Tea Time With Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
The Backstory
Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
I'm Johann Sebastian Bach, and this is the backstory of my Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Here you'll find out how a piece this famous reached us without a single page in my own handwriting, only a copy made by a pupil of one of my pupils. Whenever you're ready, take a turn at the Trainer , where my fellow composers and I teach you to recognize our pieces the moment they start playing.
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A Boy From Eisenach Who Liked Big Instruments
I was born in Eisenach in 1685, and by the time I was a young man I knew I wanted to spend my life at an organ. In 1703 I became organist at the New Church in Arnstadt, a post I was very glad to have. An organ, if you've never met one, is a keyboard connected to pipes, and it can make a whole building hum like a very large beehive. Some people think this piece comes from those early years, though that is only one of several guesses.I Ask My Boss for a Very Long Weekend
In 1705 I asked for time off from Arnstadt, and I took four months of it. I wanted to hear Dieterich Buxtehude play in Lübeck, which was about 450 km away each way. I imagine my employers noticed that the organ bench stayed empty for quite a while. Listeners often hear the adventurous spirit of that kind of organ playing in the toccata, though nobody can prove the link.Ask Me the Year and I'll Change the Subject
People often ask me when I wrote this piece, and the honest answer is that nobody knows. One view puts it in Arnstadt in the early years of the 1700s, while another points to Weimar, where I went in 1708. Some scholars stretch the possible dates much later in my life, which is a lot of room for a question to wander around in. I won't offer a year, because I'd only be guessing, and I'd rather leave the mystery where it is.A Young Man in a Hurry
One Bach society describes the piece as typical of my younger years, in a rough and daring style it calls clavier hussar. A hussar is a dashing soldier on horseback, so picture a keyboard player charging in with his sword out. The piece has two parts: a toccata that sounds improvised, as if the music is being made up on the spot, and a fugue built with strict care. I like that contrast, because it shows both sides of a player, the free spirit and the careful craftsman.The Violin Hiding Behind the Pipes
Here is a theory that surprises people: the piece may have started out as music for violin. The idea is that a violin piece, now lost, was later turned into this work for organ. Nobody has proved it, and the experts haven't reached an agreement. Still, it's a pleasant thought that a fiddle might be tucked away somewhere behind all those organ pipes.The Case of the Missing Handwriting
No manuscript in my own hand survives for this piece, which is a real nuisance for anyone who wants to be sure of things. What we have instead is a copy made by Johannes Ringk, and he never wrote a date on it. That copy is kept today in Berlin, in the Prussian Cultural Heritage collection. So the whole story rests on one careful copyist, a bit like a trial with only a single witness.A Pupil of a Pupil
Ringk studied with Johann Peter Kellner, and Kellner had studied with me. That makes Ringk something like my musical grandson, and I'm glad someone in that line took the trouble to write the music down. Since the piece survives in just one copy from near my own time, it doesn't seem to have been a famous piece in my day. It took the world a long while to find it, and it makes me smile that it got there in the end.Did I Write It at All?
Now for the awkward part: a few scholars have wondered whether I wrote it at all. Peter Williams raised doubts in 1981, and Rolf Dietrich Claus did the same in 1995. Christoph Wolff, on the other hand, holds that the piece is mine, and it is still catalogued under my name as BWV 565. There's also no record of who asked for it, who it was meant for, or who first played it, so the paper trail is thin.Mendelssohn Opens the Window
The world's interest in my music came back to life later, and Felix Mendelssohn started that revival with the St Matthew Passion in 1829. One of the early printed editions of this toccata and fugue came from the Bach-Gesellschaft in 1867. Another edition, the Neue Bach-Ausgabe of 1964, followed nearly a century later. Thanks to people like these, a piece with only one old copy found its way into the hands of players everywhere.From the Organ Loft to the Cartoon Castle
These days the piece has wandered far from the organ loft where it began. It is known from Walt Disney's Fantasia, and it has also been heard in The Phantom of the Opera. Ferruccio Busoni and Marcel Dupré are among those who made transcriptions for orchestra and other forces. Not bad for a piece I can't even give a birth year for, and one that still sounds like a heavy door being thrown open.---
So that's the story behind Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, at least as much of it as anyone can tell with confidence. I find it a little funny that a piece so many people know by heart still keeps so many of its secrets. Nobody can say for certain when I wrote it, or where, or who it was meant for. No manuscript in my own hand survives, and the music has come down to you through a copy made by Johannes Ringk. Maybe the mystery is part of why it still draws people in. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor? I hope it made you want to listen again, now that you know what to listen for in that first note and the silence after it. There's still plenty more to explore. You could look at how other musicians, such as Ferruccio Busoni and Marcel Dupré, reshaped the piece for different instruments. You could also follow its journey into films like Fantasia, or read about the people who have wondered whether I wrote it at all. If any of that sounds interesting, please click on the links provided and keep exploring Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I'd be glad to have you along.