Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 facts for kids
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music written, according to its oldest extant sources, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). The piece opens with a toccata section, followed by a fugue that ends in a coda. Scholars differ as to when it was composed. It could have been as early as c. 1704. Alternatively, a date as late as the 1750s has been suggested. To a large extent, the piece conforms to the characteristics deemed typical of the north German organ school of the Baroque era with divergent stylistic influences, such as south German characteristics.
Despite a profusion of educated guesswork, there is not much that can be said with certainty about the first century of the composition's existence other than that it survived that period in a manuscript written by Johannes Ringk. The first publication of the piece, in the Bach Revival era, was in 1833, through the efforts of Felix Mendelssohn, who also performed the piece in an acclaimed concert in 1840. Familiarity with the piece was enhanced in the second half of the 19th century by a fairly successful piano version by Carl Tausig, but it was not until the 20th century that its popularity rose above that of other organ compositions by Bach. That popularity further increased, for example, after its inclusion in Walt Disney's Fantasia (in Stokowski's orchestral transcription), until this composition became, by far, the best-known work of the 18th-century organ repertoire.
A wide, and often conflicting, variety of analyses has been published about the piece: for instance, in literature on organ music, it is often described as some sort of program music depicting a storm, while in the context of Disney's Fantasia, it was promoted as absolute music, nothing like program music depicting a storm. In the last quarter of the 20th century, scholars such as Peter Williams and Rolf Dietrich Claus published their studies on the piece and argued against its authenticity. Bach scholars like Christoph Wolff defended the attribution to Bach. Other commentators ignored the doubts over its authenticity, or considered the attribution issue undecided.
History
The only extant near-contemporary source for BWV 565 is an undated copy by Johannes Ringk. According to the description provided by the Berlin State Library, where the manuscript is kept, and similar bibliographic descriptions, e.g. in the RISM catalogue, Ringk created his copy between 1740 and 1760. As far as is known, Ringk produced his first copy of a Bach score in 1730 when he was 12. According to Dietrich Kilian, who edited BWV 565 for the New Bach Edition, Ringk made his copy of the Toccata and Fugue between 1730 and 1740. In his critical commentary for Breitkopf & Härtel's 21st-century revised edition of the score, Jean-Claude Zehnder narrows the time of origin of the manuscript down to around the middle of the first half of the 1730s, based on an analysis of the evolution of Ringk's handwriting. At the time Ringk was a student of Bach's former student Johann Peter Kellner at Gräfenroda, and probably faithfully copied what his teacher put before him. There are some errors in the score such as note values not adding up to fill a measure correctly. Such defects show a carelessness deemed typical of Kellner, who left over 60 copies of works by Bach.
The title page of Ringk's manuscript writes the title of the work in Italian as Toccata con Fuga, names Johann Sebastian Bach as the composer of the piece, and indicates its tonality as "ex. d. #.", which is usually seen as the key signature being D minor. However, in Ringk's manuscript the staves have no ♭ symbol at the key (which would be the usual way to write down a piece in D minor). In this sense, in Ringk's manuscript, the piece is written down in D Dorian mode. Another piece listed as Bach's was also known as Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and was equally entitled to the "Dorian" qualification. It was that piece, BWV 538, that received the "Dorian" nickname, that qualifier being effectively used to distinguish it from BWV 565. Most score editions of BWV 565 use the D minor key signature, unlike Ringk's manuscript.
- Ringk manuscript
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Ringk's manuscript does not use a separate stave for the pedal part, which was common in the 18th century (notes to be played on the pedal were indicated by "p." being written at the start of the sequence). Printed editions of the BWV 565 organ score invariably write the pedal line on a separate stave. In Ringk's manuscript the upper stave is written down using the soprano clef (as was common in the time when the manuscript originated), where printed editions use the treble clef.
All other extant manuscript copies of the score date from at least several decades later: some of these, written in the 19th century, are related with each other in that they have similar solutions to the defects in the Ringk manuscript. Whether these derive from an earlier manuscript independent from Ringk's (possibly in the C. P. E. Bach/Johann Friedrich Agricola/Johann Kirnberger circle) is debated by scholars. These near-identical 19th-century copies, the version Felix Mendelssohn knew, use the treble clef and a separate stave for the pedal. In general, the later copies show a less excessive use of fermatas in the opening measures and are more correct in making the note values fit the measures, but that may as well be from polishing a defective source as from deriving from a cleaner earlier source. In the later copies the work is named for instance "Adagio" and "Fuga" (for the respective parts of the work), or "Toccata" for the work as a whole.
The name "Toccata" is most probably a later addition, similar to the title of Toccata, Adagio and Fugue, BWV 564, because in the Baroque era such organ pieces would most commonly be called simply Prelude (Praeludium, etc.) or Prelude and Fugue. Ringk's copy abounds in Italian tempo markings, fermatas (a characteristic feature of Ringk's copies) and staccato dots, all very unusual features for pre-1740 German music.
German organ schools are distinguished into north German (e.g. Dieterich Buxtehude) and south German (e.g. Johann Pachelbel). The composition has stylistic characteristics from both schools: the stylus phantasticus, and other north German characteristics are most apparent. However, the numerous recitative stretches are rarely found in the works of northern composers and may have been inspired by Johann Heinrich Buttstett, a pupil of Pachelbel, whose few surviving free works, particularly his Prelude and Capriccio in D minor, exhibit similar features. A passage in the fugue of BWV 565 is an exact copy of a phrase in one of Johann Pachelbel's D minor fantasias, and the first half of the subject is based on this Pachelbel passage as well. At the time it was however common practice to create fugues on other composers' themes.
Structure
BWV 565 exhibits a typical simplified north German structure with a free opening (toccata), a fugal section (fugue), and a short free closing section.
Toccata
The Toccata begins with a single-voice flourish in the upper ranges of the keyboard, doubled at the octave and ornamented with a lower mordent. It then spirals toward the bottom, where a diminished seventh chord appears (which actually implies a dominant chord with a minor 9th against a tonic pedal), built one note at a time. This resolves into a D major chord:
Three short passages follow, each reiterating a short motif and doubled at the octave. The section ends with a diminished seventh chord which resolved into the tonic, D minor, through a flourish. The second section of the Toccata is a number of loosely connected figurations and flourishes; the pedal switches to the dominant key, A minor. This section segues into the third and final section of the Toccata, which consists almost entirely of a passage doubled at the sixth and comprising reiterations of the same three-note figure, similar to doubled passages in the first section. After a brief pedal flourish, the piece ends with a D minor chord.
Fugue
The subject of the four-voice fugue is made up entirely of sixteenth notes, with an implied pedal point set against a brief melodic subject that first falls, then rises. Such violinistic figures are frequently encountered in Baroque music and that of Bach, both as fugue subjects and as material in non-imitative pieces. Unusually, the answer is in the subdominant key, rather than the traditional dominant. Although technically a four-part fugue, most of the time there are only three voices, and some of the interludes are in two, or even one voice (notated as two). Although only simple triadic harmony is employed throughout the fugue, there is an unexpected C minor subject entry, and furthermore, a solo pedal statement of the subject—a unique feature for a Baroque fugue. Immediately after the final subject entry, the fugue resolves to a sustained B♭ major chord.
Coda
A multi-sectional coda follows, marked Recitativo. Although only 17 bars long, it progresses through five tempo changes. The last bars are played Molto adagio, and the piece ends with a minor plagal cadence.
Performance
The performance time of the piece is usually around nine minutes, but shorter performance times (e.g. 8:15) and execution times of over 10:30 exist. The first section of the piece, the Toccata, takes somewhat less than a third of the total performance time.
As was common practice for German music of the 17th century, the intended registration is not specified, and performers' choices vary from simple solutions such as organo pleno to exceedingly complex ones, like those described by Harvey Grace.
See also
In Spanish: Tocata y fuga en re menor, BWV 565 para niños
