Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 06/03/2015, uploaded on 10/29/2015

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Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565        Johann Sebastian Bach, arranged by Ferruccio Busoni 

Of all the memorable pieces that Bach composed, perhaps one stands out a little more than the rest—the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Indeed, it’s one of the most well-known and recognizable works in the entire organ repertoire. As with much of Bach’s music for organ, no autograph manuscript exists and the best guess places the time of composition between 1703 and 1707.

The piece exemplifies a typical north German structure consisting of a free opening, a fugal middle section and a brief free closing section. However, the recitative-like sections show the influence of the waning south German organ school. It was common in Bach’s time for composers to freely borrow ideas from one another and many connections have been pointed out between pieces by Bach and his lesser known contemporaries. Such connections exist between the Toccata and Fugue and Johann Heinrich Buttsett’s Prelude and Capriccio in D minor, as well as Pachelbel’s Fantasia in D minor.

The toccata is essentially a virtuosic piece typically written for keyboard instruments. It often abounds in fast passages requiring a delicate touch of the performer. This toccata begins with the famous flourish descending into the biting dissonance of a diminished seventh chord over a tonic pedal. A brilliant passage in triplet sixteenths follows, one often cited for the apparent parallel fifths that occur. However, these fifths disappear with a correct interpretation of the rhythmical and harmonic structure of the passage. Next follows a passage built around a sixteenth-note melody and with a distinct influence of string music. After another section of triplet sixteenths, the toccata comes to a full close before the announcement of the fugue subject.

The fugue subject consists of a reiterated dominant pitch and a melodic pattern based on the D minor scale. The answer enters immediately on the termination of the subject, though in the key of the subdominant instead of the more usual dominant. This apparent departure from rule is actually necessitated by the nature of the subject itself. Contrary to the way fugue is usually taught today, an answer in the subdominant key has always been an acceptable practice (though the cases in which it is explicitly required are few) and the original fugal theorists of the late Renaissance openly recognized the fifth below the tonic (i.e., the subdominant) as a proper interval for the answer of a fugue subject. Furthermore, examples of a fugue subject answered in the subdominant key can be found in numerous works by Bach, as well as other Baroque composers such as G.F. Handel.

Many of the passages of the fugue feature the string-influenced writing of the toccata. Episodes are built largely out of scales and arpeggios that would fit equally well on a violin as they do on the keyboard. The fugue ends deceptively in the key of B flat and a return is made to the toccata style of the opening interspersed with full chords in a slower tempo. The toccata’s opening descending line, though extended through multiple augmentations, brings the piece to a close in an ominous plagal cadence.     Joseph DuBose

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Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (9’)                                                Bach, arr. Busoni

J. S. Bach was without a doubt one of the greatest organists who ever lived and one can imagine what listeners must have thought when they heard him playing works like this, probably his most famous, the Toccata and fugue in D minor. It is quite a ubiquitous work, the first line of which makes appearances in movies, tv, almost all musical genres and even in cell phone rings! But the rest of it is also a masterpiece – a towering edifice of austere beauty and grandeur. Bach loved a full harmony and some who heard him claimed he must have played some notes with his nose. The first thing he did whenever he tried out a new organ was to pull out all the stops and see “whether it had lungs.” This transcription by the great Italian composer Ferrucio Busoni certainly gives the piano lungs.     Jonathan Levin

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.