Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the great masters of music, hardly needs and introduction. I first learned to play his simple pieces on the piano when I was five years old. Bach's wives had a total of 20 children; he wrote music to teach his own children. Three of his sons became well known composers.

Bach himself  was virtuoso and improviser on the organ and the harpsichord; he wrote preludes, concertos and chamber music for keyboards that allowed him to improvise the solo parts. He is best know for his fugues which wove melodic themes through four voices- soprano, alto, tenor, baritone. His contrapuntal ingenuity continues to be admired by contemporary musicians and composers.

Bach was influenced by Handel and Vivaldi. Händel was born in 1685, the same year as JS Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. Bach eventually complimented Handel and his music saying that Handel was "the only person I would wish to be, were I not Bach." Mozart admired Bach's genius. Beethoven said that JS Bach was "the master of us all". 

As an adult, I attempted to play many of pieces in the Well-Tempered Clavier. My hero at the time was Glenn Gould who recorded the entire series and the Goldberg Variations with widely acknowledged virtuosity. The coordination of left and right hand and arm movements is important to keyboard skills. Even with sustained practice, the two hands want to do similar things or perform linked movements. I spent years, for example, trying to achieve right and left hand separation as I played the piano. I was inspired Gould, who achieved remarkable independence of his left and right hands. In fact, he seemed to achieve complete independence for each finger of each hand. If you listen closely, you can hear him play individual notes with individual attention. Gould played Bach and Bach’s preludes and fugues that were based on four voices that sang through the fingers of both hands. An alto voice, for example, would start in the left hand, pass to the right and back to the left. Less skilled pianists use a coordinated hand strategy and the continuity of a single voice is audibly interrupted as it passes from hand to hand.  Of course, Gould was a musical genius with a prodigious memory. He learned musical scores away from the piano; playing the piece followed memorizing and rehearsing it in his mind. 

Some of Bach’s pieces became contemporary hits: for example, by the Swingle Singers' (Air on the G string, Wachet Auf chorale prelude) and Wendy Carlos' 1968 album, Switched-On Bach, created with a Moog synthesizer. I specially enjoyed the Carlos arrangements and was inspired to learn about synthesizers. The distinct timbres of the Moog synthesizer voices made the four voices in preludes and fugues stand out clearly.

Persona Classical Ensemble

Recordings of JS Bach, edited and arranged for synthesizer
by Stephen Gislason and recorded at Persona Digital Studio

Air on the G String
Cantata 208
Cantata 207-2
Cantata 207-9
Cantata 202 (final aria, recitative and Gavotte)
Aria from the Christmas Oratorio
Invention in A minor
Prelude D major

JS Bach’s works were indexed by Schmeider in 1950 as Bach Werke Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue, BMV). BWV 1–224 are cantatas, BWV 225–249 the large-scale choral works, BWV 250–524 chorales and sacred songs, BWV 525–748 organ works, BWV 772–994 other keyboard works, BWV 995–1000 lute music, BWV 1001–40 chamber music, BWV 1041–71 orchestral music, and BWV 1072–1126 canons and fugues.