The WTF Bach Podcast

Dec 07 2024 82 ep. 36 mins 88
The WTF Bach Podcast artwork

Experience the music of Bach as you never have before. For music lovers, to professional musicians, let WTF Bach guide your mind through a contrapuntal journey.

wtfbach.substack.com

  Music  Education
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


MiniSeries! 2: Divine Row Row Row Your Boat

Dec 07 2024 18 mins  
The first variation in these late variations for organ, is a canon at the octave. The two hands, each on a separate keyboard, play the same shape, one octave apart, while the feet provide the chorale melody. It looks like this:Those are the first three measures of 18 measures. That’s right: the shape is imitated note for note for 18 bars! If you’re having trouble seeing that th

MiniSeries! 1: Bach's Christmas Puzzles

Nov 28 2024 21 mins  
In this first of several related episodes, we will learn about Bach’s late contrapuntal masterpiece, the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her, BWV 769. The variations— although certainly not as familiar— should be considered alongside Bach’s other late achievements, the Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, and A Musical Offering. They employ many similar

Bach Pulls Out His Dagger.

Nov 18 2024 29 mins  
Since I was a child I’ve known the story of Bach pulling out a blade. What really happened? In this short episode, I read the contemporary reports from the Arnstadt Consistory Court, where this famous fisticuffs was first recorded. About halfway through the episode (14 minutes), I’ve given you some “chill” chorales, played over a drone. One of my listeners mentioned they wa

The Urtext Illusion: Textual Variance in Bach's "Aria Variata" BWV 989

Oct 31 2024 54 mins  
Last week I posted this piece on YouTube:The most intriguing part of studying this piece was the overwhelming amount of differences between the three earliest sources of this work. Here is a list of the sources I reference in the episode , the copyists, and when they were made:The ‘Andreas Bach Book’ (D-LE III.8.4) J. Christoph Bach; copyist, between 1705-1714P 801 J. Tobias Kr

Passion Music for His Son: The F Minor Sinfonia, BWV 795

Oct 09 2024 33 mins  
Yes, that recording at the end is none other than Jascha Heifetz with Primrose and Piatigorksy, who apparently recorded three of the sinfonias. The wonderful pianist with that golden sound playing before the string trio arrangement is (I think!) Marcelle Meyer recorded sometime around 1948. WTF Bach needs your support! Consider becoming a subscriber.Today’s episode focuses on the

Fantasy & Fugue in C minor BWV 537

Sep 25 2024 46 mins  
Becoming familiar with Bach’s music is a never-ending process. First, there is the initial reading, which alone can occupy many happy years. What’s remarkable is that with each further reading, you’re astonished by the details you missed before—quite honestly amazed. You ask yourself: Where—or even who—was I during those earlier readings? You begin to measure your growt

Anyone Else Getting Married?

Sep 08 2024 41 mins  
In this episode, we’ll explore Bach’s constant involvement with weddings. Weddings and funerals occupied a weekly place in Bach’s life in Leipzig and we’ll shed light on the various ways in which he was involved musically. [I forgot to credit the last recording in this episode to Rudolph Lutz and the J.S. Bach foundation.]Here are (some of) the beautiful parts which make up

The 3rd Keyboard Partita (A Crucial Revision)

Aug 12 2024 22 mins  
A brief(er) episode for you today: Bach’s first published opus was his six partitas for keyboard. In some of the sources within Bach’s circle, copies retained as a ‘Handexemplar’ include revisions by a scribe we can almost say with certainty is Bach himself. The most consequential of these revisions appears at the end of the third partita, where the second half of the Gigue

Performer's Commentary, Vol. 3

Aug 04 2024 53 mins  
The final performer’s commentary episode for you. This is live commentating (the program notes of the future) on the last of my three simultaneous releases. This album is a bunch of preludes and fugues— some maybe you know, some maybe you don’t.You can stream and individually purchase any track including the performer’s commentary from the third volume below. [More streamin

No One Ever Erected a Statue to a Critic (Bach vs. Scheibe)

Jul 26 2024 36 mins  
Johann Adolph Scheibe went down in history for attacking Bach’s “turgid and confused” style. “…from the natural to the artificial, and from the lofty to the obscure ... one wonders at the painful labor of it all, that nevertheless comes to nothing, since it is at variance with reason.”Let’s examine the controversy from the beginning. How To Support This Podcast:https: