You may not think you know the music of J.S. Bach (1685-1750), but you do. If you have heard the Beatles songs “Blackbird” (Bourree in E minor), “Penny Lane” (the second Brandenburg concerto), and “All You Need is Love” (Invention No. 8 in F major), then you have heard Bach. The introduction to Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” draws on Bach’s chorale “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.” Other music by The Beach Boys, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Eddie van Halen, and many more popular artists also give him credit. Perhaps Bach on banjo isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when considering Bach, but there are many wonderful recordings available, particularly those of Bela Fleck. Fats Waller said his greatest joy was playing Bach on the organ, and that he considered “Johann Sebastian Bach the greatest man who ever lived, along with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
Published in 1728 in Leipzig, this particular Partita in D Major was written after the majority of Bach’s 1,128 pieces had already been composed. Thirteen of his children had been born, with seven more to come. Many of his most famous pieces, the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B Minor, and the St. Matthew Passion preceded the work you will hear today. The Brandenburgs were composed as a type of “job application” written for the Margrave of Brandenburg; Bach was hoping to get a position in his court. The Margrave never responded to Bach. But get this, the first movement of the second Brandenburg concerto, part of a violin solo partita, and a keyboard prelude and fugue were included in a musical collection sent into deep space by NASA on Voyager 1 in 1977. “Three specific pieces by Bach were included to represent Earth’s musical legacy to potential extraterrestrial life.” I love that Bach literally is being sent into the universe to represent humanity! For a man born 341 years ago, that’s a pretty fine legacy indeed. Today, Voyager, still flying and functioning, is so far away that it takes over 22 hours for radio signals to reach the Earth. We await the reviews!
The partita we will hear today includes seven movements, all in D major. Following the opening extensive overture, there are six dances. All are in binary form, with each half repeated. The liveliest of the dances is the last.
Cesar Franck (1822-1890) was a young talent of twelve when his parents moved from Belgium to Paris so that he could attend the Paris Conservatory. His father wanted him to become a concert pianist. Though he won many prizes in piano, organ, and composition, and had parents who were aggressively “marketing” their son, Franck had other ideas. He took a different path as soon as he was able. Parental permission was necessary for him to marry until age 26. At 26, he married an actress (uh oh!) and thereafter made his living primarily as an organist, composer, and teacher at the Paris Conservatory, where he was beloved by his students. Franck’s short list of piano compositions seems to imply a disenchantment or disinterest in the instrument, but this piece uses the piano at its best. The Prelude, Chorale and Fugue (1884) has its roots in Bach. It was composed originally as simply a prelude and fugue, with the chorale added later. Frolova-Walker writes that Franck wanted to blend Bach’s legacy with the virtuosity of Liszt. Indeed, that virtuosity is evident in this demanding work. Franck had huge hands and could reach a twelfth on the keyboard (that’s about 10 inches on a piano). This work includes several vast stretches, many of which require rolling the chords, which adds to the complexity of the performance. Whatever influences we hear in this piece, it is fully Franck’s unique, amalgamated style that predominates.
Composed in 1900, Alexander Scriabin’s (1872-1915) Fantasie is a late Romantic work which embodies a display of extremes. Scriabin was deeply involved in the Symbolist movement, which believed in using your art form for individual enlightenment. In his case, he wanted to transform sound into ecstasy. He had his own mythology of how this would come about, and his music is saturated with mystical references. Scriabin had synesthesia, a condition which can create blending of the senses. He saw very clear colors when he heard musical pitches, and in this dark, introspective work, Scriabin associated B minor with dark blue (I’ve looked at the score, I see a lot of black). Nearly everything about this work is extreme. Turbulence and dissonance contrast with lovely lyricism. The piece has crazy technical demands and is basically unplayable as written, forcing the performer to make decisions about what to play and what to omit. It is a handful, and Scriabin himself said that there’s an element of “the demonic” in this work. “For Scriabin, his every work was a musical force attempting to reach towards a reality past our own” (Robbins, 2018). Scriabin met an untimely death at just 43 from sepsis due to a shaving cut.
A friend and classmate of Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) wrote these Ten Preludes, Op. 23 between 1901 and 1903. Historically, they are not “preludes” to anything, but are free-standing pieces of music. Rachmaninoff had suffered from serious depression after the disastrous premiere of his first symphony in 1897. He wrote: “All my hopes, all belief in myself, had been destroyed.” The symphony was never performed again during his lifetime and was not published until after his death. A friend arranged for him to meet Tolstoy, a writer whom he greatly admired. Unfortunately, this visit provoked an even deeper depression. Finally, he was introduced to a psychiatrist who specialized in hypnotherapy. It took three months of daily hypnotherapy to free him from the clutches of his depression and allow his creative rebirth. It had been about three years since he had composed. The second piano concerto (dedicated to his doctor) and these preludes were among his earliest forays into composition after that experience. They are concise and economical miniatures which range from 2-4 minutes each, with contrasting moods of sadness and nostalgia to exuberance and joy. They display virtuosity and beautiful lyricism as they explore the limits of the piano. You will undoubtedly recognize at least one of them, No.5 in G minor. Rachmaninoff said that he wrote the sixth prelude on the day his daughter was born in 1902.
© by Diane Baxter, 2026
