Bach and the Organ ed. by Matthew Dirst (review)

For this latest volume in the Bach Perspectives series, Matthew Dirst edits essays by prominent scholars Lynn Edwards Butler, Matthew Cron, Robin A. Leaver, and Christoph Wolff, who presented earlier versions of their essays at "Bach and the Organ," a conference sponsored by the American Bach Society, the Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative, and the Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, and held at the Eastman School of Music in September 2012 (http://www.americanbachsociety.org/meetings/rochester_program.html [accessed 18 February 2018]). Two additional essays, by George B. Stauffer and Gregory Butler, were solicited for this volume. In the preface, Dirst explains that Bach was known during his lifetime as a "great player and an expert judge of new instruments" (p. vii). This volume adds to the extensive scholarship concerning Bach's organ compositions and his interaction with the organ culture of his time.

In the essay "Bach's Report on Johann Scheibe's Organ for St. Paul's Church, Leipzig: A Reassessment," Lynn Edwards Butler states that, according to a 1718 memorandum by Daniel Vetter, Bach "could not praise and laud [the organ] enough, especially its rare stops" (Vetter quoted and trans. by Butler, p. 2). She mentions the impact of negative comments about the organ by Ernst Flade, a twentieth-century biographer of Gottfried Silbermann, and others, including a nephew of Silbermann who saw the organ in 1741. Butler assesses documents from the Leipzig University Archives to reassess Bach's report. Schiebe himself wrote many of the documents, which discuss the case, wind system, frame, stops, voicing, and tuning; describe the lighting effected by a nearby window; and mention the one-year guarantee and the bill. Apparently, Scheibe was not compensated at the amount he requested, although he maintained the organ until his death in 1748. According to Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Bach found the work "really good, and sum agreed upon too small" (p. 15). Bach also praised the "rare stops."

Leaver's essay, "Bach's Choral-Buch? The Significance of a Manuscript in the Sibley Library," is a "description of that manuscript, a review of its provenance and content, and a discussion of its significance as a possible witness to the practices of the circle of organists who studied with Bach in the 1730s and 1740s" (p. 16). Research on the provenance indicates that the manuscript may have been listed in two different catalogs and was owned by music theorist Heinrich Schenker and Bach biographer Philipp Spitta, among others. The paper's watermark is similar to those in books originating in Dresden in the 1740s. Bach apparently had many Dresden connections, including his son Wilhelm Friedemann, who was organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden until 1746. The Choral-Buch has simple organ accompaniments with bass figures for congregational chorales and may have served as a pedagogical tool for Bach's students. Spitta, however, did not believe Bach wrote the Choral-Buch, because it did not have "settings deemed daring enough to confuse the Arnstadt congregation" (p. 26). The essay concludes with an extensive table listing the contents of the 285 pages of chorales and alternative settings of the same texts.

In "Miscellaneous Organ Trios from Bach's Leipzig Workshop," Stauffer argues that the appearance of the Six Trio Sonatas for organ, BWV 525–30, "emerges not as a sudden, isolated event, but rather as the logical outcome of a period of concentrated study and experimentation with the free organ trio" (p. 59). He discusses the origin of the organ trios (including BWV 21/1a; 583–87; 790a; 1014/3a; and 1039/1a, 2a, 4a) and the organ concerto, BWV 597, and proposes that they stem from Bach's tenure in Leipzig from 1725 to 1730 or so. Though Stauffer believes that BWV 597, 790a, 1014/3a, and 1039a were created in Bach's workshop by colleagues and students, he asserts that BWV 21/1a and 584...