Disc 1

The Prelude in b is a raw, edgy piece. It careens around corners on two wheels. Not least of all, its key touches major chords on F# and C#, purposefully dissonant in the Kellner/Bach temperament of Paul Fritts’s sublime organ at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. The prelude’s abrupt conclusion, an eighth-note B-major chord, does nothing to soothe.

From the previous sonata’s key of d minor, it is a comfortable shift to the Fugue’s b minor, and back to the Fritts at PLU. The consistent stepwise motion of the fugue subject is placid, even serene. A long middle section with no pedal rocks playfully, gently. But it is with the pedal’s reentry, and combination of subjects, that the writing is at its most intense.

Disc 2

From its opening gesture, the Prelude in e is full of extravagances. Consider the downbeats of measures 27-30. This idea of releasing a chord from the top down, so that the bass note resonates longest in the room, was something Virgil Fox called the “acoustical release.” He used it to the horror of purists. Yet, here it is: the clear intent for the left hand to release before the pedal, and a thrill to play.

Or consider the audacity of the scale that starts on a high B in measure 125 and proceeds in 12-note increments down the circle of fifths to middle E, then to tenor A, tenor D, low G, finally ending on low C in measure 130, just eight bars before the end. The pattern occurs in other places, but nowhere else does it start one note shy of the highest pitch on the keyboard and end on the very lowest. On paper it reminds one of the old Victor Borge stunt, poking fun at Bach by playing a sequence until its iterations fell off the end of the piano. But Bach’s writing here sounds as powerful as a sledgehammer.

The opening movement of Sonata IV in e is transcribed from the “Sinfonia” from Cantata 76. In the cantata, the gamba plays the part transcribed for the left hand. So it was natural to leave it, add a violin for the upper part, and assign continuo to the harpsichord. In the final movement, the gamba played the bass line with treble voices assigned to the violin and harpsichord. But when it came to the middle movement, a bit of rehearsal horseplay yielded a stunning possibility where the gamba plays the middle voice, and harpsichord the outer two. (Note to violinists: don’t be late for rehearsal.)

Positioning Sonata II in c last provides the most contrast, both in key and color, with the concluding fugue. The tiny cleanness of 4-foot flutes makes for an airy, charming first movement, and the flexible winding lends a frail, almost human-voice element to the Largo. A reed in the pedal for the final movement might not be an organist’s first thought, yet the bassoon frequently served as a continuo instrument in the eighteenth century.

The Fisk organ at Old West Church in Boston recaps its earlier appearance for the closing Fugue in e. It is popularly referred to as “the Wedge,” an apt description of the shape of its subject. The great nineteenth-century biographer Philipp Spitta had this to say about this Prelude and Fugue: “. . . the whole energy and vitality of the master are displayed. It is a composition not sufficiently described by its present title; it should be called an organ symphony in two movements to give an adequate idea of its grandeur and power.” This is Bach’s longest organ fugue, and the only one to end with a da capo, or repeat of the exposition. This recapitulation, common to sonata form, makes the piece the obvious choice to end this program.

Bach composed his Six Sonatas for Two Manuals and Pedal in about the years 1727-1730. Although these sonatas are almost always performed on the organ, they were more likely composed for the two-manual pedal harpsichord, or, most likely, the two-manual pedal clavichord. Bach created this set of trio sonatas for the instruction of his prodigiously talented first son Wilhelm Friedemann, who was then in his late teens. For the development of pedal technique and coordination, these trio sonatas are the consummate challenge. In keeping with his pedagogical purpose, Bach also intended these pieces to refine his son’s awareness of important distinctions between various meters and tempo markings.

His first lesson begins with the first movement of Sonata I, written with the time signature (alla breve). Bach meant this composition to be an exemplary statement of alla breve: two half-notes to the bar, above all declared in the steady march of harmonies, but then animated by the interplay of notes in smaller values.

With this initial study Bach sought to warn his son about the common confusion between  (alla breve) and  (“common time”). This confusion was ubiquitous in Bach’s time, and would remain persistent for generations. For example, the first publication of these sonatas, C. F. Peters’ ground-breaking 1845 edition (still in print), uses the erroneous common time meter for this movement.

“Common time” means four beats to the measure, with steady accents on the quarter-notes. This, of course, is not what alla breve is all about. Alla breve means “[with the beat] on the half-note.” Performed alla breve, this music dances. Performed in “common time,” it plods.

In the third movement of Sonata II, Bach extended his introductory lesson regarding the alla breve. For this movement he drew on an archaic time signature, written as . The meaning of this unusual time signature is one beat to the bar, with no sub-beat. In this single-beat signature, the strong-weak flow in the music is so protracted that it moves in full measures.

In Bach’s plan for these six sonatas there are 18 movements (three per sonata), each sonata with a unique combination of time signature and tempo marking.

In the early eighteenth century, composers used adjectives borrowed from Italian to suggest appropriate tempi. These words were centuries old, and originally expressed emotions of everyday life. As they became applied to music, however, and moved north to regions where Italian was not the language of everyday life, their meanings became less well understood, especially in comparison to one another.

One of Bach’s most important missions in these sonatas was to create sets of movements demonstrating the various inflections of these Italian tempo markings. The intent of these conventional terms becomes newly appreciated when we consider their original meanings:

• Largo = broad. As we wend our way through the narrow alleys of Venice, now and then we encounter a largo—a space that arrests us because of its breadth.
• Lento = slack, feeble. One dictionary describes lento as “moving like a person walking in sleep.” In order to heat a sauce without burning it, a cook must use a very low flame, a fuoco lento.
• Allegro = happy. Already in the seventeenth century, musicians took this adjective to mean “fast.” One notes with interest, however, that in Bach’s scheme the only qualification of a tempo marking occurs in the third movement of Sonata IV, where he instructs un poco allegro.
• Vivace = lively.

The meanings of andante and adagio are less evident. Andante is the present participle of andare, “to go.” Andiamo! is the colloquial “let’s go!” As Italian tempo markings moved north, it became common for German, French, and English music teachers to translate andante as a “walking tempo.” As a result of this off-the-mark translation, the understanding of the meaning of andante gradually slowed down. In reaction to this slowing down, composers added warnings: andante ma non troppo, andante con moto. “Moving along with motion” is, of course, redundant, but it was used as a corrective, to prevent music marked andante from being played too slowly.

In the first movement of Sonata III, Bach provided his son with music’s most elegant demonstration of a true andante. This piece, which moves so delightfully, was fittingly composed in 2/4. Then Bach added a second lesson about the andante. He taught his son to appreciate the delight of music that truly moves by following his exemplary andante with two other movements that use the same meter, but move at an even brisker pace: in Sonata V, a movement marked 2/4 allegro (happy) and in Sonata VI, a movement marked 2/4 vivace (lively). These three 2/4 movements must follow Bach’s instructive emotional advance from music that “moves,” to music that is “happy,” and then to music that is “lively.”

In 1619, Michael Praetorius, in his Syntagma Musicum, cited three Italian terms for slow tempi: adagio, lento, and largo – but translated all three of them with the same German word, langsam. In the history of music, adagio has always meant “slow.” The recurring problem is, how slow? To appreciate the differences between adagio, lento, and largo we must go back to the first. Adagio is a word born of two words, ad and agio, meaning “at ease.” In Bach’s day, composers were concerned that music marked adagio was being performed too slowly, and so they again arrived at one of those warnings: adagio ma non troppo.

Bach understood that adagio does not mean slow, it means at ease. In the second movement of Sonata III he composed music that is utterly “at ease”—and, to enhance the performance of this elegant, lilting adagio, Bach added e dolce. A winsome performance is one that understands Bach’s simple instruction, “at ease and sweetly.”

As in his second lesson about the andante (contrasting it with allegro, and then with vivace), Bach similarly added a second lesson about the adagio. On this occasion he addressed the subtle distinctions between adagio (music that is at ease, as in Sonata III, 2), lento (music that is slack or feeble, as in Sonata VI, 2) and largo (music that is broad —Sonata V, 2). As Bach sought to teach his son about these three stages of increasing musical introspection, he sensitively worked in 6/8.

In the first movement of Sonata I, Bach initiated his lesson plan by teaching his son the correct performance of music composed alla breve. This launching movement stands apart as the only one for which he provided no tempo marking. This omission was intended to pose a challenge to Wilhelm Friedemann. The gifted teen was asked to supply his own tempo marking, along the way pondering the influence of meter and harmonic rhythm. Bach’s absent tempo marking thus functions as a sphinx that yields the answer to the question posed in the first movement of the first sonata (here Disc 1, Track 2) . . . in the final movement of the final sonata (here Disc 2, Track 4). These two alla breve movements are to be performed at the same tempo. The missing tempo marking for the first movement of Bach’s first sonata is thus allegro.