Johann Sebastian Bach - Organ Works - Orgelbüchlein BWV 599 - 644 / Wolfgang Zerer - organ / Hänssler Edition Bachakademie Audio CD 1999 / CD 92.094

UPC 4010276015949

The Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) BWV 599−644 is a set of 46 chorale preludes for organ — one of them is given in two versions — by Johann Sebastian Bach. All but three were written between 1708 and 1717 when Bach served as organist to the ducal court in Weimar; the remainder and a short two-bar fragment came no earlier than 1726, after the composer’s appointment as cantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig.

The plan was for a collection of 164 settings of chorale tunes sung during the Church year so that each part of the year was represented. This number was not to be, the manuscript, which is now in the Staatsbibliothek, leaves a number of tunes as missing or "ghost" pieces. These have been added in the 21st century; this project took nine hours in the first complete performance, giving an idea of the potential scope of Bach's "little" book. The Orgelbüchlein as Bach left it is about 80 minutes. However, it spans the calendar and more importantly signals a maturity and new breadth in his compositional style, not only with regard to this instrument.

Each setting takes an existing Lutheran chorale, adds a motivic accompaniment, and quite freely explores form. Many of the preludes are short and in four parts, requiring only a single keyboard and pedal, with an unadorned cantus firmus. Others involve two keyboards and pedal. These include several canons, four ornamental four-part preludes with elaborately decorated chorale lines, and one prelude in trio sonata form.

A further step towards perfecting this form was taken by Bach when he made the contrapuntal elements in his music a means of reflecting certain emotional aspects of the words. Pachelbel had not attempted this; he lacked the fervid feeling which would have enabled him thus to enter into his subject. And it is entering into it, and not a mere depicting of it. For, once more be it said, in every vital movement of the world external to us we behold the image of a movement within us; and every such image must react upon us to produce the corresponding emotion in that inner world of feeling.

— Philipp Spitta, 1873, writing about the Orgelbüchlein in Volume I of his biography of Bach

Here Bach has realised the ideal of the chorale prelude. The method is the most simple imaginable and at the same time the most perfect. Nowhere is the Dürer-like character of his musical style so evident as in these small chorale preludes. Simply by the precision and the characteristic quality of each line of the contrapuntal motive he expresses all that has to be said, and so makes clear the relation of the music to the text whose title it bears.

— Albert Schweitzer, Jean-Sebastien Bach, le musicien-poête, 1905

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