The WTF Bach Podcast

Mar 04 2025 92 ep. 35 mins 90

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.

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Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. An Audiobook.

Mar 04 2025 69 mins

The bard— not the brook, but don’t worry, this podcast isn’t going to become an English lesson.Thanks for reading WTF Bach! This post is public so feel free to share it.Here is my reading of Shakespeare’s first publication, Venus and Adonis, a poem that is pure music. If I were to list my favorite lines, I might as well copy out half the poem. Just something that pops into

MiniSeries! 10: The Final Episode

Feb 18 2025 19 mins

UPDATE: One of my astute listeners pointed out that it is in fact Jones’ review of Butler’s work in Music & Letters, and the original work by Butler is this book. Thanks for the correction!Don’t miss the end of this episode where I play three of Bach’s earlier settings of the same tune, BWVs 700, 701, & 738!We finish our study of this late masterpiece by reading some schola

MiniSeries! 9: Revisions Part Two

Feb 11 2025 27 mins

Today, as we did in episode 5 of this miniseries, we’ll examine the revisions Bach made from engraving copy to handwritten copy. This is an important view into the composer’s workshop, and unlike clear ameliorations between layers in his other works, the two versions of BWV 769 present a unique challenge in seeking the “best” version.Changes like this (first beat, alto) are

MiniSeries! 8: A Bachian Fractal

Feb 05 2025 20 mins

Show me a finale as densely packed with thematic material as this one. Here are the five bars — the only five bars — discussed in today’s episode. You might listen while looking at them:Notice the finale comes in two stages, first diminution, then stretto. The signature in the final bar is noteworthy (though it should be mentioned that the letters are an addition by the edito

MiniSeries! 7: Canon at MOVING Intervals

Jan 29 2025 16 mins

Have a look at this. This is Bach beginning a canon in inversion. The follower is a 6th below the leader:(If you can’t see that the shapes are inversions, hold up a mirror — seriously!) Yet here, only a few bars later, the imitation seems to be at a different interval:The follower is no longer a sixth below, but a third. How rare! And going on, something else:(We’re looking a

MiniSeries! 6: A Sloth Canon

Jan 21 2025 23 mins

Imagine composing an ornate melody, then stretching it out so it moves twice as slow, and somehow when you layer the stretched version onto the original, they match up beautifully: One shape, two different speeds. This is what Bach has done in this canon (but he also made sure that the consequence of both lines also blends into the harmonic implications of the chorale melody, which

MiniSeries! 5: Canonic Revisions Part One

Jan 03 2025 22 mins

The subject of the last several episodes has been Bach’s canonic variations on a Christmas tune by Martin Luther himself. A major inquiry into this work is its existence in two versions: engraved and handwritten. The published version (for reasons explained in the episode) doesn’t fully solve the canonic lines, as seen here:Notice how the notes of the bottom line don’t contin

MiniSeries! 4: Feet & LH, a 7th Apart

Dec 27 2024 18 mins

Let’s delve into a third variation from Bach’s 1747 masterpiece, “Some canonic variations on the Christmas song, ‘From Heaven Above’ for the organ with two keyboards and pedal, by J.S. Bach.”Two versions of this piece exist: the ‘fair copy’ and the ‘publication’ (Stichfassung), which present the variations in a different order. In this episode, we follow the pub

Is Pachelbel's Canon Really a Canon?

Dec 20 2024 17 mins

I never knew the authentic version of the world’s most famous canon, having only known arrangements which conceal the fact that the music is indeed a canon in three voices. Here is what the ‘real’ canon looks like:It continues for over 50 bars as a three voice canon at the unison. In my brief survey of this piece, I found one theory that suggests the 9-year-old J.S. Bach was

MiniSeries! 3: A Canon At The Fifth

Dec 17 2024 16 mins

Continuing our mini-series exploring Bach’s canonic variations on the Christmas song, ‘Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her’ BWV 769, we listen to the second canon: a canon at the perfect fifth. Here is what the initial shape looks like in the right hand: So the same shape must be imitated down the perfect fifth. It appears like this in the left hand:I briefly mention the differen