Tea Time With Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
The Best Moments
Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
I'm Johann Sebastian Bach, and I'm delighted to welcome you to the best moments of my Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. You'll listen to the passages of this organ piece that many people already know from Fantasia and The Phantom of the Opera, and you'll find out why they grip so strongly. On this site my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, so give the Trainer a go whenever you like.
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One Note and an Awkward Pause
I open the piece with one sharp, striking note that wobbles for a moment, a little flick called a mordent, and then I stop everything. The silence that follows is short but tense, a bit like a friend who says "we need to talk" and then goes off to find a glass of water.
A Tune That Chases Its Own Tail
After that I move into a fugue, which is simply a short melody that gets chased around by copies of itself, and here four voices take part in the chase. I even let the answer arrive in an unusual place, on the subdominant, which just means it starts from a slightly unexpected spot and still fits in perfectly.
The Part Where I Can't Pick a Speed
Near the end I wrap things up with a short coda marked Recitativo, and I admit I can't quite decide how fast it should go. The tempo changes several times along the way, like a driver who keeps rethinking the route, until the whole piece finally settles into its last chord.
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Now that the last chord has faded, I like to sit for a moment in the quiet it leaves behind. Did you enjoy getting to know the best moments of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor? I hope that opening note, the chase of the fugue and the restless ending will stay with you for a good while. There is still a lot more to discover about this piece, and some of it is a real puzzle. No manuscript in my own hand survives, so the music reaches us through a copy made by Johannes Ringk, who was a pupil of Johann Peter Kellner, who had been a pupil of mine. Nobody knows exactly when it was written or who it was written for, and that mystery is part of what keeps people curious about it. You could also follow the music out into the wider world, because it has found its way into Walt Disney's Fantasia and The Phantom of the Opera. Musicians such as Ferruccio Busoni and Marcel Dupré have made their own versions of it, which sound quite different from a single organ filling a church. If any of this has made you want to hear more, please click on the links provided and keep exploring Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I'd be glad to think of you listening again, and noticing something you missed the first time.