28. Five Easy Pieces

September 16, 2021

Bach's music is profoundly cheerful and full of love.  JSB was a devout Christian, and his music portrays the majesty of a Theistic God who loves his creation.  These five organ pieces are among my favorites.

1. Prelude and Fugue in F-Major
2. Prelude in D-Major 
3. Wachet Auf Ruft uns die Stimme. (Wake Up Calls Out the Voice)
4. Sheep May Safely Graze
5. Trumpet Voluntary by Jeremiah Clarke

Comments about the up-coming fundraiser, where I played these five pieces.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:38

But it took another hundred years before he recognized and he was recognized as the best, if not one of the best, composers of all time. So here you go. This work does not have the stature, that is, the complexity, of the F major prelude that you just heard. But it's a very imaginative fooling around with the D major scale. And it is by no means a piece of fluff. And all sorts of variations of the scale back and forth during the prelude and the field. The green is hard. I'm not going to be playing the fugue, um because for the lack of time. The next piece is written by Bach again. It's called Sheep May Safely Graze. It was written for a local potentate who prided himself in safeguarding his serfs. Sort of like someone in the US who lives in a gated community but who pays a military to protect the poor members of his community who clean his house and take care of his crops. So Bach, to get a few extra bucks and to stimulate the guy's ego, uh wrote this piece. It's actually he wrote a whole cantata, which is quite long, but this is one particular tune from that cantata. It was sung by a soprano accompanied by two recorders, uh, which are very pastoral instruments. And on the organ I'm using flutes. The notion is that the potentate is doing a great job keeping everyone so safe that even the sheep may safely graze. The trumpet was considered to be a regal instrument. This piece can demonstrate the importance of reeds on a pipe organ. They are often solo instruments used to convey a feeling of majesty, either of God him or herself, or those earthlings, such as a Pope, an archbishop, or a king who were thought to represent God on earth. This piece starts with a trumpet or reed on one manual played by the right hand, while a traditional bright organ sound is played by the left. Then we switch to full organ to blast out how great God or his or her representative is. Clark does this twice, and the effect is to really send shivers down your spine and make you feel in awe of the power of a God or a potentate. And as I said, I am not recording this because the organ I am currently playing on at our Savior's Lutheran Church in Livermore, California, is not powerful enough or does not have enough variety uh to really do the piece justice. This piece does two things. One, it cleans every neuron in your spinal cord, and two, it plays with your auditory cortex by juxtaposing thrilling passages played on ranks of pipes that are not found on lesser instruments. And we don't even know if Bach really composed this piece. Um it's sort of like Shakespeare. Not everything we call Shakespeare's, we are convinced uh was written by Shakespeare, but this piece was found in among Bach's organ music after he died, and it is said that he played it to demonstrate the power of new instruments, so he would show off a new pipe organ to the populace to show them that their money was well spent. Um but it's not really written in the Bach style, there's very very little counterpoint in it. Uh it's more juxtaposition of exciting different sounds, uh exciting sounds, uh, which is not very Bach-like. Um so anybody, nobody knows who actually wrote it, but it is credited to Johann Sebastian Bach. And after that, um, that is the end of the program. And uh between each of these pieces, there will be videos showing life in the villages in the cocoa farming villages. So that's it for today. Um and um I hope you enjoyed this podcast and hope you can come to the um uh to our our event on Wednesday, and if not, at least um uh send us a a contribution because uh we're doing really good work, and you'll find out a lot about that um at the event. Thank you very much. Bye.