Halle/Salle, and finally due to the fastidious work of two editors, Stephan Blaut and Michael Pacholke of Halle University, the chorale fantasia was authenticated and has become BWV 1128!
This edition is based on two 19th-century manuscripts: “Source A” by Rust and “Source B,” a copy made by Ernst Naumann sometime after 1890 in the collection of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. Researchers, according to Schulze, are still hopeful that Kötschau’s copy survived WW II and is still to be found, perhaps in a Russian library.
On June 13, 2008, Ullrich Böhme, organist, St. Thomas, played the first Leipzig performance of BWV 1128 at the opening concert of the Bachfest, which included Bach’s Cantata 178 on the same chorale, sung by the St. Thomas Choir. The same day a CD by Rondeau Production with both compositions and works by Rust was released. The score by Ortus was published on June 10, showing how rapidly new works can be distributed worldwide.
The chorale still exists in German hymnals, but apparently has not survived in American Lutheran usage. The work, a large-scale fantasia believed to date from 1705–1710, is of moderate difficulty in four contrapuntal voices scored for Rückpositiv, Oberwerk and Pedal. After an introductory section, the ornamented chorale appears in the R.H. beginning with bar 12, proceeding verse by verse with interludes, chromaticism and echo sections. It concludes with a coda in a flurry typical of stylus phantasticus, all of which should make this “new work” very exciting indeed for Bach fans.

Bach, Johann Sebastian, Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält. The Newly Discovered Organ Work: Choralefantasia BWV 1128. Organ and choral works by Ammerbach, J. S. Bach, Rust, and Schein. Ullrich Böhme, organist, on the Bach Organ at Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church. St. Thomas Choir with the Gewandhaus Orchestra; Georg Christoph Biller, cantor and conductor. 2008, Rondeau Production ROP6023, 50 minutes, €15.95; brochure 39 pp.; <http://www.rondeau.de/&gt;.
Imagine being the organist of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, picking up the newspaper on March 16, 2008 and reading the headline, “Undiscovered Organ Work by Johann Sebastian Bach Found in Halle.” So Ullrich Böhme begins his very personal essay, “From Mühlhausen to St. Thomas in Leipzig” (brochure, pp. 6–7). He was further intrigued when he learned the work had been found among scores belonging to a predecessor at St. Thomas, Wilhelm Rust (organist, then cantor 1878–1892), and purchased for 2,500 euros by two scholars from nearby University of Halle. The paper claimed they “snatched away a true sensation from Leipzig,” when in fact the chorale had a close connection to Halle. The melody of the chorale had been written by Justus Jonas, a friend of Luther and the reformer of Halle serving as pastor of St. Mary’s.
The Bach-Archiv did not have a copy of the piece, but by April 28 Böhme received the score from the publisher, Ortus. He spent the next day at home studying and practicing, and then on evening of April 30 he played the work on the Bach Organ at St. Thomas, experimenting with tempos and registrations. It is probable that Bach played this piece himself, but he also may have given it to one of his sons or students to play on July 30, 1724 as a prelude to the Cantata BWV 178 on the same chorale for the eighth Sunday after Trinity. Böhme believes this is confirmed because in Bach’s time the choir and orchestra performed in the lower “Kammerton,” whereas the organs at St. Thomas were tuned a step higher in “Chorton,” so the pitches g- and a-minor match.
The work, a chorale fantasia, reflects influence of the North German composers Buxtehude, Reinken, and Bruhns. Three other examples of this genre by Bach are heard on the CD: the familiar Ein feste Burg (BWV 720), Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 718), and Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (BWV 739).
There is only one organ that Bach played (including those in Lübeck and Hanover) for which BWV 1128 could have been written because of the requirements for a Rückpositiv, Oberwerk, Pedal and the extent of the manual ranges. That is the Wender organ at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen, where Bach served between 1707 and 1708. The original organ has not survived, but a copy with the same specification was built in the late 1950s.
Additional compositions on the chorale, all by former St. Thomas organists or cantors, are a Tabulatur by Ammerbach (organist, 1550–1597); duet by St. Thomas Choir Boys from Opella nova by Johann Schein (cantor, 1616–1630); and Cantata BWV 178 by J. S. Bach (cantor, 1723–1750). Also included are two pieces by Wilhelm Rust (organist, 1878–80 and cantor, 1880–1892): Motet for Two Four-Voiced Choirs, op. 40, on “Aus der Tiefe ruf ich, Herr, zu dir” and an organ fantasia, op. 40/3 on “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend.”
The handsome brochure is replete with photos and information in addition to Böhme’s personal account: fascinating program notes by Martin Petzoldt (Head of the Neue Bachgesellschaft and Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Leipzig); cantata text for BWV 178; biographies for Böhme, Biller, Susanne Krumbiegel (alto), Martin Petzold (tenor), and Mathias Weichert (bass); background on the St. Thomas Choir and Gewandhaus Orchestra; and finally the specification and history of the 2000 Bach Organ by Gerald Woehl.
What is eminently apparent in these compositions and performances is a devotional consciousness of the text and the earnest intent to reflect its meaning. The performers are all steeped in the Bach milieu and tradition, performing Bach week after week, year after year in worship and concert. Böhme’s playing is equally elegant and eloquent, ever confident, yet always sensitive to the chorale text, realizing the Lutheran approach, which is never performance for its own sake, but music as a servant of theology and worship. While this CD largely features organ music and Böhme’s extraordinary playing, the other performers—St. Thomas Choir and Gewandhaus Orchestra under Cantor Georg Christoph Biller—are, as expected, exceptional. This CD and its brochure should certainly pique the interest, as Bach would say, of both “Kenner und Liebhaber” (professionals and music lovers).

Thanks to Ullrich Böhme, Organist, St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, who provided invaluable information, including contacts for getting the score and the CD within ten days of its first performance in Leipzig on June 13 and providing the specification of the Wender organ in Mühlhausen.

Musical examples used with permission from the publisher ortus musikverlag.

Marijim Thoene received a D.M.A. in organ performance/church music from the University of Michigan in 1984. She is an active recitalist and director of music at St. John Lutheran Church in Dundee, Michigan. Her two CDs, Mystics and Spirits and Wind Song, are available from Raven Recordings. She is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences on the topic of the image of the pipe organ in medieval manuscripts.
Lisa Byers received master’s degrees in music education and organ performance from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from the University of Toledo, Ohio. She is retired from teaching music in the Jefferson Public Schools in Monroe, Michigan, as well as from her position as organist/choir director at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Tecumseh, Michigan. She subs as organist in the Monroe area.
Photo credit: Bela Fehe

The University of Michigan 49th Conference on Organ Music was dedicated to the memory of Robert Glasgow, brilliant organist and much loved professor of organ at the University of Michigan. The conference was truly a celebration of his life as a scholar, performer, and teacher. His raison d’être was music—organ music of soaring melodies and transcendent harmonies. He shared his passion with his students and has left a legacy that can be kept alive through generations of students who instill in their students his ideas.
During the conference, a wide variety of lectures were presented that reflected years of research, along with performances of four centuries of organ music. The conference was international in scope, with lecturers and performers from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Canada as well as the U.S. The themes of the conference focused on the influences of J. S. Bach and Mendelssohn’s role in arousing public interest in Bach’s music.

Sunday opening events
The initial event was an afternoon “Festival of Hymns” presented by the UM School of Music, Theatre, and Dance and the American Guild of Organists Ann Arbor chapter. Led by organist-director Michael Burkhardt, it featured the Eastern Michigan University Brass Ensemble, the Detroit Handbell Ensemble, and the Ann Arbor Area Chorus. Special care was taken to choose, coordinate, and connect music by Bach, Mendelssohn, and Charles Wesley. Many hymn verses and arrangement variations kept the presentation musically interesting and enjoyable. Dr. Burkhardt was masterful in his organ solos, accompaniments, improvisations, conducting, and composing. His leadership from the console was met with great enthusiasm from the appreciative, participating audience. (Review by Lisa Byers)
Sunday evening’s organ recital program featured music of Spain and France performed by musicians from the University of Michigan’s Historic Organ Tour 56 to Catalonia and France. Janice Feher opened with an excerpt from a Soler sonata. Gale Kramer performed the “Allegro Vivace” from Widor’s Symphony V, followed by Joanne V. Clark’s rendering of the “Adagio” from Widor’s Symphony VI. Mary Morse sang the versets of a Dandrieu Magnificat for which Christine Chun performed the alternate versets. Timothy Huth played a section from Tournemire’s In Festo Pentecostes, and Paul Merritt closed the program with the Dubois Toccata. The various composition styles, registrations, and favorable interpretations performed excellently and sensitively on the Hill Auditorium organ were well received and greatly acknowledged by the audience. (Review by Lisa Byers)

Monday, October 5
Jason Branham, a doctoral student of Marilyn Mason, set the stage for celebrating not only Mendelssohn’s two hundredth birthday but also his profound influence in bringing the forgotten music of J. S. Bach to the attention of Berlin and consequently to Western society. Branham’s program was a reprise of Mendelssohn’s Bach recital presented at St. Thomas-Kirche in Leipzig in 1840, performed to raise money to erect a monument to Bach in Leipzig: Fugue in E-flat, BWV 552; Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, BWV 654; Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543; Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 582; Pastoral in F Major, BWV 590; and Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565. Branham’s performance was exciting and earned him thunderous applause.
Christoph Wolff, Professor of Musicology at Harvard, eminent Bach scholar, and author of Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, gave four illuminating lectures during the conference. In his first lecture, “J. S. Bach the Organist—Recent Research,” he presented arguments supporting Bach’s authorship of the D-minor Toccata and Fugue, BWV 565, dated 1703. Peter Williams, who questioned Bach’s authorship in the 1980s, maintained that such a piece could not have been composed by Bach before 1730. Wolff presented convincing arguments based on an analysis of both the oldest manuscripts and the music itself. He also drew a connection to the discovery in 2008 of Bach’s Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält, BWV 1128, in the library of Halle University. The work is a large free fantasia dated ca. 1705, with compositional features shared by the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Wolff maintained that Bach, whose organ technique was formidable at an early age, composed the D-minor Toccata and Fugue to dazzle his audience with improvisatory passages borrowed from pieces like Buxtehude’s D-minor Toccata. Wolff concluded that this work was written as a showpiece for Bach himself and not intended to be circulated and copied by his pupils; hence only one copy exists, in the hand of Johannes Ringk, dated 1730.
Michael Barone’s handout listing Mendelssohn recordings was a testimony to his impressive knowledge of recorded organ music. Of the many Mendelssohn pieces he played, the most compelling was a 1973 recording of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, op. 25, played by Robert B. Pitman, piano, and George Lamphere, organ, at the Methuen Music Hall (Pipedreams CD-1002; live performance). The playing was stunning in its youthful exuberance and virtuosity.
Professor Wolff showed images of historical organs and churches connected to Bach, many of which unfortunately no longer exist, in his lecture “Silbermann and Others—The World of Bach Organs.” The most riveting information regarding performance practice of the organ in Bach cantatas came from a view of the original Mülhausen balcony. The balcony was large enough to accommodate strings, woodwinds, brass, and choir; kettle drums were fixed onto the railings overlooking the audience. The choir stood below the instruments. The large organ was used—not a little Positiv. A performance incorporating this practice is on John Eliot Gardner’s recording, Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, using the Altenburg organ in Cantata 146.
James Kibbie, Professor of Organ at the University of Michigan, announced that his recordings of the complete organ works of Bach, performed on historical instruments in Germany, can be found at the website <blockmrecords.org>. The project is supported by a gift from Dr. Barbara Sloat in honor of her late husband J. Barry Sloat. Additional details are available at <www.blockmrecords.org/bach&gt;.
Istvan Ruppert is Dean and Professor of Organ in the Department of Music of the Szechenyi University in Gyor, Hungary, and is also an organ professor at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music. His program included music by Mendelssohn, Karg-Elert, Max Reger, Liszt, and three Hungarian composers. He has formidable technique and played with great energy and abandon. It was refreshing to hear intriguing and unknown compositions by Frigyes Hidas, Zsolt Gárdonyi, and Istvan Koloss. The humor in Gárdonyi’s Mozart Changes was appreciated. Ruppert is a real enthusiast in sharing music by Hungarian composers by graciously offering to send scores to those who wished to have them.

October 6
Prof. Wolff pointed out in his lecture “Bach’s Organ Music—From 1750 to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” that Bach’s Clavier Übung III offered a textbook of organ playing. Wolff lamented that Mendelssohn’s inclusion of historical music by Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Haydn into the Gewandhaus concerts had unfortunate consequences in our concert programs today. While only five percent of his concerts were devoted to “historical composers,” the remaining works were by contemporary composers, himself, Liszt, Schumann, and Schubert. Today our programs are mainly old music, with five percent devoted to new music.
Susanne Diederich received a PhD from Tübingen University. Her dissertation, “Original instructions of registration for French organ music in the 17th and 18th centuries: Relations between organ building and organ music during the time of Louis XIV,” represents some of the ground-breaking research on French Classical organs; it was published by Bärenreiter in 1975. In her lecture, “The Classical French Organ, Its Music and the French Influence on Bach’s Organ Composition,” Diederich pointed out that the French Classical organ was complete by 1665, and Guillaume Nivers’ First Organ Book of 1665 contained the first description of all the stops. Her handout was especially informative in showing how Bach’s table of ornaments in his Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm
Friedemann reflected his assimilation of ornament tables by Raison, 1688, Boyvin, 1689, and Couperin, 1690. Robert Luther, organist emeritus of Zion Lutheran Church in Anoka, Minnesota, played movements from Guilain’s Second Suite, and Christopher Urbiel, doctoral student of Marilyn Mason, played movements from de Grigny’s Veni Creator, Marchand’s Livre d’orgue Book I, and Bach’s Fantaisie, BWV 542, to illustrate features Bach borrowed from the French Classical repertoire.
Seth Nelson received his DMA in organ performance from the University of Michigan in 2003; he is organist at the First Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas, and accompanist for the San Antonio Choral Society and the Trinity University Choir. His lecture/recital, “Music of the Calvinist Reformation: Introducing John Calvin’s Theology of Music,” included an explanation of why Calvin did not approve of the use of the organ in services. The reasons were many: the Old Testament mentioned its use, thus it is not appropriate to use an old instrument in the new age; it is wrong to imitate the Roman Church; it is an unnecessary aid; it is too distracting; it is against Paul’s teaching, “Praise should be in all one tongue.” The highlight of the program was hearing Seth Nelson’s spirited playing of Paul Manz’s introduction to Calvin’s setting of Psalm 42 and Michael Burkhardt’s introduction and interlude to Calvin’s setting of Psalm 134.
The evening concert featured Mendelssohn’s six organ sonatas played by James Hammann, chair of the music department of the University of New Orleans. It was a rare treat to hear these technically demanding pieces all played at one sitting. Dr. Hammann’s years of investment in this music is apparent. His recording of Mendelssohn’s organ works on the 1785 Stumm organ in St. Ulrich’s Church in Neckargemünd is available on the Raven label.

October 7
Tuesday morning began with the annually anticipated narrated photographic summary of European organs presented by Janice and Bela Feher. This year featured the UM Historic Organ Tour 56 to Northern Spain and France. The PowerPoint presentation included at least 600 photographs of organs in 35 religious locations and the Grenzing organ factory in Barcelona. The organs dated from 1522 to 1890 and included builders Dom Bedos, François-Henry, Louis-Alexandre, Clicquot, Cavaillé family, Cavaillé-Coll, Moucherel, and Scherrer. The photos showed views of cases, consoles, mechanical works, stained glass windows, altar pieces, sacred art, and other enhancements. The Fehers provided a written list with detailed information for each picture. Their first book, with Marilyn Mason, is available by mail order from <Blurb.com>. (Review by Lisa Byers)
Stephen Morris is a lecturer in music at Baylor University, Waco, Texas; organist-choirmaster and director of music ministries at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit in Houston, Texas; and maintains a studio as a teacher of singing, largely concentrating on early adolescent female voices. His presentation, “Acclaim, Slander, and Renaissance: An Historical Perspective on Mendelssohn,” incorporated visual images and music. Among the lesser-known facts is that Mendelssohn was admired and befriended by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They chose Mendelssohn’s March from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for their daughter’s wedding. It became a favorite for productions of Shakespeare throughout Europe. However, due to anti-Semitism fueled by Richard Wagner, Mendelssohn’s March was banned by Nazi Germany, and ten other composers were commissioned to replace it. Ironically, the Nazis preferred Bach above all composers, yet they never would have known about him without Mendelssohn. Morris noted that there is a great wealth of information on Mendelssohn research at <www.
themendelssohnproject.org>.
Professor Wolff concluded his Bach-Mendelssohn lectures with a fascinating presentation, “The Pre-History of Mendelssohn’s Performances of the St. Matthew Passion.” He described Sarah Itzig Levy, Mendelssohn’s maternal great aunt and a famous harpsichordist, as the moving force who began the revival of
J.S. Bach’s music. She introduced family members and friends to many of Bach’s works. She studied with W.F. Bach and commissioned C.P.E. Bach to write what turned out to be his last concerto: one for harpsichord, fortepiano, and orchestra. She regularly performed in weekly gatherings in her salon as soloist with an orchestra from 1774–1784. In 1823 Mendelssohn was given a copy of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion by his grandmother, Bella Salomon, Sara Levy’s sister. It took Mendelssohn five years to persuade his teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, to have the Singakademie of Berlin perform it. The 19-year-old Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion to a packed audience that included the Prussian king. This performance enthralled the audience and thus began J. S. Bach’s reentry into the hearts of German people and to the world at large. Mendelssohn continued conducting performances of the St. Matthew Passion when he became director of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig in 1834, at the age of twenty-six. He re-orchestrated it, shortened some pieces, omitted some arias, and introduced the practice of having the chorale Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden sung a cappella. That score and the performing parts are now in the Bodleian Library.
Eugenio Fagiani, resident organist at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Bergamo, played a recital at Hill Auditorium featuring Italian composers Filippo Capocci, Oreste Ravanello, Marco Enrico Bossi, and four of his own compositions. His playing was impeccable, and his compositions reflect the influence of one of his teachers, Naji Hakim, in style and use of exotic sounds and feisty, driving rhythms. His Victimae Paschali Laudes, op. 96, has a wide variety of striking timbres, ranging from a clarinet plus mutation stops to a big-band sound. His creativity as a composer was undeniable in his Festive Prelude, op. 99b, composed for this conference. Here the pedal occasionally sounded like percussive drums. The work sizzled with energy and ended in a fiery toccata. Fagiani played “Joke,” another of his compositions, as an encore. The audience enjoyed his quotations from J. S. Bach and John Lennon. More can be learned about this impressive composer/organist at his website:
<www.eugeniomariafagiani.com&gt;.
Michele Johns, Adjunct Professor of Organ at the University of Michigan, presented an interesting lecture on the changes of taste reflected in hymnals from four denominations over the past forty years. She noted that the texts have become more gender inclusive, hymns in foreign languages are included (“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” appears in four languages in the Presbyterian Hymnal), and there is greater variety in styles from “pantyhose music”—one size fits all—to Taizé folk melodies; she proved her point that in today’s hymnals there is “Something Old, Something New.”
One of the most exciting recitals of the conference was played by Aaron Tan, a student of Marilyn Mason and a graduate student in the School of Engineering at the University of Michigan, organist/choirmaster at the First Presbyterian Church in Ypsilanti, and director of the Ypsilanti Pipe Organ Festival. His memorized recital shimmered with grace and energy: Alleluyas by Simon Preston; Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, op. 7, no. 3, by Marcel Dupré; Sicilienne from Suite, op. 5, by Maurice Duruflé; Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, by J. S. Bach; Moto ostinato from Sunday Music by Petr Eben; Naïades and Final from Symphony No. 6 by Louis Vierne. The audience gave him a standing ovation.
The concluding recital was played in Hill Auditorium in memory of Robert Glasgow by some of his former students. The program was a beautiful tribute to his life—a life devoted to the study, performance and teaching of organ music, especially the music of Franck, Mendelssohn, Vierne, Widor, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms. The performers brought with them some of his spirit, some of his light, some of his joy in creating something that puts us in another dimension. His attention to the minutest detail of the score, his total commitment to breathing life into each phrase was mirrored in these performers:
Mark Toews, director of music, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto, past president, Royal Canadian College of Organists, Variations de Concert, op. 1 by Joseph Bonnet; Ronald Krebs, vice president, Reuter Organ Company, O Welt, ich muss dich lassen, op. 122, no. 11, Fugue in A-flat Minor, WoO8, by Johannes Brahms; David Palmer, Professor Emeritus, School of Music, University of Windsor, organist and choir director, All Saints’ Church, Windsor, Ontario, L’Apparition du Christ ressuscité a Marie-Madeleine by Olivier Messiaen; Joanne Vollendorf Clark, Chair of the Music Department, Marygrove College, Detroit, minister of music, Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, Detroit, Pastorale, op. 26, by Alexandre Guilmant; Charles Miller, minister of music and organist, National City Christian Church, Washington, D.C., Pièce héroïque by César Franck; Joseph Jackson, organist, First Presbyterian Church, Royal Oak, Michigan, “Air with Variations” from Suite for Organ by Leo Sowerby; and Jeremy David Tarrant, organist and choirmaster, the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Detroit, Andantino, op. 51, no. 2, and Carillon de Westminster, op. 54, no. 6, by Louis Vierne.
Professor Marilyn Mason made the 49th Conference on Organ Music at the University of Michigan a reality. She invested countless hours of planning and organizing into making it happen, because she has an insatiable thirst for learning and thinks “we all need to learn.” She has brought brilliant scholars and performers together for 49 years to teach and inspire us. The list includes such figures as Almut Rössler, Umberto Pineschi, Martin Haselböck, Todd Wilson, Janette Fishell, Madame Duruflé, Catherine Crozier, Guy Bovet, Peter Williams, Lady Susi Jeans, Wilma Jensen, Gordon Atkinson, and Marie-Claire Alain (to name only a few). We thank her for such priceless gifts.

Maxim Serebrennikov is a doctoral student at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, where he is currently completing his thesis, “Solo Keyboard Thoroughbass Fugue of the Baroque Era.” His research interests lie in the history and theory of Baroque music, in particular discovering, studying, and publishing unknown sources of keyboard and organ music. His recent articles in Musicus, The Organ, and Harpsichord & Fortepiano focus on rarities of harpsichord and organ music of the 18th century. He is also active as a professional music typesetter and score and book designer, working with various publishing houses.

Introduction
In 2010 J. S. Bach, G. F. Handel, and D. Scarlatti, who were born 325 years ago, once again were the main figures of the musical calendar. Once again thousands of performers and scholars strove to express their reverence for the genius of these artists. Once again millions of listeners and readers were eager to enjoy their great works.
How often, though, in celebrating these masters, we forget their contemporaries, possibly having no less sacrificially served their art. Alas, the names of these other musicians are frequently lost among the pages of history or altogether disappear without a trace. But it is precisely their activity that laid the solid foundation on which the masters constructed their monuments.
Until recent times, the name of Gott-fried Kirchhoff (1685–1746) was known only to a small circle of specialists. Meanwhile his contemporaries highly valued his output and enthusiastically praised his skill on the clavier and organ. German organist and theoretician Martin Heinrich Fuhrmann (1669–1745), recalling Kirchhoff’s playing, wrote: “I later heard the well-known Mr. Kirchhof play the organ in Halle, and his fingers so mastered the charms of music that I cried out, ‘What a shame that the hands of these two keyboard players in Leipzig and Halle must some day turn to dust!’”2 And further: “In my time, when in 1692 I was studying in Halle, Zachow was flourishing there, whom I heard on Sundays with a true hunger and thirst; and if I had to travel there again, and there were no bridge over the [river] Saale, and I could not reach the city, then truly I would swim across the river like Leander for his Hero, even to hear renowned pupils of his such as Mr. Kirchhoff.”3
The unexpected discovery of L’A.B.C. Musical in 2002 served as a new impulse for studying Kirchhoff’s life and works.4 The first monograph on Kirchhoff was published in 2004, along with the new edition of L’A.B.C. Musical.5 In 2005 and 2006, L’A.B.C. Musical became the subject of two master’s theses, which were defended at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and at the Kiev Conservatory, respectively.6 In 2008 one more unknown prelude and fugue by Kirchhoff was discovered in the manuscript Mus. Ms. 11605, which is housed in the music department of the State Library in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung).7 Additionally, in 2009 the composer was honored through the naming of a music school in Bitterfeld, not far from his birthplace.
This is not to say that researchers have answered all regarding the life and work of Kirchhoff; quite the opposite—many questions remain. The greatest mystery at present is the fate of the composer’s oeuvre. Kirchhoff dedicated his entire life to music: from 1693 to 1709, he studied organ and composition in Halle under Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663–1712); from 1709 to 1711, he was Kapellmeister at the court of the Duke of Holstein-Glücksburg; from 1711 to 1714, he served as organist at the church of St. Benedict in Quedlinburg; and, from 1714 to his death, Kirchhoff held the position of Director Musices and organist at Our Lady’s Church in Halle. Even if Kirchhoff was not remarkable for the rate at which he produced works (such as, for example, Georg Philipp Telemann), his long period of professional activity must have produced an imposing quantity of works. Despite this, all Kirchhoff’s compositions known at present can be counted on the fingers of one hand. What has happened to all the rest?
Possibly, the passage of time did not spare Kirchhoff’s manuscripts, and a large portion was lost to natural calamities (fire, flooding, etc.). Possibly, the composer had little regard for his own creations and did not attempt to save them for later generations. Possibly, the fault for the loss of certain of these compositions falls on Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who succeeded Kirchhoff as Director Musices and organist at Our Lady’s Church in Halle.8
Nevertheless, hope remains for the restoration of at least some portion of Kirchhoff’s oeuvre. This is confirmed by unexpected discoveries of recent years, one of which we shall discuss here.

The Mylau Tablature Book
In 1910, Georg Schünemann (1884–1945), German musicologist and member of the commission for the revelation and studying of Monuments of German Musical Art (Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst), uncovered in the Mylau church archives a rich collection of organ works composed by the old German masters. The value of this find was difficult to overestimate: the manuscript contained not only works of composers to that time unknown, but also unknown works by well-known composers.9
Today this collection is still housed in the Mylau church archives, listed as MS H 3a. The manuscript is a book of considerable thickness (101 leaves) in upright format (c. 21 × 33 cm) and hard cardboard binding, covered with colored paper. The front cover of the binding carries the inscription “TABLATURE | Book | 1750” (“TABULATUR | Buch | 1750”), which is at the very least a misleading identifier. In fact, the Mylau Tablature Book does not contain a single example of tablature notation. The date “1750” also does not correspond to the real time of the manuscript’s creation.
In 1984 the Mylau Tablature Book was sent for expert appraisal to the German Book and Writing Museum (Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum, Leipzig), where museum staff member Gertraude Spoer determined that in the eighteenth century the manuscript had undergone restoration, during which the original binding was replaced by the current one. Subsequently, the inscription “TABULATUR | Buch | 1750” belongs to a later time than the manuscript itself. More than likely, this misleading title was added shortly following the change of binding. Furthermore, based on study of the paper’s watermarks, Spoer concluded that manuscript MS H 3a was made around the year 1725.10 Unfortunately, the copyist has never been identified.
The contents of the Mylau Tablature Book are truly impressive with respect to volume: the manuscript contains 176 pieces, dominated by preludes and fugues. The composers include such names as Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), Johann Krieger (1652–1735), Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722), Andreas Kniller (1649–1724), Nikolaus Vetter (1666–1734), Andreas Werckmeister (1645–1706), Christian Friedrich Witt (1660–1717), and Gottfried Pestel (1654–1732). It is, however, these names alone that are noted in the manuscript. Many pieces were written anonymously, and the majority of these remain unattributed.11 Furthermore, those attributions that are given in the manuscript are not always credible.

Praelud: ex. C. dis â Monsieur Bach.
As has been mentioned, the Mylau Tablature Book was a valuable contribution to Baroque literature for organ. To date, this manuscript remains the single known source for many of the pieces that it contains. Among these is the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, recorded on pages 40–41. (See Example 1.)
According to the Mylau Tablature Book, Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) is the author of this work. The name of the composer is indicated in the heading of the composition: “Praelud: ex. C. dis â Monsieur Bach.”12 At that time, “Bach.” and “J. Bach.” were common abbreviations for Pachelbel’s name, which was said and written in some South German dialects as “Bachelbel”. The period at the end of “Bach.” is a sign of abbreviation, enabling us to distinguish Pachelbel’s name from the names of members of Bach family.
The Prelude and Fugue in C Minor was first published in 1977 in the 39th volume of Corpus of Early Keyboard Music—the series founded by the American Institute of Musicology.13 Since then the pieces have been reproduced multiple times in other editions.14 Thanks to these publications, the cycle became accessible not only to musicians worldwide, but also strengthened its position as being a work by Pachelbel.
Recently, however, Pachelbel’s authorship of this polyphonic cycle has come under growing suspicion, given how strongly the style of writing in the pieces differs from that of other preludes and fugues by the composer. Thus, in the 2004 publication of The Thematic Catalogue of the Musical Works of Johann Pachelbel, these two pieces received the cautionary note “Ascription Questioned,” and in the new edition of the composer’s Complete Works for Keyboard Instruments they are shifted to the appendix as “dubious.”15
As it turns out, the doubts of the researchers were not without basis. In March 2008 we discovered a forcible argument in F. W. Marpurg’s Treatise on Fugue (1753–1754), which disclaims Pachelbel’s authorship of the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor located in MS H 3a.

F. W. Marpurg’s Treatise on Fugue as a key to ascription
F. W. Marpurg’s two-part Treatise on Fugue was, in its time, truly an extraordinary theoretical work. It was the first paper to be dedicated entirely to fugue. At the same time, it was the most fundamental work on fugue, which generalized and summed up all the knowledge of fugue acquired by musical theory and practice to the middle of the eighteenth century. Lastly, it was the richest treatise with respect to the amount and breadth of musical material ever collected into one resource. The quantity of music examples used by Marpurg to illustrate his theses is so great that they constituted the whole two-volume appendices for each part of the treatise. Marpurg’s erudition defies imagination even today: the appended musical examples include, beyond those samples composed by Marpurg himself, close to 500 excerpts from the works of more than 50 composers.16
In the score appendix for the second part of the treatise (Tab. III, Fig. 1), Marpurg several times quotes a theme, which is surprisingly similar to the theme of the C-minor fugue from the Mylau manuscript. The ascription here, however, is not to Pachelbel, but to his younger contemporary, Kirchhoff. The name of this once-celebrated German organist and composer, fellow student of G. F. Handel and a good acquaintance of J. S. Bach, is indicated at the beginning of the example: “1st theme of Kirchhoff” (“1. th[ema] Kirchoffii.”).17 (See Example 2.)
One cannot, of course, fully rule out the possibility that Pachelbel and Kirchhoff, each independently of the other, composed practically identical subjects. Formularity was one of the most characteristic features of Baroque music. The study of fugue assumed, in part, the mastery of an entire series of stereotypical, standard subjects and possible devices for their treatment. For this reason, correspondences were unavoidable (especially when one considers how in church practice, fugue subjects were often based on the initial phrases of plainchant melodies). Yet, despite a single intonational vocabulary, exact correspondence was rare, even for music of that time. Working from one and the same intonation formula, each musician materialized it in his own way. By way of example, we offer a fugue subject from the 2nd mode of Prototypon longo-breve organicum (1703) by Franz Xaver Murschhauser. (See Example 3.)
In comparing the three subjects, it is clear that they share a single intonational impulse: a descending minor triad, intensified by a leap to the leading tone. Although in Murschhauser’s subject this formula holds to a different rhythmic pattern and melodic continuation, it, most importantly, does not stand apart as an independent syntactic unit.
In light of this example, the similarity of the “Pachelbel” and “Kirchhoff” subjects to each other is made all the more clear. It is undoubtedly worth considering them variants of a single idea thought up by a single author. Indeed, there is undeniable correspondence between those elements and parameters of the subject that secure its individuality, specifically: motivic head, syntactic structure, melodic skeleton, rhythmic pattern, and harmonic plan. The primary divergences, excluding tonality, come down to figuration of the harmonies and to cadencing of the theme.
It is difficult to say today with certainty from whom these differences have arisen. Possibly, Marpurg himself made the changes in order to make the sample more relevant to his didactic intentions. It is more than likely, however, that he simply had a different version of the fugue at his disposal, one that today remains unknown or has been lost.
In any case, this question remains: who is the true author of the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor found in the Mylau manuscript—Pachelbel or Kirchhoff? We believe that testimony from the treatise of an authoritative theorist and well-informed musician deserves more confidence than testimony from a manuscript completed by an unknown copyist using unknown sources. Furthermore, the stylistic attributes of the music do much on their own to confirm that this work conforms to Kirchhoff’s creative signature.

L’A.B.C. Musical as one more
argument in favor of Kirchhoff’s
authorship
Kirchhoff’s name appears not only in the score appendix, but also in the body of the text of Marpurg’s treatise:

If the late Musikdirektor Kirchhof of Halle denoted the counterparts of his well-known fugues in all twenty-four keys with figures alone, he did this because he wanted to instruct his students in the various possibilities of thematic entrances and in the technique of figured bass at the same time.18
Marpurg quotes six various Kirchhoff themes in total. Although he never gives the title of those pieces that he quotes as musical examples (rather noting only the author of each piece!), it is natural to suggest that those themes he indicates as Kirchhoff’s come from those very same fugues he refers to in the text.
Earlier we stated the hypothesis that by “well-known fugues in all twenty-four keys” Marpurg meant the unpublished version of L’A.B.C. Musical (c. 1734) by Kirchhoff.19 First, this is the only known composition by Kirchhoff to contain, as the title page asserts, “preludes and fugues in all keys.” Second, one of the themes cited by Marpurg in the treatise’s appendix is identical to the theme of the A-minor fugue from L’A.B.C. Musical (Examples 4a, 4b). Third, the texture of every piece in the collection, including the fugues, is notated as thoroughbass, i.e., on one staff using various clefs and thoroughbass signatures.
Within a comment in his own edition of the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor from the Mylau Tablature Book, Michael Belotti rightly notes that the texture of the pieces is nothing other than a realized thoroughbass.20 Indeed, for the style of Pachelbel, who was trained in the contrapuntal tradition, this type of texture is atypical. However, for the style of Kirchhoff, whose emergence as a professional coincides with the blossoming of thoroughbass technique in Germany, this manner of writing is completely natural and consistent. All the known clavier and organ fugues by Kirchhoff can be included in the genre of the so-called thoroughbass fugue.21 It is highly likely that the original version of the C-minor Prelude and Fugue from MS H 3a was also recorded in codified form, and the variant that has reached us is someone’s realization. In any case, the texture of both pieces can be easily expressed in thoroughbass notation with no damage done to the musical material (see Appendix: Version 1).

Conclusion
These arguments clearly point to Kirchhoff’s authorship of the C-minor Prelude and Fugue from manuscript MS H 3a. In identifying the true author of these pieces, we not only restore historical justice, we also reveal one more previously lost page of Kirchhoff’s
oeuvre. It would be wonderful if this page were not the last to be revealed, if there were new finds ahead, which allow us to expand our understanding of the creative output of one of the forgotten composers from J. S. Bach’s circle and to objectively evaluate his role in the compositional style of his epoch. 

Alexander Fiseisky, born in Moscow, graduated with distinction from the Moscow Conservatoire as pianist and organist. He is an organ soloist of the Moscow State Philharmonic Society, head of the organ class at the Russian Gnessins’ Academy of Music in Moscow, and president of the Vladimir Odoyevsky Organ Center. He organized and served as artistic director for organ festivals in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, and Tallinn, among others. In 1997 he was honored by President Yeltsin with the title ‘Honored Artist of the Russian Federation’. Fiseisky has given concerts in more than 30 countries. In the Bach anniversary year of 2000 he played J. S. Bach’s entire organ works, twice in the context of EXPO 2000 in Hannover, and once in a single day in Düsseldorf as a Bach marathon. Sought after as a juror in international competitions, he has directed seminars and masterclasses in Europe and the USA. He is the dedicatee of numerous compositions, including works by Mikhail Kollontai, Vladimir Ryabov, Milena Aroutyunova, and Walther Erbacher. A musicologist, he has edited anthologies of organ music of Russia and of the Baltics (Bärenreiter-Verlag). He has many recordings to his credit, including the complete organ works of J. S. Bach.

It goes without saying that the primary
task of every performer who wishes to convey the meaning of any given musical work must first be to understand the original intention of the composer. And when the works in question are those of Johann Sebastian Bach, where the invisible thread that should link us to the era in which he lived seems to be irretrievably broken, the task takes on Herculean proportions. The aim of this analysis is to attempt a correct reading of the Clavierübung III—one of the most enigmatic works in the whole literature of the organ.
This work, which was composed at the high point of the composer’s creativity (1739), impresses us by its dimensions alone. It is part of a cycle of works, comprising the Six Partitas (Part 1, composed in 1731, BWV 825–830), the French Ouverture and the Italian Concerto (Part 2, composed in 1735, BWV 831, BWV 971), as well as the Goldberg Variations (Part 4, composed in 1742, BWV 988). And the Clavierübung III itself is also a cyclical work—it consists of 21 chorale preludes and four duets framed by a prelude and a fugue in E-flat major.
Bach certainly accorded the Clavierübung III particular importance. It is no coincidence that this was the first work for organ that he had published in Leipzig. What was Bach’s purpose in writing this work, and what means did he choose to fulfil it?

The history of the composition. The intentions and aims of the composer
The Clavierübung III was written to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Luther’s visit to Leipzig and the festal Whitsun service in St. Thomas Church on the 25th of May 1539, which effectively marked the official recognition of the Reformation in Leipzig. The Clavierübung III consists essentially of arrangements of chorales from the Protestant church service, and in its structure it is reminiscent of Luther’s Catechism, which consists of two parts: the Greater Catechism deals with the principles of faith, while the Lesser Catechism is directed more towards children and the less-educated part of the population. Correspondingly, each chorale melody—with the exception of Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ [Glory be to God alone on high]—is presented in two versions: a greater version which uses all the resources of the organ including the pedals, and a shorter manualiter version.
And indeed, because of its special structure, the Clavierübung III has often in the past been referred to as an “Organ Catechism,” and correspondingly it is usually referred to today as the “Organ Mass.” It is clear that neither of these two names do full justice to the structure of Bach’s composition. Nor do they explain the inclusion of the four duets.
The title of the work is as follows:

Dritter Theil / der / Clavier Übung / bestehend / in / verschiedenen Vorspielen / über die / Catechismus- und andere Gesaenge, / vor die Orgel: / Denen Liebhabern, und besonders denen Kennern / von dergleichen Arbeit, zur Gemüths Ergezung / verfertiget von / Johann Sebastian Bach, / Koenigl[ich] Pohlnischen, und Churfürstl[ich] Saechs[eschen] / Hoff-Compositeur, Capellmeister, und / Directore Chori Musici in Leipzig. / In Verlegung des Authoris.

[Third Part of the Clavierübung consisting of various preludes on the Catechism and other Hymns for the organ: for amateurs, and especially for connoisseurs of such work, for the refreshment of their souls, executed by Johann Sebastian Bach, Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Court Composer, Capellmeister, and Directore Chori Musici in Leipzig. Published by the author.]

Bach here follows the example of his predecessor at St. Thomas Church, Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722), and modestly calls his work Clavierübung [Keyboard Exercise].2 He thereby encourages us, through diligent practice (Übung in German), to understanding his purpose in writing this work.
Let us accept this invitation.
The first question, even after a cursory look at Bach’s work, is probably “What does it represent in this compositional form? Are we to understand it as a unified dramatic whole or as a collection of diverse pieces for the keyboard?”
Characteristically, the usual concert practice suggests that the Clavierübung III is not seen as an integral work: virtually nobody plays the whole composition in its published form.3 But the question nevertheless remains: Is there really no suggestion of an overall dramatic structure within the work?
An analysis would help us to answer this question. But before we tackle it, we should—even very generally—look at some characteristics of the musical aesthetics and Bach’s particular compositional style during the period when he was working on the Clavierübung III.

The theological and philosophical basis of the work of J. S. Bach
Bach’s personal philosophy was heavily influenced by the philosophical ideas and the personality of Martin Luther (1483–1546). Books written by Luther accounted for a quarter of all the books in Bach’s private library. According to the personal inventory that was made after his death, Bach owned two complete editions of the works of Martin Luther in Latin and German, as well as works of his successors: Abraham Calov, Martin Chemnitz, Johannes Olearius, and others.4 The title page of an earlier version of the Clavier-Büchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach5 bears a note giving the title of the work as Anti-Calvinismus by August Pfeiffer, written in Bach’s own hand.
It is well known that Luther was a well-educated musician.6 In contrast to the majority of the reformers in the 16th century, Luther considered music to be a form of divine revelation. In the foreword to Georg Rhau’s anthology Symphoniae iucundae7 he wrote: “In summa: Die edle Musika ist nach Gottes Wort der höchste Schatz auf Erden.“8 [Summing up: Noble music is the greatest treasure on earth next to the Word of God.] He is quoted in the Encomion musices as giving a similar definition: “Musika ist eine schöne, liebliche Gabe Gottes, sie hat mich oft also erweckt und bewegt, daß ich Lust zu predigen gewonnen habe...”9 [One of the finest and noblest gifts of God is music. It has often aroused and moved me so that I have gained a desire to preach . . . ] And in a letter to Ludwig Senfl of 4 October 1530 we find the following lines in his handwriting:
Et plane judico, nec pudet asserere, post theologiam esse nullam artem, quae musicae possit aequari, cum ipsa sola post theologiam id praestet, quod alioqui sola theologia praestat, scilicet quietem et animum laetum…10
[I plainly judge, and do not hesitate to affirm, that except for theology there is no art that could be put on the same level with music, since except for theology, (music) alone produces what otherwise only theology can do, namely, a calm and joyful disposition.11]
Luther’s views were akin to those of Bach. Like the great reformer, Bach saw the world of music and the world of theology as very closely connected.12 A short handwritten treatise concerning figured bass, which Bach wrote while working on the Clavierübung III, is introduced with the following words:
Der Generalbaß ist das vollkommenste Fundament der Music welcher [auf einem Clavier] mit beyden Händen gespielt wird dergestalt das die lincke Hand die vorgeschriebenen Noten spielet die rechte aber Con- und Dissonantien darzu greift damit dieses eine wohlklingende Harmonie gebe zur Ehre Gottes und zulässiger Ergötzung des Gemüths und soll wie aller Music, also auch des General Basses Finis und End Uhrsache anders nicht, als nur zu Gottes Ehre und Recreation des Gemüths seyn. Wo dieses ists keine eigentliche Music sondern ein Teuflisches Geplerr und Geleyr.13
[The thorough-bass is the most perfect foundation of music. It is played with both hands on a keyboard instrument in such a way that the left hand plays the written notes, while the right hand strikes consonances and dissonances, so that this results in full-sounding Harmonie to the Honor of God and the permissible delight of the soul. The ultimate end or final goal of all music, including the thorough-bass, shall be nothing but for the Honor of God and the renewal of the soul. Where these factors are not taken in consideration, there is no true music, rather, devilish bawling and droning.14]

When Bach at the age of 23 left Mühl-hausen, he declared that the Endzweck [ultimate aim] of his creative work would be the regulirte kirchen music zu Gottes Ehren [regulated church music to the glory of God].15
One can further assess the musical and aesthetic views of the composer with the help of his annotations in the margins of a Bible that was published by Abraham Calov (1681–1682) in Wittenberg.16 These marginalia are quite valuable—they allow us to catch a glimpse of the personal views of their writer and open up his world for us.
Already in Exodus, Chapter 15, where the prophetess Miriam sings of the wonderful deeds of God, we can read in Bach’s own hand: “N.B. Erstes Vorspiel auf 2 Chören zur Ehre Gottes zu musiciren.” [N.B.: First prelude for two choirs to be sung to the glory of God.] As a comment on First Chronicles 29, v. 2117 we find the following statement by the composer:

Ein herrlicher Beweiß, daß neben andern Anstalten des Gottesdienstes, besonders auch die Musica von Gottes Geist durch David mit angeordnet worden.
[Splendid proof that, besides other arrangements for worship, music too was instituted through David by the Spirit of God.]18
First Chronicles 26 describes the choosing of musicians for the temple. Bach’s comment: “Dieses Capitel ist das wahre Fundament aller Gott gefälligen Kirchen Music.” [This chapter is the true foundation of all church music pleasing to God.]
And one final quote: Second Chronicles, chapter 5 contains the passage:

. . . it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the LORD, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the LORD “For he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever,” the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God. (2 Chronicles 5:13–14)19

Bach annotates this text with a remarkable comment that has programmatic significance and shows not only his relationship to the composing, performing, and hearing of music, but also to the activities of a church musician in general: “Bey einer andächtigen Musique ist allezeit Gott mit seiner Gnaden Gegenwart.“ [Where there is devotional music, God with His grace is always present.]
These examples suffice to clarify where we must start if we wish to analyze the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Albert Schweitzer wrote in his masterful fashion: “Music is an act of worship with Bach… For him, art was religion...”20 The orthodox Lutheran Bach, who was born and raised in Eisenach, Luther’s own town, where the façade of the main church of St. George was decorated with the Protestant motto “A mighty fortress is our God,” transcended in his music the boundaries of confession and creed. “In the last resort, however, Bach’s real religion was not orthodox Lutheranism, but mysticism. In his innermost essence he belongs to the history of German mysticism.”21
This mystical sensitivity to the presence of God and the desire to give witness to Him through music, coupled with his dazzling talent, enabled Bach in his later works to develop an astonishing artistic fusion, the likes of which had not been seen in the world’s cultural history.
In 1747 Bach was admitted to the Societät der musikalischen Wissenschaften [Society of the Musical Sciences], which his one-time pupil, the philosopher and music author Lorenz Christoph Mizler von Koloff (1711–1778), had founded.22 Mizler, a friend of Bach’s, was strongly influenced by Pythagorism and the rational philosophy of both G. W. Leibnitz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754). He saw music as a mathematical science.23
The very fact that Bach accepted Mizler’s invitation to join the Societät der musikalischen Wissenschaften is in itself significant. The composer obviously sympathized with Pythagoras’s ideas concerning the universe and its perfect harmony: a harmony that, according to the teachings of the ancient philosopher and mathematician, was expressed in numbers,24 and shared the convictions of his progenies.
J. S. Bach became the fourteenth member of the Society after G. F. Telemann (6) and G. F. Handel (11), together with other well-known scholars and philosophers. Following the established tradition, upon joining the Society he contributed a mite of his own. In addition to the Canonic variations on “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm’ ich her” (BWV 769), the composer also donated a portrait of himself to the Society, which had been painted in 1746 by Elias Gottlob Hausmann. A microanalysis of the music manuscript that appears in this painting has been made by Friedrich Smend. The results have thrown light on significant aspects of Bach’s compositional methods, which until the middle of the twentieth century had not attracted much attention by scholars.25
Smend’s publication gave new impetus to investigating numerology in the works of the Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig.26 It is not without interest that the researchers first found support in the writings of Christian theologians, but later more and more in the works of the ancient philosophers.27

Features of J. S. Bach’s compositional method
Albert Schweitzer defined Bach as a phenomenon in the history of music: “Bach is . . . a terminal point . . . everything merely leads up to him.”28 Indeed the works of the Cantor of St. Thomas make use not only of the fruits of earlier achievements in composition, but they are also the consummation of the most characteristic tendencies in the music of his own time. He makes use of a plethora of past and present expressive techniques and puts them at the disposal of one single goal: the creation of “devotional music.”
So what exactly were the artistic methods used by J. S. Bach as a composer?
Victor Hugo once described Gothic cathedrals as “symphonies in stone.” If we apply this quotation to the works of Bach, we could say that his larger compositions are “Gothic cathedrals” in music. And when one looks more closely at how Bach approached a new composition we can actually find quite close parallels to architecture. One could contrast, for example, Bach’s methods with the processes current in Viennese Classicism. Whereas in the latter period composition proceeded in a “linear” fashion, beginning from the melody in one of the voices, the methods of Bach’s time started from quite a different point. First of all, the composer laid down a concept of the entire work, or—to use the architectural analogy—he created a “ground-plan.” Then he proceeded to fill in the details. An example of this method is provided by the Orgelbüchlein [Little Organ Book] (BWV 599–644).
This working method gave free rein to the composer’s imagination. The proportions of the composition and its “saturation” with both obvious and more hidden details—factors that played an important role in determining the overall sense of the work—could easily be incorporated in the composition from its very beginning. Great importance was attached to Affektenlehre [Doctrine of the Affections], musical-rhetorical figures, and numerology.
Bach was without a doubt a brilliant “musical architect.” There is no room in his works for anything non-essential. He worked in a similar fashion to the architects of the Middle Ages: every detail has its origin in the concept governing the whole. And as with the medieval builders, much of this work remains, even today, shrouded in mystery. There are always new avenues opening up in these seemingly well-known works for new generations of interpreters to explore.
One can of course only penetrate more deeply into this musical architecture of most of Bach’s works if the connection to the words of the chorales used by the composer is taken into account. Johann Gotthilf Ziegler (1688–1747), a pupil of Bach, wrote in 1746: “Herr Capellmeister Bach, who is still living, instructed me when playing hymns, not to treat the melody as if it alone were important, but to play them taking into account the affect of the words.”29
Johann Mattheson (1681–1764) described music as sounding speech. Naturally this form of speech required its own lexicon in the shape of the definite progressions of musical notes bearing the semantic meaning—the motives, or musical-rhetorical figures, as they are called. These were quoted by Bach’s cousin, Johann Gottfried Walther (1684–1748), in his Musicalisches Lexicon [Music Encyclopaedia] (1732) and in the Praecepta der Musicalischen Composition [Principles of Musical Composition] (1708). Another important compositional aspect was the use of rhetorical laws in the construction of the musical structure, so that the composition began to resemble a religious sermon. As already mentioned, the Affektenlehre [Doctrine of the Affections], which depended upon the use of unequal temperament and the resulting different emotional character of the various keys, played an important role in composition,30 as did, surrounded as it was by an air of mystery, numerology with its different levels of meaning.
One of these levels is to be found in allegorical symbolism. Andreas Werckmeister (1645–1706) gave the following meanings to the first eight numbers in Musikalische Paradoxal-Discourse:31 1 – God, unity; 2 – The Word, God the Son; 3 – The Holy Spirit; 4 – The world of angels; 5 – Symbol of Mankind (“sensual Mankind” [Numerus sensualis]); 6 – Third Person of the Godhead (3×2);32 7 – Symbol of purity and peace; 8 – Symbol of wholeness and perfection.
Another level is that of semantic symbolism. For example, the number 7 symbolises the Seven Last Words on the Cross.
A third level is that of cabbalistic symbolism. Each letter of the alphabet stands for a particular number: a = 1, b = 2, c = 3 and so forth. The letters i and j share the number 9, while u and v are both attributed to the number 20. This means that particular combinations of letters each have a corresponding number. For example, the number 14 is the sum of the numerical values of the letters BACH. Thus the number 14 (or similar numbers, such as 140 or 1.4) would be associated with the composer Bach, whose name was assembled from these individual letters.
Numbers were also used as a constructive element, whereby the harmonic proportions of the ratios of simple numbers, which had been known since Pythagoras’s time, were incorporated into the composition. In addition, the proportio divina, the “Golden mean,” was also used. Naturally Bach was a consummate master of all these creative methods and he used them constantly in his compositions. The most obvious example is the Clavierübung III, which occupies a key position among all Bach’s works for the organ.
Let us examine the structure of this composition more closely.

The chorale preludes
The central part of the work under consideration, as Bach’s title-page suggests, is the collection of chorale preludes. This collection covers not only the essential elements of the Protestant liturgy but also of Luther’s Catechism.
Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit – Christe, aller Welt Trost – Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist [Kyrie, God the Father, eternal – Christ, consolation of all the world – Kyrie, God the Holy Spirit] (BWV 669–674)
The triad of the first chorales creates a sense of unity. The models for these autonomous works were certain verses of the Gregorian chorale Kyrie fons bonitatis (10th century),33 which display the characteristic of a refrain. (Example 1) Such a compositional method is seldom found among Bach’s organ works. In the context of Kyrie – Christe – Kyrie it allowed the composer to establish by means of music the essence of the “one and indivisible” Holy Trinity.34
The first motif of the cantus firmus is characterized by a stepwise progression. In the final statement of the cantus firmus (which is the same in all three compositions), note the upwards leap over a fifth. It is perhaps of interest to note that both the stepwise movement on the one hand and the prominent role of the fifth on the other (elements that determine the mood of the first chorales of the Clavierübung III) play an important part in the dramatic construction of the whole work.
The unity of the initial Kyrie – Christe – Kyrie is underlined by the fact that they are written in a single compositional style—the stile antico. Hermann Keller described them as “Orgelmotetten kunst-vollster Art” [The most highly artistic motets for organ].35 The music suggests greatness and quiet strength. The movement of the accompanying voices working out the motifs of the cantus firmus is linear. The cantus firmus, which is kept in longer note values, appears successively in the soprano (Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit), in the tenor (Christe, aller Welt Trost), and in the bass (Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist), and thus symbolizes in similar fashion the three Persons of the Trinity: God the Father, who is above all, who holds all in being; Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and humankind; and the life-giving Holy Spirit.
The epic element appears organically tied to the inner dynamics of the Kyrie – Christe – Kyrie. The contemplative character of the first chorale gives way to a feeling of emotional turbulence in the second chorale. The third chorale is energy-laden, an effect achieved by the introduction of a fifth voice, the acceleration of the musical structure, and the use of chromatics.
The end of the chorale Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist is quite remarkable: against the backdrop of the final statement of the cantus firmus in the pedals, a tie overflowing with chromatic dissonances appears in the upper voices. These six-and-a-half bars differ quite markedly from all that has gone before. The sound as it were illustrates the text, which at this point contains a plea for mercy. The word eleison is accompanied by an ostinato, which climbs in seconds and by a chromatic figura parrhesia. The music suggests a certain personal involvement. It is significant that one finds the motif BACH in crab motion here (although it appears in other notes), and finally encounters the signature of the composer: CH-BA in the alto of the penultimate bar. (Example 2)
There are altogether 60 bars in the chorale prelude Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist, which matches Werckmeister’s concept well.36 And there is of course the additional association with the creation of the world (the six days of God’s creative work).37 It is worth mentioning that in the first prelude of the Clavierübung III the numerical symbol for the name Bach already occurs more than once. The subsequent statement of the theme in the chorale Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit is not only emphasized by the use of parallel thirds, but also by its extension to 14 notes (the numerical value of the letters BACH).38 And the cantus firmus in the chorale prelude Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist has a total of 41 notes (JSBACH).
The three manualiter Kyries, each in the form of a small fughetta, all elaborate the opening motif of the appropriate verse of the chorale. Each following chorale begins in the soprano with the last note of the preceding chorale, which serves to underline the inner unity of the three manualiter pieces Kyrie – Christe – Kyrie.
An interesting aspect, which is seldom found within Bach’s organ works, is how the keys of the six pieces we have looked at are related. Each of them has at least two tonal centers. We should not let the key signature with three flats of the greater chorale preludes Kyrie – Christe – Kyrie confuse us: the rules of musical notation would certainly have allowed these preludes to have been written with only two flats. It would appear that the composer intentionally adopted three flats in order to strengthen the association with the Holy Trinity.

Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’
[Glory be to God alone on high] (BWV 675–677)
A special feature of the following section of the Clavierübung III is the fact that it has three different preludes on the chorale Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’—the Protestant version of the Gloria in excelsis from the Gregorian Mass for Easter Sunday. An explanation for this phenomenon must be sought in the text of the chorale itself,39 as it sings the praises of the Holy Trinity. Correspondingly, Bach includes three preludes here, each of which is a very individually elaborated piece in three-part texture.
In the first prelude, elegant and rhythmical canon-like outer voices surround the cantus firmus in the alto. The next prelude is executed as a trio sonata with pedal obligato. The cantus firmus appears from time to time in one or other of the voices of this exquisite trio and blends with the natural flow of the music.40 The last chorale prelude is a small fugato in the manner of an Italian versetto, based on the first notes of the cantus firmus.41 All in all, these three versions of the angel’s praise Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ create a feeling of incorporality and immateriality, convincing us by their clarity and purity, and creating an impression of harmony and perfection.
In this section of the Clavierübung III there is a small, at first glance insignificant, compositional detail that is, however, very interesting when seen from the perspective of the dramatic construction of the whole. The keys of the chorale preludes—F major, G major, and A major—form an ascending motif that is the basis for all three preludes on Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’. The composer must assuredly have chosen this sequence of keys with the aim of thus uniting the whole cycle. Numerology reveals another interesting aspect—the numerical values of F, G, and A (6 +7 + 1) comes to 14, the same value as BACH.

Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’ [These are the holy Ten Commandments] (BWV 678–679)
Following the lead of Luther’s Catechism, Bach now begins an extensive section of the Clavierübung III with arrangements of the Gregorian chorale on an Old Testament theme, Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’.42 This is the last pair of chorales in a major key for the remainder of the cycle and the only time that Bach uses the same key for two consecutive compositions—Mixolydian G major, which is one of the purest keys in unequal temperament. It is significant that in both the Orgelbüchlein and in Cantata 77, the chorale melody Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’ is also written in this key.
The greater chorale prelude is developed as a composition for five voices, with the cantus firmus appearing a total of five times as a canon in the tenor. Thus it appears ten times in all, symbolizing an obedient response to the Law.43
The beginning of the prelude is wonderful: over a pedalpoint we hear, emerging out of the stillness, the motif of three descending notes, which we encountered earlier in the piece, worked out as a canon in the upper voices. The measured diatonic motion, the prepared suspensions, the surrounding motifs, and the ascending triads—these are just some of the musical means the composer has used to create a world of unspoiled purity, order, and harmony, in which the unsullied inhabitants of Paradise were at home before the Fall. (Example 3)
A change in character occurs in the fifth bar44 with the introduction of a figura suspirans45 and a motif of ‘falling seconds’, supplemented by a descending chromatic figura parrhesia motif in the alto. (Example 4)
Now the music is dominated by grief, sorrow, and misfortune.46 A change occurs once more in the sixth bar with the introduction of a figura kyklosis or figura circulatio in the alto47 (Example 5), which enriches the fabric with its new nuances. Thus with the help of symbolic motifs that are organically woven into the very fabric of the music, the composer brings us closer to the meaning of the chorale.
The First Commandment, which Luther in his Great Catechism deems to be the most important, is interpreted in the second verse of the chorale:

Ich bin allein dein Gott, der Herr,
kein Götter sollst du haben mehr,
du sollst mir ganz vertrauen dich,
von Herzens Grund lieben mich,
Kyrieleis.

[I alone am your God, your Lord,
No other Gods shall you have,
You shall put your whole trust in me,
Love me from the depth of your heart.
Kyrieleis.]

There is much evidence that precisely these lines were the starting point for Bach’s plan for the whole composition.
It is interesting to note that where the text speaks of “the love of God that comes out of the depths of the heart,” Bach interrupts the cantus firmus (bars 48–50) and increases the number of repetitions from ten to twelve. The motivation for this change can best be seen as an attempt to create a connection between the Old and New Testaments, whose interpreters in the new Christian congregations were the twelve Apostles. And Bach will follow the same intention to connect, through the symbolic comparison of the numbers ten and twelve, the Mosaic Law and the teachings of Jesus again in the Eucharist part, the conclusion of the chorale prelude section of the Clavierübung III.
It is well known that in the New Testament the Commandment of Love takes on decisive significance: “Jesus answered . . . you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). The composer underlines the importance of this commandment with the help of special methods that are introduced at key points. When the word Herz [Heart] appears in the chorale text, Bach highlights it (in bars 46-47) with two groups of 16th notes, and when the words lieben mich [love me] appear in bars 51–52, he uses the heterolepsis, a musical rhetorical figure that creates the effect of two being united in one.48 Thus the composer uses musical means to portray the tangible content of the text. (Example 6)
Numerology plays an especially important role in the chorale prelude Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’.49 The chorale prelude has 60 bars (corresponding to the six days of creation). A pause first appears in the pedal after 37 notes, which can be seen as the Labarum, or Chi-Ro Christogram.50 The next pause comes after 60 further notes (another apparent reference to the creation of the cosmos). The subsequent melodic structure of the pedal line up to the pedalpoint in bar 29, which creates the illusion of a reprise, contains 47 notes. In the first bar, after the pause (bar 21), we encounter a leap of two octaves in the pedal, covering the entire range of the pedal, which is very unusual. (Example 7)
It is well known that Bach often referred to the Psalter, as did Luther in his Catechism. Psalm 47:2 states: “For the LORD, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth.” The text of the cantus firmus quoted at the point of the two octave leap is: Kein Götter sollst du haben mehr [No other Gods shall you have]. Michael Radulescu suggests that we should see the leap as an original “musical comment” by the composer, which, though hidden behind the abstract numerological symbolism, is to be understood as a distinct statement: “I am larger than life, I am your King.”51
The subsequent phrase in the pedal contains 147 notes. When Luther in his Catechism explains the meaning of the Ten Commandments, he quotes Psalm 147:11: “But the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.” By introducing the number 147 into his chorale prelude Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’, Bach is underlining the actuality of the psalmist’s words quoted by Luther for the theme of the Decalogue.
The final notes of the cantus firmus in the second tenor are accompanied by a descending counterpoint in the first tenor, beginning with a chromatic figura parrhesia, which contains 12 notes (bars 57–60). The last phrase in the pedal consists of 14 notes (BACH), which is preceded by two short phrases of five notes each.
After all the above we can concur with those experts who suggest that the basic idea behind this work is love for the Creator.52 Additional confirmation for the correctness of this view is the number 315, which is the sum of all notes in the pedal. Albrecht Clement considers this number to be the numerical expression of the phrase Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben. [Literally: “You should love God, your Lord” as a direct rendering of the Luther Bible’s translation of Mark 12:30.]53
Characteristically, Bach introduces this summons in the title of Cantata 77, whose opening chorus is built upon the theme of the chorale prelude Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’, viz.

Du sollt Gott deinen Herren lieben
24 + 73 + 59 + 49 + 65 + 45 = 315

The manual fughetta on the chorale Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’, written in the form of a gigue, is also dominated by the number 10, although it also contains other interesting numerical allusions.
First of all, it is a four-voice fughetta and the theme is presented ten times (4×10 = 40). The same relationship can be seen in the exposition of the fughetta: ten bars of four dotted eighth notes (10×4 = 40). The theme runs for ten beats. Thus we see the same relationship in the exposition: 10×4 = 40. The theme in the second exposition is presented in inversion and in a shortened form (six beats). The relationship is correspondingly 6×4 = 24. And finally, the last two stretti quotations of the theme (bars 32–35) give us the relationship 8×2 = 16, as the theme here is eight beats long. It is not difficult to see that the addition of 24 and 16 results in the key number 40, which is apparently a reference to the Jewish people’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness before being given the stone tablets with the Decalogue.
The theme has a most interesting structure. It consists of two parts: the main melody of the chorale emerging from a repeated ostinato note and its leaps (six beats), and stepwise motifs over a fifth (four beats). (Example 8) Christoph Albrecht described the theme figuratively as a musical picture of a “raised warning forefinger.”54 But numerology allows us to find deeper connotation in it. The second part of the theme contains 14 notes (BACH). One could consider this as a mere coincidence, were it not that we meet the melody with this numerical symbol again at other central formative points in this little piece.
This second part of the melody occurs as a theme in its own right in the 41st beat of the fughetta (JSBACH), where it fills out the eleventh bar at the junction between the two expositions. Again, this melody is consistently developed in the 14 bars that separate the two concluding quotations of the theme from the second exposition. And we would finally add that the number 14 is underlined by the sum total of all the beats in this chorale prelude: they all add up to 140.
Without a doubt it would be the very height of negligence for a performer who is looking for an authentic interpretation to ignore the manifold recurrence in the composition of the name of its creator. The composer of the manual version of Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’ obviously had definite reasons for weaving his name again and again into the musical fabric of the work.
Let us boldly assume that in this work Bach wishes to embody the idea of the divine Commandments as the cornerstone of his own life. The tenfold repeated theme of the chorale Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’ and the numerical symbol 40 harbor the idea of the Commandments. Their importance for Bach personally is attested to by the composer’s repeated use of the symbol 14.

This article will be continued.

Larry Palmer’s first article for The Diapason in November 1962 was “Hugo Distler: 20 Years Later.” Appointed Harpsichord Editor in 1969, he continues to write, record, play, and teach: since 1970 as Professor of Harpsichord and Organ in the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Entartete—“degenerate”—was a derogatory term used in Nazi Germany to characterize art works deemed to be “un-German” or “impure.” The word itself originated as a biological term to describe a plant or animal that has changed so much that it no longer belongs to its species.
In 1937 a large exhibition of entartete paintings and graphic arts was mounted in Munich, birthplace of the National Socialist movement. Works by Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde and many others were displayed to show the degradation of modern art by artists unacceptable to the regime: Nazi-denounced “Jews, Bolsheviks, persons of color, and perverts.”
As contrast, directly across the plaza, there was another exhibition, many of its pieces chosen by Adolph Hitler himself. This show demonstrated “true German art”—realistic representations of heroic blond Aryan figures by the Führer’s favorite sculptor Arno Breker, and his “court painter” Adolf Ziegler.
That music, too, could be degenerate was a concept put forward as justification for denying performances of works by such contemporary masters as Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, and Kurt Weill. For the most part, the creators of these works were forced to flee Hitler’s oppressive totalitarian regime or face incarceration in concentration camps. To find a score by Distler among those deemed modernist and unfit for German ears seems unimaginable to present-day auditors, but such a travesty did occur.
During October of that same year, 1937, a week-long Festival of German Church Music took place in Berlin. Among a plethora of new music, several of Hugo Distler’s compositions were heard. In addition to the choral and organ music that had secured his reputation as one of the most talented composers of his generation, Distler’s secular magnum opus, the Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings, opus 14, was given a prominent place in a Sunday concert at the Philharmonic Concert Hall, with the composer’s Lübeck colleague, Marien-organist Walter Kraft, as soloist. The conductor was none other than Dr. Peter Raabe, president of the Nazi music regulatory board (the Reichsmusikkammer), so one might have expected that the official press would use only superlatives to praise the concert.
Not so! Here is an excerpt from one of the more scathing reviews:

. . . there was the general aggravation of Hugo Distler’s Concerto for Harpsichord, an “in-your-face” example of degenerate art. The delicate domestic harpsichord was utilized in an unnatural way—like a piano. At the Finale the young composer seemed to be driven by the devil! This motoric noisy music chattered endlessly on . . . Listeners could only laugh. Perhaps it would have been better had they whistled and pondered the biblical quotation: He mocked only himself . . .1

An earlier description of the Concerto’s 1936 premiere in Hamburg, read:

Stuttering rhythms, fractured mood and brutal background sounds fulfill the intellectual aspect of the formal side . . . only to a very limited extent. It appears to be difficult for some people to break loose from the idolatry of an outgrown, stereotypical [Kurt] Weill era. Distler must—in our opinion—change a great deal at the human level in order to properly exploit his considerable abilities.2

Distler’s music degenerate, brutal, diabolic? Possibly, perhaps, to ears deafened by militaristic brass bands or the loud general cacophony of the government propaganda, but otherwise, unlikely.
How did church composer Hugo Distler come to write a major composition for harpsichord, a far from ubiquitous keyboard instrument in the 1930s? As Wanda Landowska remarked (about J. S. Bach), to understand the greatness of a master composer, one needs to place it in the context of music by his contemporaries.
Urged by Leipzig professor Hermann Grabner to base his composition studies on music of the past, specifically that of the Baroque, and influenced further by his organ teacher, Günther Ramin, one of Germany’s pioneering harpsichordists during the 1920s,3 Distler was evidently drawn to the instrument. In addition to Ramin’s public performances, there was new music for harpsichord being created during Distler’s student days. In 1927 Carl Orff (who was to become a household name ten years later with his wildly successful choral/orchestral work Carmina Burana) composed a Kleines Konzert nach Lautensätzen for winds, harpsichord, and percussion. Based on lute pieces by Vincentio (Vincenzo) Galilei and Jean-Baptiste Besard, the work is a 13-minute precursor to a similar work by Francis Poulenc, the Suite Française (1935), also based on Renaissance dance music (by Claude Gervaise), and scored for the same instrumental forces.
Forced by economic necessity to leave the conservatory course before completing his degree, Distler auditioned for and won the position of organist at the Jakobikirche in the north German city of Lübeck, a position he assumed on January 1, 1931. There he began a brilliant career as composer of choral and organ music, with the smaller of the church’s two baroque instruments as his special muse and guide.4 Somehow, despite a meager salary, Distler managed to acquire a two-manual Neupert concert harpsichord in November of that same year5 and used it on November 29 for the first performance of his Kleine Adventsmusik, opus 4.6 Through the succeeding years of his tenure at St. Jakobi, Distler frequently employed his harpsichord for a series of vesper concerts, as well as for chamber music in other Lübeck venues.
Distler actually began writing an extended harpsichord concerto during the early 1930s, a fact that went unnoticed until I discovered fair-copy segments of it in a trunk of musical manuscripts recently found and sent from Lübeck, then stored beneath the guest bed at Frau Distler’s post-war home in Bavaria.7 The physical remnants of this work explained a seeming time discrepancy in his letter to Hermann Grabner (dated 17 April 1931): “Work on my harpsichord concerto, which would have soon been finished, was unfortunately interrupted by another task [a Luther Cantata for a Lübeck Reformation Festival] . . .”
In another communication dated 17 August, this one to Gerhard Schwarz, the young composer wrote, “I have also completed a Concerto for Harpsichord and Eleven Solo Instruments that I have given to Professor Ramin to look over; so far as I can tell, he would like to perform it this winter, perhaps even in Berlin. In addition, Frau Mann-Weiss wants to do it in Hamburg for the New Music series, also this winter.”8
However, it was more than additional commissions that prevented the first performance, expected in March of 1933. The presumptive dedicatee and soloist of the Chamber Concerto for Harpsichord and Eleven Solo Instruments, Günther Ramin, did not like the score as it was presented to him, and asked for extensive revisions. In a letter to his fiancée, Waltraut Thienhaus, Distler expressed anger at his former teacher’s request. The work, missing many pages by the time of its rediscovery in 1968, was not performed until 1998. Although it is now available in a performing edition by Michael Töpel, I find it a flawed and unpleasant work.9 Score one for Professor Ramin!
Further annoyance for the young composer may have been triggered by the fact that Ramin DID play a Chamber Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra in the spring of 1933, but it was a work by Distler’s exact contemporary Kurt Hessenberg,10 later to be associated in Frankfurt with another Leipzig fellow student, the blind German organist Helmut Walcha. Although I have not seen a score of Hessenberg’s Concerto, if it holds as much musical charm as several of the Zehn Kleine Präludien für Klavier oder Clavichord, opus 35 (published by Schott in 1949), it may be a work worth searching for.
Hessenberg, too, endured the political idiocy of the 1930s. He recounted,

My Second String Quartet . . . has a special “history”: its premiere by the Lenzewski Quartet was on the program of a concert [sponsored by] the Reichsmusikkammer in Berlin [1937]. However, because I was still very much unknown, the piece was performed before a board from the aforementioned institution in my absence for approval, and provoked the displeasure of that body. So the piece, which in spite of its adherence to tonality reveals the influence of Hindemith, perhaps also of Bartòk, was dropped from the program. This decision was criticized at that time in a music journal, as a result of which more attention was directed toward me than probably would have been the case if a public performance had taken place. The Quartet was premiered soon after in Frankfurt by the Lenzewski Quartet, excellently, and with success, and not much later in an independent concert of this ensemble in Berlin as well.11

Hessenberg apparently had a more sanguine outlook than Distler (whom, he wrote, he had met only twice, despite the fact that both were students at the same time in the same city). Balanced and genial in character as in music, Hessenberg adapted well to pre- and post-war necessities, living until 1984.
Other harpsichord offerings from the Germany of the 1930s include Music for 2 Violins and Cembalo 1932 by Heinrich Kaminski (1886–1946), composed in post-Regerian thick texture by a favorite composer of Thomaskantor Karl Straube, and the appropriately spare 1934 Spinettmusik by Rudolf Wagner-Régeny (1903–1969), composer, pianist and clavichordist of Romanian origin, perhaps historically shunned because he was one of two approved surrogates who wrote pure “Aryan” alternative music to replace the banned Midsummer Night’s Dream music of Felix Mendelssohn (for performance at the 1935 Reichstagung of the Nazi Kulturgemeinde in Düsseldorf).12
Wagner-Régeny’s seven short pieces compare favorably with Distler’s Dreissig Spielstücke of 1938,13 and since Distler, too, joined the Nazi party on May 1, 1933, perhaps one need no longer cast neither aspersions nor stones at either composer for such ancient political miscalculations. At least in Distler’s case, it is evident that he became increasingly unsympathetic with the government authorities, and finally committed the ultimate act of civil disobedience by removing himself from earthly existence altogether.
Unquestionably the compositional high point encountered thus far among examples of Third Reich harpsichord music is Distler’s (Second) Harpsichord Concerto, with its vivacious Stravinskian first movement; hauntingly lovely, lyrical second movement featuring arching solo violin lines above percussive, insistent rhythmic figures from the harpsichord; and culminating with a rollicking third movement based on Samuel Scheidt’s four-part harmonization of the folk song Ei, du feiner Reiter. Distler’s variations on this sturdy German tune certainly display wit and good humor, especially in a solo harpsichord parody of the mechanistic technique-building keyboard exercises of Carl Czerny. Two further keyboard solo variations (six and twelve) show an idiomatic variety of texture. The note C held over by the second violin serves as a breathtaking common tone modulation for the A-flat major return of the theme, set as a phrase by phrase dialog between strings and harpsichord, concluding with a whimsical employment of ever-longer periods of silence, à la Haydn, from which the final expected answer by the harpsichord never occurs at all. This lengthy silence is ended when the exasperated strings plunge, pall-mall, into a repetition of the wildly motoric tenth variation to provide a vigorous finale. Quirky, or even sarcastic, yes, but scarcely degenerate!
At the first performance of this Concerto the work had an additional movement, Allegro spirituoso e scherzando, expanding by more than six minutes a work that already clocked in at more than half an hour! Several critics suggested pruning the composition by deleting this extra movement, and the composer took their advice. Subsequent performances utilized only the three movements described above, and the printed score presents this three-movement version. The additional movement works as a stand-alone piece with strings, the manner in which I played its modern premiere during the 1980 American Guild of Organists national convention in Minneapolis.14
That the composer found the harpsichord to his liking was shown in one further extended work, until recently known only as a reference citation, the Schauspielmusik zu Ritter Blaubart [Theatre Music for Knight Bluebeard]. Parts for this incidental music assembled for a cancelled Berlin production of Ludwig Tieck’s play were among manuscripts turned over to the Bärenreiter-Verlag by Waltraut Distler, a few years after the end of the war. Since there were other items both complete and more marketable to bring into print, the stage music was basically overlooked. Reassembled and organized by Michael Töpel, the score was published, at last, at the turn of the new millennium, and given a first performance in 2002. Now there is a recording (Musicaphon M 56860), issued early in 2008.
Distler recycled quite a lot of his Harpsichord Concerto for this incidental music, with very interesting additions of wind instruments to the original strings. Three short, newly composed vocal insertions have secco harpsichord accompaniments. One movement [War Music] is an orchestral version of two pieces from Distler’s Eleven Piano Pieces, opus 15 [Fanfare; With Drums and Pipes]. Most appealing is the sarabande-like Overture to the Second Act (arranged for harpsichord and strings from the second movement of String Quartet in A minor, opus 20/I), truly one of the loveliest of Distler’s instrumental works. (The recorded performance, however, has the harpsichord consistently anticipating the strings!) A welcome bonus of the recent disc is the digital remastering of the first recording of the opus 14 Concerto, made in 1964 by the superbly musical French harpsichordist Huguette Dreyfus and the Deutsche Bach Solistin, conducted by Martin Stephani.
Concerning his Concerto Distler wrote to a pupil: “It is an angry piece . . . If it is so ‘modern’, then it is not because I wanted to appear really ‘modern’ for once, but because I am such a dislocated puppet.”15 As his last sacred motets demonstrate, he was willing to disregard the government’s strictures against writing new church music. Published after the war as part of his cycle of Sacred Choral Music, opus 12, the two motets conceived as opening and closing choruses for a planned St. John Passion, never to be completed, showed the composer’s increased mastery of form and expanded use of chromatics. (The fugue subject of the last motet, Fürwahr er trug unsere Krankheit [Surely He hath borne our griefs], contains ten of the twelve pitches found in the chromatic scale.)
Five years after the Concerto performance so stigmatized by the Nazi press, the composer’s mounting dread of military conscription fueled his descent into depression, and led him to turn on the gas in the Berlin apartment where he ended his life on November 1, 1942. Ironically, only a few days later his name appeared on the Führerliste—a register of those individuals permanently exempted from the military draft, persons deemed to be more important at home than in the armed forces.
Hitler’s much-vaunted “thousand year Reich” survived Distler by only three years, falling 988 years short of its self-proclaimed longevity. But as we celebrate the composer’s centenary, his music continues increasingly to move and beautify our musical life. Political movements are transient; artistic worth endures.

Hugo Distler’s compositions
for (or with) harpsichord
Opus 4. Kleine Adventsmusik [A Little Advent Music], Breitkopf und Härtel 4967. First performed 28 November 1931, using harpsichord as the keyboard instrument. English edition (Concordia Publishing House).
Opus 6/I. Christ, der du bist der helle Tag [Christ Who Alone Art Light of Day], Bärenreiter 636. First performed 26 Februrary 1933, with harpsichord. English edition (Concordia).
Opus 9/I. An die Natur (1933). First performed 16 August 1933 at the Nationalsozialistischen Musikfest in Bad Pyrmont. Bärenreiter 683.
Opus 11/I. Choralkantate Wo Gott zuhaus nit gibt sein Gunst, harpsichord or organ. Composed 1933, published 1935. Bärenreiter 758.
Opus 14. Konzert für Cembalo und Streichorchester (1935–1936). First performed 29 April 1936, Hamburger Musikhalle, Hugo Distler, harpsichordist, Dr. Hans Hoffmann, conductor. Published October 1936; Bärenreiter 7393. An additional movement, deleted from the original published edition Allegro spirituoso e scherzando is now available as Bärenreiter 7393, edited by Michael Töpfel.
Opus 17. Geistliche Konzerte für eine hohe Singstimme [Three Sacred Concertos for High Voice and Keyboard: Organ, Harpsichord, or Piano]. Composed in 1937, published 1938. Bärenreiter 1231. English edition (Concordia).
Opus 18/I. Dreissig Spielstücke für die Kleinorgel oder andere Tasteninstrumente. 1938. Published June 1938. Bärenreiter 1288.
Opus 21/II. Kleine Sing- und Spielmusik: Variations on “Wo soll ich mich hinkehren?” (Piano or harpsichord). Composed 1941 (doubtful according to Lüdemann), published 1952. Bärenreiter 2046.

Without opus number
Kammerkonzert für Cembalo und elf Soloinstrumente (1932). Mss incomplete. First performed 28 November 1988, Martin Haselböck, harpsichordist and conductor. Published 1988. Bärenreiter 7687.
Ritter Blaubart (1940)—Theatre music for Ludwig Tieck’s play. Chamber orchestra includes harpsichord (prominently). First performed 29 September 2002. Bärenreiter 7711, published 2001.
Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her. Kleines Konzert and Choral. Neue Weihnachtsmusik für Klavier, Orgel, und andere Tasteninstrumente. Bärenreiter Collection (1935), edited by Reinhard Baum.

A basic bibliography
Books
Larry Palmer: Hugo Distler and his Church Music. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967. (Out of print; often available through Amazon.com or Alibris.com).
The most comprehensive (and recent) book on Distler is available only in German, Winfried Lüdemann: Hugo Distler—Eine musikalische Biographie. Augsburg: Wissner-Verlag, 2002 [ISBN 3-89639-353-7]. An exhaustive biography based on all available letters and archival holdings. Complete listing of Distler’s works, analysis of the music; many photographs and musical examples.

Periodical literature in English
Jan Bender: “Hugo Distler and his Organ Music” [An interview conducted by William Bates], The American Organist, December 1982, 42–43.
Mark Bergass: “Hugo Distler’s First Vespers at St. Jakobi in Lübeck,” The American Organist, April 1982, 174–177.
Larry Palmer: “Hugo Distler’s Harpsichord Concerto,” The Diapason, May 1969, 12–13. “Hugo Distler: Some Influences on His Musical Style,” The American Organist, November 2002, 50–51. “Hugo Distler: 60 Years Later,” The Diapason, November 2002, 22.

Discography
The most satisfactory way to “know” Hugo Distler is through his music. The following compact disc recordings are recommended:

Organ works
Complete Organ Works (two discs, also included are works by Bach, Buxtehude, and Scheidt). John Brock plays two Brombaugh organs. Calcante Recordings, Ltd CD022 (1998).
Of historic interest (primarily for the instruments—Distler’s house organ and the Jakobi instruments, all of which have been changed since Distler played them): Complete Organ Works played by Armin Schoof. Thorofon CTH2293 and CTH2294.
Also of “historic” interest: Larry Palmer plays the large partitas and several smaller chorale works: Musical Heritage Society LP 3943 (out of print). Robert Sipe organ of Zumbro Lutheran Congregation, Rochester, MN (1978).

Choral works
Liturgische Sätze (selections from opus 13, opus 5, opus 11, and opus 6/2). Thorofon CTH 2420.
Choralpassion, opus 7. Kammerchor der Universität Dortmund, conducted by Willi Gundlach. Thorofon CTH2185.
Totentanz, opus 12/2 (same choir and conductor), plus Motet and Organ Partita on Wachet auf. Thorofon CTH 2215.
Die Weihnachtsgeschichte, opus 10. Thomanerchor Leipzig, Hans-Joachim Rotzsch. Berlin Classics 0092462BC.
Totentanz und Mottetten, opus 12 (including the opening and closing choruses for the never-completed St. John Passion). Berliner Vokalensemble, conducted by Bernd Stegmann. Cantate C 58007.

Instrumental works
Harpsichord Concerto, opus 14, and Incidental Music to the Play Ritter Blaubart. Musicaphon M 56860 (issued 2008).
Harpsichord Concertos, Martin Haselböck, harpsichord and conductor, with the Wiener Akademie. Both early and late concerti, plus the deleted movement from opus 14. Thorofon CTH 2403.

Special appreciation to my former organ student Simon Menges (Berlin) for sending the Musicaphon compact disc before it became available in the United States.