Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue

As organist, my last opportunity to make a musical statement about the Resurrection of Christ was at the Great Vigil, when I played the Pièce d'Orgue. I had hoped to learn and play the Bach Prelude and Fugue in D major for the May 3 Evensong, but that did not come anywhere close to happening; I did not even get it fingered. So I did the next best thing that I could: the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, BWV 564, which Hermann Keller describes as “stylistically one of the most remarkable, and technically one of the most brilliant works by Bach.”

I played this in 2011, so it had a fairly good fingering – though I found a few more places this time where I could get the thumbs off the black notes. That led to one mistake in the fugue, highlighting the rule “Drill for skill, because under stress you regress” (I have heard this attributed to the football coach Vince Lombardi, but I cannot confirm it. Whatever its source, it is certainly true.) For one measure about halfway through the fugue; I found that a revised fingering made the passage easier to play by getting the thumb on a white note instead of the black. I rehearsed it that way every time in my preparation – but in the playing of it for the liturgy, I fell back into the old fingering from 2011. Of course, I had not practiced that fingering, so I could not play the passage! But enough of that; the other errors (there are many) are plain ordinary Wrong Notes.

If the Pièce d'Orgue reflects Bach's mastery of the French musical idiom of the day, the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue reflects his familiarity with both the North German and Italian styles. As Keller said, I do not think that there is another composition of Bach that is quite like this one. In some respects, the Italian Concerto (BWV 971, for harpsichord) comes close, but great as that piece is, I prefer the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue.

The artwork for the YouTube clip: two works from the Orthodox tradition. First, The Son of God (Viktor Vasnetsov, 1848-1926)
Notice the four Living Creatures (Revelation 4:6-8 and following)

Icon of the Mother of God (Yov Kondzelevych, 1705)
I love the expressions, especially the Child's, and it is interesting to see one of the most traditional of Icons expressed in a baroque idiom.