Adam Brakel plays Buxtehude Praeludium in D Minor

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, voiced, and researched pipe organs since 1973. Stimulating work as a research engineer in magnetic recording paid the bills. He is working on his Opus 5, which explores how an understanding of the human sensitivity to the changes in sound can be used to increase emotional impact. Opus 5 includes double expression, a controllable wind dynamic, chorus phase shifting, and meantone. Stay tuned.

Many of the organ compositions of Dieterich Buxtehude (c. 1637–1707) and Nicolaus Bruhns (1665–1697) contain bass accidentals that are not playable on the short-octave manual and pedal basses of the late-seventeenth-century organs of Lübeck. The bass octave of Buxtehude’s organs contained just eight notes—C, D, E, F, G, A, A-sharp, and B—a consequence of meantone tuning. It is impossible to imagine that these wonderful and dramatic compositions were not played in some manner on those organs, but that is the extraordinary claim of at least one modern researcher.¹

A solution to this problem might lie in its history. The original scores of the organ works of Buxtehude and Bruhns were written in tablature, an older form of notation that looks nothing like modern notation. Figure 1 shows an example of tablature and modern notation for the same composition. And here is the key point: none of the tablature originals have survived. All extant versions in tablature are copies, and copies often contain errors. Our modern scores are transcriptions from tablature to modern notation. Transcriptions may contain errors, not the least of which is that the intended octave in tablature is often ambiguous.^{2, 3, 4} Figure 2 shows an example of a tablature copy of Bruhns’s Praeludium in E Minor (the smaller of the two E minor praeludia).

What might have motivated eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musicians to modify the original tablature manuscripts to be unplayable on the organs for which they were composed? The musicians who later copied or transcribed the originals were familiar with later organs that had full-compass basses, or perhaps only a missing low C-sharp. We should also note that the later shift toward equal temperament eliminated the intense gravity of meantone’s pure major thirds, whose resultants sound a full two octaves lower in pitch. The disappearance of this gravity may have influenced the desire to shift tenor accidentals and the phrases in which they were embedded to the bass octave. The ambiguity of the intended octave in tablature may have also provided the rationalization to do so. Equal temperament’s loss of gravity was a strong motivation for eighteenth-century organ builders to include deeper and very costly pitches in their stoplists.⁵

Meantone, unlike equal temperament, has intense key color. Modern-received wisdom relates that the strong dissonances in meantone were avoided in practice; history teaches us otherwise. Dom Bédos argued that meantone was more musical than equal temperament because it presented the composer with useful tensions between the purity of its eight major thirds and the dissonance of its four Pythagorean thirds. Bédos was explicitly referring to quarter-comma meantone.⁶ Restoring bass accidentals to the tenor heightens their dissonance (beat rates will double), setting up tension for later resolution with meantone’s pure thirds.

The short bass octave is an essential feature of the great meantone organs of Lübeck on which the compositions of Buxtehude and Bruhns were most logically composed and played. The short octave with its four missing accidentals has an unusual key order:

         D     E     A#

C  F     G     A     B

This indicates the use of an original form of meantone, i.e., quarter-syntonic comma, not the later and much less colorful versions like Gottfried Silbermann’s fifth-comma meantone. Dissonances were used to good effect, but dissonances in quarter-comma meantone also supported the elimination of accidental bass pipes, saving space in their layouts and considerable cost. Later versions of meantone in the eighteenth century reduced both the dissonances and the purity of meantone; this supported the use of more accidentals in the bass of new organs, often omitting only the C-sharp in a normal order of the bass keys:

           D#          F#      G#     A#

C     D     E   F       G        A       B

We know that the organ compositions of Buxtehude and Bruhns were composed when the large organs of Lübeck had short bass octaves, and there is evidence that those organs were not retuned from their original meantone in Buxtehude’s time.⁷ This suggests that the presence of any bass accidentals other than A-sharp in the organ works of Buxtehude and Bruhns very likely denotes deliberate changes in modern transcriptions to accommodate later organs with more complete bass octaves and much less colorful temperaments.

We will never know if any of our reconstructions are faithful to the originals—they are all lost. But we can use our knowledge of meantone’s inherent dissonant tension and majestic purity to aim for a reconstruction that heightens the emotional impact of these compositions. This is completely in character with the stylus phantasticus, a term coined for the freely composed organ works of Buxtehude and Bruhns—works that speak to modern ears with emotional intensity and dramatic rhythms. These works perfectly express the unique sound of a pipe organ’s principal chorus and thundering pedal bass. And unlike modern compositions, these works feature the musicality and gravity of seventeenth-century meantone.

I am an organbuilder, not a musician skilled in composition. I built my Opus 5 for, among other things, the purpose of showcasing the effect of quarter-comma meantone on the works of Buxtehude and Bruhns, only to discover that many of the modern scores are deeply flawed. Finding no one willing to address this problem, I have evaluated and restored the following scores:

Dieterich Buxtehude: Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 137, restored; Toccata in D Minor, BuxWV 155, restored; Toccata in F Major, BuxWV 157, no issues; Ciaccona in E Minor, BuxWV 160, no issues; Fuga in C Major, BuxWV 174, no issues;

Nicolaus Bruhns: Praeludium in E Minor (“Little”), restored.

At the end of this article you will find my suggested corrections, all of which are in the pedal, noting the editions I used. If a reader objects that others are much more qualified to make these corrections, I could not agree with you more, and I wholeheartedly welcome those with more skill to propose solutions that are playable on historically correct, short-octave organs.

We can debate how much of a phrase containing bass accidentals needs to be moved to the tenor. We can debate whether the bass accidentals are themselves errors that represent different notes. But if we accept that Buxtehude and Bruhns created their compositions on the organs of their time, we must also accept that the accidentals C-sharp, D-sharp, F-sharp, and G-sharp in the bass octaves of modern scores are not faithful to the original compositions.

Claiming that these compositions were not meant to be played on the large and grand late-seventeenth-century organs of Lübeck is analogous to saying that the Scherer family and Friedrich Stellwagen made and maintained beautiful organs with wonderful sounds, but those short-octave organs were not meant to be played—they were just exercises in thought.

Notes

1. Ibo Ortgies, Die Praxis der Orgelstimmung in Norddeutschland im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert und ihr Verhältnis zur zeitgenössischen Musik, Göteborgs universitet, 2007, page 2, Abstract: “An analysis of payments to bellows pumpers as recorded in church account books shows that the organs of St. Marien, Lübeck, were not retuned during the tenures of Franz Tunder and Dieterich Buxtehude. Thus, some of their organ works could not have been played on the organs available to them during their lifetimes.” [translated by John Brombaugh]

2. organscore.com/buxtehude-complete-organ-works, accessed June 2022. “Editing Buxtehude’s organ work is a delicate task because we do not have access to any holographic source of these works. The available manuscripts are all copies by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century organists, mostly written in modern notation system—the originals were probably in German organ tablature—and contain transcription errors such as missing notes, confused voices, incorrect note heights or accidentals, and poorly placed bars. In places where the music is obviously corrupted and no complementary source is available, the editor must reconstruct the music by guessing at the original idea. Because of this, no modern edition can claim to be the genuine composer’s text.”
3. en.opera-scores.com/O/Dieterich+Buxtehude/Herr%2C+ich+lasse+dich+nicht%2C+BuxWV+36.html, accessed June 2022. “Copies made by various composers are the only extant sources for the organ works: chorale settings are mostly transmitted in copies by Johann Gottfried Walther, while Gottfried Lindemann’s and others’ copies concentrate on free works. Johann Christoph Bach’s manuscript is particularly important, as it includes the three known ostinato works and the famous Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 
137. Although Buxtehude himself most probably wrote in organ tablature, the majority of the copies are in standard staff notation.

“The nineteen organ praeludia form the core of Buxtehude’s work and are ultimately considered his most important contributions to the music literature of the seventeenth century. They are sectional compositions that alternate between free improvisation and strict counterpoint. They are usually either fugues or pieces written in fugal manner; all make heavy use of pedal and are idiomatic to the organ. These preludes, together with pieces by Nicolaus Bruhns, represent the highest point in the evolution of the north German organ prelude and the so-called stylus phantasticus. They were undoubtedly among the influences on J. S. 
Bach, whose organ preludes, toccatas, and fugues frequently employ similar techniques.

“Occasionally the introduction will engage in parallel thirds, sixths, etc. For example, BuxWV 149 begins with a single voice, proceeds to parallel counterpoint for nine bars, and then segues into the kind of texture described above. . . . [Note the reference to writing in parallel thirds and sixths. This works extremely well with meantone’s pure thirds. All of equal temperament’s major thirds are very, and equally, dissonant.]

“Buxtehude’s other pieces that employ free writing or sectional structure include works titled toccata, praeambulum, etc. A well-known piece is BuxWV 146, in the rare key of F-sharp minor; it is believed that this prelude was written by Buxtehude especially for himself and his organ, and that he had his own way of tuning the instrument to allow for the tonality rarely used because of meantone temperament.” [The key of F-sharp minor in Pietro Aron’s quarter-comma meantone, with the wolf placed on the interval G-sharp to D-sharp, is very useful; its minor third is much less dissonant than an equal temperament minor third. Furthermore, the minor third beats at exactly twice the rate of the fifth. This is a sonorous key in meantone. (See the beat rate chart on page 131 in The Sound of Pipe Organs, Michael McNeil, 2012.) As there were no pedal F-sharp bass keys on Buxtehude’s organs, this note would have been played in the tenor.]

4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_tablature, accessed June 2022. “. . . The feature of organ tablature that distinguishes it from modern musical notation is the absence of staves, noteheads, and key signatures. Pitches are denoted by letter names written in script, durations by flags (much like modern notation), although in early notations durations were shown using mensural indications, and octave displacement by octave lines drawn above a letter. There was some variation in the notation of accidentals, but sometimes sharps were specified by the addition of a loop to the end of the letter. B-natural and B-flat were represented by h and b respectively. Naturals are not indicated, as accidentals do not carry through the entire measure as in modern notation. Key signatures are not specified; they are implied by the indicated sharps.

“. . . Repertoire originally written in tablature has been translated into modern notation. However, this translation carries a risk of error. In German script an A and an E can become confused, as can an F and a G. Likewise, an octave line over a series of notes can begin or end ambiguously. Different solutions are given by different editors, and this is one manifestation of the improvisatory tradition of organ performance of the period.”

5. Michael McNeil, “The elusive and sonorous meantone of Dom Bédos,” The Diapason, September 2020, pages 14–17.

6. John Brombaugh analyzed Bédos’s tables of meantone intervals, and McNeil found the result was virtually identical to Pietro Aron’s equal-beating quarter-syntonic-comma meantone (see Owen Jorgensen, Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear, Northern Michigan University Press, 1977, pages 173–177).

7. Ibo Ortgies. See quotation in Note 1.

Restorations for performance on meantone organs with short bass octaves, C, D, E, F, G, A, A-sharp, and B

All examples are in the bass clef in the pedal.

Edition Peters 4855, Nicolaus Bruhns, 1968

Nr. 3, Praeludium und Fuge e-moll (“Little”), pages 20–24. See Examples 1 and 2.

Edition Renaud Vergnet, D. Buxtehude, Volume 1, 2018

Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 137, pages 5–7. See Examples 3 through 16.

Edition Renaud Vergnet, D. Buxtehude, Volume 2, 2018

Toccata in D Minor, BuxWV 155, pages 2–5. See Examples 17 
through 19.

Adam Brakel plays O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß, BWV 622, by J. S. Bach. 

Performed at Knowles Memorial Chapel, Rollins College; Skinner Organ Company (1931) / Randall Dyer (2022), four manuals, 78 ranks. 
https://www.rollins.edu/chapel/history/the-great-organ.html 
https://www.rdyerorgans.com/collaborations/view?id=1

Adam Brakel is director of music for the Diocese of Orlando and St. James Cathedral in Orlando, Florida. His performances span the globe—from coast to coast in the United States to across Europe and Asia. His expansive repertoire includes the entire spectrum of styles featuring the complete organ works of Bach, Bruhns, Buxtehude, Couperin, Liszt, de Grigny, Franck, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Duruflé. He is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC. 
www.concertartists.com 

Photo credit: Majorie Durante

Adam Brakel plays Fugue on B-A-C-H, op. 46, by Max Reger.

Recorded at the Cathedral of St. James, Orlando, Florida. Wicks organ, four manuals, 63 ranks. https://stjamesorlando.org/

See Adam Brakel's artist spotlight at: https://www.thediapason.com/artists/adam-j-brakel

Adam J. Brakel is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.

Adam Brakel plays the Bossi Etude Symphonique at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Corpus Christi, "Adam Brakel plays the Bossi Etude Symphonique at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Corpus Christi, Texas"

Dialogue: Bach, Buxtehude, Kathryn Cok, harpsichord. DMP Records, DVH 140431, 2022, €15. Available from dmp-records.nl.

Chromatische Fantasie und Fuge d-moll, BWV 903, Johann Sebastian Bach; Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BuxWV 223, Dieterich Buxtehude; Fantasie und Fuge a-moll, BWV 904, Bach; Fuga in C, BuxWV 174, Buxtehude; Fuge C-dur, BWV 952, Bach; Praeludium in g, BuxWV 163, Aria: Rofilis, BuxWV 248, Buxtehude; Fuge a-moll, BWV 959, Bach; Canzona in C, BuxWV 166, Buxtehude; Präludium, Fuge, und Allegro Es-dur, BWV 998, Bach; Courante Simple in a, BuxWV 245, Buxtehude; Capriccio B-dur, BWV 992, Bach.

Dr. Kathryn Cok is a native New Yorker currently living in the Netherlands, where she completed her graduate studies and now teaches at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She is active as a performer and researcher and currently serves as vice president of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America. As far as I am aware, this production represents her first commercial recording of late Baroque solo keyboard repertoire.

Cok presents on this recording a very interesting collection of famous and obscure keyboard works by the two most celebrated keyboard composers of the German high Baroque. The program opens with a Bach work clearly influenced by Buxtehude and a challenge: how does one approach and perform a work so often heard and familiar as Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue? Is it even possible to bring something new to this work, studied and performed since Bach’s own time, without introducing bizarre elements (as many have tried) or otherwise deviating in significant ways from the score? In hearing the first notes, the Dutch influences in Cok’s playing are evident, particularly in the slower sections of the piece. She plays with great sensitivity, emphasizing the forward motion of the voices rather than the vertical harmonies, usually slightly delaying the upper voice. The recitativo sections are treated with subtlety and tenderness, while the rapid sections are played with flair and virtuosity. Added ornaments are always tasteful and appropriate, although her inclusion of the supertonic in the final arpeggiated tonic chord (here and elsewhere) was a fresh surprise. In short, Cok succeeds in breathing life into the work without deviating significantly from the score.

The accompanying fugue is more sedate in character, earning its epithet in the chromaticism of its theme. Bach makes extensive use of pedal points throughout the fugue in all voices. Many performers allow these extended notes to simply fade into silence or use trills to extend the pitch; Cok chooses to repeat the tied pitch at the beginning of each tied bar, sometimes alternating octaves upon repetition. Her solution keeps the harmonies active in our ears. Given these extended pedal and inverted pedal points, the parallel octave passage (pedal?) at the work’s conclusion, and other elements, I believe this work could be appropriately performed on the organ.

It is interesting that most of the Buxtehude works in the present collection have been published traditionally with the organ works and are most frequently performed on that instrument. That said, Cok makes a persuasive case for their performance on the harpsichord.

The first Buxtehude work heard, a charming setting of the chorale Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (BuxWV 223), is one such case. It is sectional, with each line of the chorale treated in contrasting style. In performance on the organ, it is easy to facilitate these contrasts by changing manuals or registration. In this performance, the resources of the harpsichord provide the ability for similar dynamic contrasts.

The next Bach work, while similarly titled Fantasie and Fugue, could hardly be more different than the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. The Fantasy and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 904, is a more serious and profound work, likely a product of a later time. The first movement is a prelude in fairly strict, mostly three-, although sometimes expanding to four- or five-voice counterpoint. The fugue is a splendid double fugue, with both subjects combined at the conclusion. It is a work that appeals to the mind as much as the ear and was a wise choice to show contrast with the much earlier chromatic pair. Interestingly, the second theme of this fugue is a descending chromatic line, thus an inversion of parts of the subject of the D-minor chromatic fugue.

Three other great works of Buxtehude (alternating with Bach works on the CD) are also drawn from the organ repertoire. These are the famous “Gigue” Fugue in C Major, BuxWV 174; one of the large stylus phantasticus praeludia, BuxWV 163, this one in G minor; and the lesser-known Canzona in C Major, BuxWV 166. The fugue is a rollicking delight, briskly performed by Cok. Both the G-minor praeludium and the Canzona in C are extended dramatic works in stylus phantasticus with alternating imitative contrapuntal sections and free dramatic flourishes. Cok has clearly mastered this style, performing these works in a highly improvisatory manner, with bold contrasts in registration and tempo and lavish embellishments.

Cok has included two relatively obscure Bach fugues, found among those many works buried in the appendices of the Bach Gesellschaft and mostly ignored for generations. The Fugue in C Major, BWV 952, is not a particularly interesting work in three voices. The subject is one of those instrumental-type “sewing-machine” subjects that rambles on in a sequence before finally finding an answer. The counterpoint and harmonies do suggest the work of the young Bach—indeed, the successful working out of the piece implies a somewhat later date of composition—but the lack of musical creativity suggests the work of a lesser mind, perhaps the exercise of a young student or even a youthful Bach son. The performance is quite fine, bringing as much life and interest to the work as is possible given the rather feeble source material.

The Fugue in A Minor, BWV 959, brings us into another world altogether. It is a fugue à 3 with occasional chords expanding to four voices. One immediately notices in comparison with the previous fugue the more interesting and intriguing fugue subject, ripe with possibilities. There are many “un-Bachian” elements to be found in this work, unlike the previous straightforward C-major fugue, which surprise the listener on first hearing and mark it as a product of his earliest productive years. In earlier times the authenticity of many of these early “quirky” works was questioned by scholars simply because “there’s nothing else like it in the canon.” One need only to study works such as the famous Toccata in D Minor, BWV 565, Chromatic Fantasy in D Minor, BWV 903i, Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582, the Pastorale in F Major, BWV 590, the Piece d’orgue, BWV 572, the canzona, the capriccios in B-flat major and E major, and many others, to realize that Bach was experimenting and often composed only one example of a form, genre, or style.

This experimentation is equally evident within works, with almost unlimited experimentation in harmony, modulations, scales, manual (and pedal) figurations, endings, etc. These striking and unusual techniques allow us to follow his compositional matriculation as they merge and evolve into more mature music.

This is a lengthy way of saying that I have no problem accepting this curious and creative work as the effort of a youthful Johann Sebastian Bach, despite its eccentricities. I do not know for certain, but I suspect it was these same quirky eccentricities that attracted Cok to this work and inspired her to this dynamic and dramatic performance, which succeeds without overemphasizing the more unconventional elements.

The two remaining works by Buxtehude included in this recording are both variation sets, published in modern editions not among the organ works, but with a collection of traditional keyboard suites presumably intended for performance on harpsichord or clavichord. Seldom performed, these suites and variations for keyboard are far less well known than are Buxtehude’s brilliant and justly acclaimed so-called “organ works” (and that’s an article for another day).

According to Emilius Bangert, publisher of the first modern edition of these suites and variations (Hansen, 1941, suites only republished by Dover), the tune Rofilis “is a melody from Lully’s Ballet de l’Impatience; it became widely known, and already in the seventeenth century was used in Denmark as a hymntune.” Without an initial statement of the unadorned tune, Buxtehude provides a set of three brief (sixteen-bars without repeats) variations in Aria: Rofilis, BuxWV 248, a work that requires subtlety rather than virtuosity. The entire work is scarcely two minutes in duration, but it is ample time to demonstrate Cok’s ease with this style. Her playing here is a fine example of pure musical poetry.

The roots of the final Buxtehude work in this collection, Courante Simple, BuxWV 245, are more shrouded in obscurity. It is immediately a larger-scaled work than Rofilis, with more variations exploring higher technical and stylistic demands. The variations tend to increase in complexity as they progress, allowing Cok to again demonstrate her subtlety, creativity, and virtuosity at the keyboard.

The final music of Johann Sebastian Bach included in this delightful collection comprises two major works, both well known. Heard first is the Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat Major, BWV 998. This work has been a standard of the keyboard repertoire at least since Wanda Landowska recorded it on her Pleyel harpsichord in 1949, but it is actually catalogued as a “lute work” in Wolfgang Schmieder’s Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis catalog. There have always been questions about this group of so-called “lute” works, even though lutenists have played them, and guitar transcriptions and performances have been popular since the days of Andrés Segovia. The manuscript of the E-minor lute suite includes a notation at the top of the page reading aufs lautenwerk. The lautenwerk, a gut-strung keyboard instrument designed to imitate the sound of the lute, was supposedly invented by Bach himself, and his post-mortem instrument inventory suggests that he possessed two of them. Although no historical examples are known to exist, several modern instrument builders have constructed modern lautenwerke based on surviving descriptions. In style, all of the lute works are similar, typically featuring a flowing melody in one voice or two, accompanied by a walking bass line in slower notes, and/or passages of style brisé. They are seldom contrapuntally complex, with voices being fragmented even in fugues.

Under Cok’s fingers, the leisurely prelude is pure poetry. The melody sings, and there is just enough flexibility of rhythm and agogic to keep the music flowing and engaging the listener. Likewise, the fugue is brought to life in a tranquil way, allowing us to anticipate and appreciate each entry of the theme.

When the mood suddenly changes, Cok makes the shift in style without a noticeable bump. The return of the original section restores tranquility. The final “Allegro” is an outburst of joy, and Cok brings the whole work to an exciting, rollicking conclusion.

Arguably the earliest popular instrumental work by Bach is the so-called Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo Fratello dilettissimo, BWV 992 (“Capriccio on the departure of his beloved brother”), the work with which Kathryn Cok concludes her recorded performance. It was written for the occasion of his brother Johann Jakob’s departure to serve the King of Sweden. The work is in six sections, each relating in a programmatic way to the departure:

1. Arioso: Adagio, “Friends Gather and Try to Dissuade Him from Departing;”

2. (Andante), “They Picture the Dangers Which May Befall Him;”

3. Adagiosissimo (or Adagissimo), “The Friends’ Lament;”

4. (Andante con moto), capriccios “Since He Cannot Be Dissuaded, They Say Farewell;”

5. Allegro poco, “Aria of the Postilion” (Aria di postiglione);

6. “Fugue in Imitation of the Postilion’s Horn” (Fuga all’imitazione della cornetta di postiglione).

Due to the youthful genesis of the work, it lacks many elements of the style of the mature Bach. Yet it has remained a standard of the harpsichord repertoire at least since it was popularized by recordings released by both Wanda Landowska and Ralph Kirkpatrick in the late 1950s. It is easy to see how this work has far surpassed most of Bach’s early keyboard works in popularity, given its obvious charm and the documented transmitted program. Textures vary from simple figured-bass passages to full-fisted chords in some cadences. Quite a bit of ornamentation is notated in modern editions, but given the provenance of its multiple sources, it is unclear how much of it actually originates with the composer.

Like much of the music of Buxtehude and the young Bach, it requires great freedom and imagination to interpret successfully in performance. Throughout this entire program, Cok has demonstrated repeatedly that she has mastered the art of the stylus phantasticus. Her performances show thoughtfulness, creativity, subtlety, and virtuosity—all in the service of the music.

The harpsichord heard in this recording, built by Titus Crijnen in 1999, has a rich and resonant sound, superbly captured by the recording team. Kathryn Cok’s spirited and musical performances throughout this disc make recommendation easy. She is an artist of considerable skill, and this compact disc recording should only serve to further her already impressive reputation.