J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

Bach’s style before the composer’s assimilation of Vivaldi’s idiom around 1712, and
how little we know about the experiments in Bach’s initial drafts’ and adjuring us: ‘It
is perplexing, of course, but let’s face it: Bach had some difficulty writing fugues
containing more than four voices.’ 29 Likewise, in his revised edition of The organ
music of J. S. Bach, Peter Williams also resists Humphreys’ conclusions, largely
preserving his reading of 1980; although he is now more circumspect about the
question of authorship. He ascribes BWV 534’s contrapuntal infelicities to errors of
transmission, and argues that ‘so distinctive a harmonic and melodic character make it
hard to believe that Bach had no hand in the piece’, finding ‘a warmth to the harmony
and melody hard to attribute to any pupil.’ 30 Clearly, as Harvey Grace found: ‘this
fugue gets hold of one in a curious way.’ 31
Although long assumed to be a part of Bach’s output, BWV 534 has not been
performed as frequently as other, similar works and is therefore not especially well-
known to the general musical public (could we interpret this as an example of ‘the
invisible hand of the canon’ at work?). This is certainly not true of the next work we
shall look at: ‘the’ Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.
There is little doubt that this is ‘the most famous piece of organ music ever
written’. 32 Its fame and long-established position in the Bach canon (in volume IV of
the Peters edition, among the ‘classical’ preludes and fugues) have tended to obscure
just how unlike its companions it really is. Its attribution remained unchallenged,
however, until Peter Williams opened the discussion in 1981. The doubts he
expressed can be grouped under four headings: extra-musical problems; then questions
that arise from the beginning, the middle, and the end of the piece. 33 The source itself
29 Review of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentary Essays, Musical Quarterly 72/2 (1986), 278.
30 nd The organ music of J. S. Bach, 2 ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp.50, 51.
31 See p.46 above. It is worth comparing Williams’ indifference to relatively minor works such as
BWV 580 (an alla breve fugue in D) or 897 (Prelude and Fugue in A minor; Dretzel), which have
been excised from the canon without regret.
32 Peter Williams, ‘BWV 565: a toccata in D minor for organ by J. S. Bach?’ Early Music, 9/3 (July
1981), 330.
33 Observations not footnoted are my own.
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