Organ Sonatas (Bach)

The collection was put together in Leipzig in the late 1720s and contained reworkings of prior compositions by Bach from earlier cantatas, organ works and chamber music as well as some newly composed movements.

Commentators have suggested that the collection might partly have been intended for private study to perfect organ technique, some pointing out that its compass allows it to be played on a pedal clavichord.

Friedemann, aufgesetzt, welcher sich damit zu dem großen Orgelspieler vorbereiten musste, der er nachher geworden ist.

Sie sind in dem reifsten Alter des Verfassers gemacht, und können als das Hauptwerk desselben in dieser Art angesehen werdenThe organ sonatas were first gathered together in Leipzig in an autograph manuscript which Bach scholars have dated to a period roughly between 1727 and 1730.

After Bach's death, the musician Georg Poelchau (1773–1836) produced a covering page for the collection (along with the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes) with a title and commentary.

They were written when the composer was in his full maturity and can be considered his principal work of this kind.Poelchau's commentary on the covering page is a direct quotation of this passage from Forkel.

The organ sonatas represent the culmination of Bach's collections of keyboard works with a partly didactic purpose, from the point of both playing and composition.

Even in the second "fair copy" produced by Wilhelm Friedemann and Anna Magdalena, Bach made corrections in three movements (in the first, fifth and sixth sonatas).

In a more rudimentary form, trios of this kind already appeared in German organ music in a few of the freely composed chorale preludes of Buxtehude, van Noordt, Armsdorff and Georg Böhm, Bach's teacher from Lüneburg.

The first version of the slow movement of BWV 528 also dates from roughly the same period: instead of the larger scale structure of the two chorale preludes, the musical material is broken up into imitative two bar phrases, often of bewitching beauty.

Although no longer having any liturgical references (in particular no cantus firmus), the sonatas BWV 525–530 preserve the concerto-like quality of the two Weimar chorale preludes; like them the manual and pedal parts are written within an idiom particular to the organ rather than that of solo instruments like the violin or flute.

Moreover, the collection of six sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and violin, BWV 1014–1019 seems to have involved a similar survey, recording all possible ways of writing for the instrumental combination.

[11] Williams (2003) and Speerstra (2004) have noted that the compass of the keyboard parts of Bach's BWV 525–530 rarely go below the tenor C, so they could have been played on a single manual pedal clavichord, by moving the left hand down an octave, a customary practice in the 18th century.

In this case the lowest part can be composed less concisely than in another, regular sonata.As Breig (1999) comments, Scheibe regarded Bach's organ sonatas as his main contribution to the genre of Sonaten auf Concertenart.

In all the other movements—in particular in the entire first sonata BWV 525 and in all the final fast movements—the theme passes to the pedal, usually in simplified form stripped of ornaments; thus even in these movements the bass line is less elaborate than the upper parts.

This style of writing would not have translated well to the organ: indeed Bach reserved such lines for the elaborate cantus firmus parts in his ornamental chorale preludes.

A fugue subject in semiquavers is introduced at the beginning of section B: although similar in shape to the flourish opening of the main theme, it involves scale figures in contrast to arpeggios.

The fugue subject is freely developed in exchanges between the upper parts before fragments of the main theme of increasing length begin to be heard, starting with the opening flourish.

None of these occur in the ritornello segment and are examples of what Walther termed "varied figures" in his 1708 theoretical treatise Praecepta der musicalischen Composition.

Williams (2003) discusses the "ingenious" structure of the movement which he describes as "bright, extrovert, tuneful, restless, intricate": there is "inventive" semiquaver passagework in the manuals matched by "instructive" or challenging footwork in the pedal.

In 1764 handwritten copies of three movements of the sonatas were also available from the Leipzig publisher Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf, who also produced librettos of Bach's cantatas during his lifetime.

After Bach's death the organ sonatas entered the standard repertoire of German organists, although more as a benchmark for the mastery of technique than for public performance.

His interests later turned to pedagogy and singing: in Zurich he set up an institute similar to the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin of Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch.

The family of Daniel Itzig, banker to Frederick the Great and his father, also provided a cultural milieu for musical connoisseurs: four of his daughters, Sara, Zippora, Fanny and Bella (maternal grandmother of Felix Mendelssohn), were all keyboard players.

After her marriage to the banker Samuel Salomon Levy in 1784, she ran a weekly musical salon in their residence on the Museuminsel: the concert room housed both a harpsichord and a fortepiano and was large enough to accommodate a chamber orchestra.

With the help of Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, Sara also built up a significant library of hand copies of Bach manuscripts.

van Swieten, an avid collector of music, knew Kirnberger and Princess Anna Amalia from Berlin and had brought back to Vienna several hand copies of Bach manuscripts of keyboard and organ works, including a transcription of the organ sonatas for two keyboards: van Swieten's large collection of musical manuscripts is now preserved in the Imperial Library, which he directed from 1777 onwards.

[34] Mozart's contacts with the Bach circle date back to the concert tour with his sister and father when they stayed in London from April 1764 until July 1765.

She attended the musical salons of Baron van Swieten and brought with her from Berlin her extensive personal collection of Bach family manuscripts.

In August 1781 Mozart took up lodgings with his fortepiano in "a very prettily furnished room" (ein recht hüpsches eingerichtetes zimmer) in the servants' quarters on the third floor of the Arnstein family mansion "auf dem Graben".