Piano Music - Johann Sebastian Bach

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Bach_Johann_Sebastian

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📖 “Study Bach, there you will find everything.”
By Johannes Brahms

📖 BACH MUSICALLY
OMNIPOTENT
“It seems almost foolish to repeat what has been said so many times about the wonderful old cantor of Leipsic, Johann Sebastian Bach. However, there may still be some who have not yet become acquainted with the indisputable fact that the practice of Bach is the shortest, quickest road to technical finish. Busoni has enlarged upon Bach, impossible as that may seem; but as a modern bridge is sometimes built upon wonderful old foundations, Busoni has taken the idea of Bach and, with his penetrative and interpretative ability, has been able to make the meaning more clear and more effective. Any young pianist who aspires to have his hands in condition to respond to the subtle suggestions of his brain may acquire a marvelous foundation by the use of scales, Bach and arpeggios."
Wilhelm Backhaus in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

📖 "Die Musik ist nahe der Theologie, ich gebe nach der Theologie der Musik den nächsten Locum und die höchste Ehre."
Martin Luther

📖 "Die Musik ist eine Gabe und Geschenk Gottes, die den Teufel vertreibt und die Leute frühlich macht, da man dabei allen Zorn, Hoffart und andere Laster vergißt. - Ich möchte alle Künste, namentlich die Musika, gerne sehen im Dienste dessen, der sie erschaffen hat."
Martin Luther in Carl Reinecke's Aus dem Reich der Töne (1907)

📖 “The purity of style to be found in Bach, in connection with his marvelous contrapuntal designs, should be expounded to the student at as early an age as his intellectual development will permit. It may take some time to create a taste for Bach, but the teacher will be rewarded with results so substantial and permanent that all the trouble and time will seem well worth while.
There is also a refining influence about which I would like to speak. The practice of Bach seems to fairly grind off the rough edges, and instead of a raw, bungling technic the student acquires a kind of finish from the study of the old master of Eisenach that nothing else can give him."
Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

📖 "The immortal god of harmony."
Ludwig van Beethoven, in Letter to Christoph Breitkopf (1801)

📖 "I need Bach at the beginning of the day almost more than i need food and water"
Pablo Casals,
In Lloyd Weber Joys and Sorrows (1985)

📖 "In the course of time the distance between sources diminishes. Beethoven, for instance, did not need to study all that Mozart studied - Mozart, not all that Handel - Handel, not all that Palestrina - Because these had already absorbed the knowledge of their predecessors. But there is one source which inexhaustibly provides new ideas - Johann Sebastian Bach."
Robert Schumann
Music and Musicians (tr. Ritter) (1878)

📖 BUSONI ON THE STUDY OF BACH
“In the study of the subject of accentuation and phrasing it would not be possible for anyone to recommend anything more instructive than the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. The immortal Thüringian composer was the master-weaver of all. His tapestries have never been equalled in refinement, color, breadth and general beauty. Why is Bach so valuable for the student? This is an easy question to answer. It is because his works are so constructed that they compel one to study these details. Even if the student has only mastered the intricacies
of the Two Voice Inventions, it is safe to say that he has become a better player. More than this, Bach forces the student to think.
If the student has never thought before during his practice periods, he will soon find that it is quite impossible for him to encompass the difficulties of Bach without the closest mental application. In fact, he may also discover that it is possible for him to work out some of his musical problems while away from the keyboard. Many of the most perplexing
musical questions and difficulties that have ever confronted me have been solved mentally…"
Ferruccio Busoni in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

📖 "For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of beig a human being."
Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows

📖 "The performance of his [Bach's] incomparable works, whose influence flows in an ever widening channel thorugh the whole domain of musical education, has clearly demonstrated that the practical study of Bach is the gateway to the mastery of technique."
Walter Carroll in Anthony Walker Walter Carroll The Children's Composer

Piano Teacher's Recordings

Johann Sebastian Bach
Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2
Prelude and Fugue C-sharp Major BWV 872
Natalia Loresch, piano

Johann Sebastian Bach
Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2
Prelude and Fugue E Major BWV 878
Natalia Loresch, piano

Johann Sebastian Bach
Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2
Prelude and Fugue G Major BWV 884
Natalia Loresch, harpsichord
From a lecture recital at the Royal Academy of Music, London

Johann Sebastian Bach
Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1
Prelude and Fugue G-sharp Minor BWV 863
Natalia Loresch, harpsichord
From a lecture recital at the Royal Academy of Music, London

Johann Sebastian Bach
Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1
Prelude and Fugue G-sharp Minor BWV 863
Natalia Loresch, clavichord
From a lecture recital at the Royal Academy of Music, London

Johann Sebastian Bach

1685 - 1750
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organist.

📖 “The aim and final reason of all music should be none else but the glory of God and refreshing the soul.”

📖 “Tobe, Welt, und springe; ich steh' hier und singe in gar sichrer Ruh'.”

📖 “Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.”

📖 “I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.”

Quotes by Johann Sebastian Bach

From the Johann Sebastian Bach article in the Grove Music Dictionary:

(b Eisenach, March 21, 1685; d Leipzig, July 28, 1750). Composer and organist. The most important member of the family, his genius combined outstanding performing musicianship with supreme creative powers in which forceful and original inventiveness, technical mastery and intellectual control are perfectly balanced. While it was in the former capacity, as a keyboard virtuoso, that in his lifetime he acquired an almost legendary fame, it is the latter virtues and accomplishments, as a composer, that by the end of the 18th century earned him a unique historical position. His musical language was distinctive and extraordinarily varied, drawing together and surmounting the techniques, the styles and the general achievements of his own and earlier generations and leading on to new perspectives which later ages have received and understood in a great variety of ways.
The first authentic posthumous account of his life, with a summary catalogue of his works, was put together by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and his pupil J.F. Agricola soon after his death and certainly before March 1751 (published as Nekrolog, 1754). J.N. Forkel planned a detailed Bach biography in the early 1770s and carefully collected first-hand information on Bach, chiefly from his two eldest sons; the book appeared in 1802, by when the Bach Revival had begun and various projected collected editions of Bach’s works were under way; it continues to serve, together with the 1754 obituary and the other 18th-century documents, as the foundation of Bach biography.
(Christoph Wolff and Walter Emery)

Johann Sebastian Bach - free sheet music download on IMSLP Petrucci Music Library