Customer Reviews

Bach: The Orgelbï¿1/2chlein

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Russell Stinson and Bach's "Orgelbuchlein"

Johann Sebastian Bach's Orgelbuchlein is one of the most important compilations of chorale preludes in all the repertory of organ music. Every serious organist must encounter the Orgelbuchlein in some way and almost every organist draws from this collection many times throughout his or her career as a church musician.

Bach spent a lot of time creating these forty-five settings. Why? The general scholarly consensus over the years is that the Orgelbuchlein had a didactic purpose, demonstrating the many ways an organist could decorate congregational hymns either to introduce the hymns before the congregation sang them or to be played as an organ verse. (Chorales often included ten or more stanzas and rarely were any omitted during the three hour Lutheran services. Tedium while singing chorales was relieved by an alternatim style in which stanzas would alternate between congregation, choir and organ solo.)

As was often his wont when preparing sets of pieces, Bach employed a large variety of styles in Orgelbuchlein, from complex counterpoint to only slightly elaborated homophony, and equally varied moods from ecstatic to quietly introspective, at the same time drawing on a large pool of musical imagery to portray the text being interpreted by the music.

Russell Stinson has spent many years studying and researching Bach materials, and he provides many good insights. However I find his writing style here unfocused and undisciplined, too often including material that offers little illumination on the subject at hand. For instance, in his discussions of two of the chorale preludes (BWV #'s 601 and 635) Stinson mentions that the pedal line can be easily played by alternate feet. Here the reader gets the impression that organ playing issues will be a feature as the study progresses. However alternate-foot pedaling is not mentioned again until quite a bit later (p.154) when Stinson points out that alternate-foot pedaling was an important aspect of baroque organ playing technique. Surely others of these chorale settings lend themselves just as well to this approach. Why was it mentioned in these two instances but no others? It provides no special enlightenment about the music and does little more than clutter up the text.

In other cases Stinson makes important claims without providing any supporting rationalization. Especially notable in this regard are his comments concerning conflicting rhythms. This performance practice issue has been hotly debated for many years and is found in three of the Orgelbuchlein chorales (BWV no's 608, 617 & 624). It needed more detailed treatment by Dr. Stinson, who suggested that no's 608 and 624 could be played either literally or assimilated, while the conflicting rhythms in BWV 617 "should no doubt" be assimilated (p.128) but provided no rationale for this declaration. This reviewer disagrees with Stinson with respect to BWV 617 and would have appreciated some explanation for his conclusion - - especially since the author promised (p.xv) to provide fresh insights into performance practice issues in the Orgelbuchlein. If any single issue in the Orgelbuchlein deserved more in-depth treatment, this is it, and its omission is very disappointing.

In several of the chorale settings, Stinson refers to the musical gestures representing images associated with the text. Much has been written about Bach's use of imagery, especially in the Orgelbuchlein, but here, again, Stinson fails to employ this line of investigation consistently.

Organists will find worthwhile information in this book, but they would have benefited much more had the author spent less time with coincidentals and more time with essentials, following a consistent focus in his discussion.

David L. Mitchell,
Madison, Maine