Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)
Trio Sonatas
Sonata No.4 in E Minor, BWV 528
Sonata No.5 in C Major, BWV 529
Sonata No.6 in G Major, BWV 530
Prelude & Fugue in C Major, BWV
547
Johann Sebastian Bach made his early reputation as an organist.
The son of a town and court musician, Johann Ambrosius Bach, he owed much of his early
training, after the death of his parents, to his brother, Johann Christoph, organist at
Ohrdruf, and began his career as organist at Arnstadt at the age of eighteen, moving to
Mühlhausen four years later and in 1708 winning appointment as organist and chamber
musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst at Weimar, the elder of the two rulers of the duchy.
Bach's later career took him in 1717 to Cöthen as
Hofkapellmeister to the young Prince Leopold, a position that involved him rather in
secular music, owing to the Pietist leanings of the court. His patron's marriage to a
woman without cultural interests led Bach to leave Cöthen in 1723 and move to Leipzig,
where he had accepted the position of Kantor at the Choir School of St. Thomas. There he
was to remain for the rest of his life in a position that brought responsibility for the
music of the principal city churches and concomitant difficulties both with the town
council and later with the Rector of the Thomasschule, where he was employed to teach the
choristers. He assumed responsibility for the University Collegium Musicum, established
earlier by Telemann, a preferred candidate for the position of Kantor, and arranged for
this group some of his earlier instrumental compositions. He remained in Leipzig until his
death in 1750.
It was natural that a musician trained
in his craft as Bach had been should write the kind of music for which there was an
immediate need. In Weimar he wrote much of his organ music, in Cöthen much of his
instrumental music and in Leipzig the greater part of his church music. The six Trio
Sonatas for organ seem to belong to the earlier years of Bach's period in Leipzig, dated
conjecturally to 1727, apparently devised for the use of the composer's eldest son Wilhelm
Friedemann, who became one of the most distinguished organists of his generation in
Germany. The sonatas demand clarity of performance and distinct enunciation of the two
melodic lines and bass pedal part.
The fourth of the sonatas, in E minor,
opens with a motif entrusted to the upper part, immediately imitated by the lower in a
brief Adagio introduction. The lower part proposes the theme of the following Vivace,
imitated at the octave by the upper part. The following B minor Andante is of increasing
elaboration and complexity in figuration and leads to a triple time final movement. The
sonata is arranged from the 1723 cantata, Der Himmel
erzählen die Ehre Gottes, The Heavens are telling. The fifth sonata, in C
major, opens with a concerto-like movement, with a relatively limited bass accompaniment,
its closing bars over long-held pedal notes. There is a slow movement in A minor with
melodic lines elaborately embellished, and a final C major Allegro that continues to make
technical demands on the performer. The G major sonata opens in the manner of a Vivaldi concerto, with the two upper parts in unison,
before going on to brief antiphonal imitation on of the other. The upper part is entrusted
with the aria melody of the E minor slow movement, the opening later re-appearing in the
key of A minor, before leading, through E minor, to a final return to G major in a
movement in which once more there is a miraculous interweaving of parts.
Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 547, is strikingly
different from much of the composer's work of this kind. Written apparently after 1723,
the Prelude opens with a three-voice contrapuntal composition for the manuals in 9/8
metre, with an unusual bass part for the pedals, including a distinctive rhythmic figure
when it enters. The same rhythmic figure ends the Prelude. The first 48 bars of the fugue
make no use of the pedals, which are used only in the concluding 24 bars, the last five
and a half providing a tonic pedal-point. The first pedal entry is in fact in augmentation
of the opening of the fugal subject, which itself is treated with the greatest
contrapuntal ingenuity.
Wolfgang Rübsam
A native of Germany, Wolfgang Rübsam received his musical training in Europe from Prof.
Erich Ackermann, Prof. Helmut Walcha and Marie-Claire Alain, and in the United States from
Dr. Robert T. Anderson. He resides today in the Chicago area holding a Professorship at
Northwestern University since 1974 and serving as University Organist at the University of
Chicago since 1981. International recognition was established upon winning the GRAND PRIX
DE CHARTRES, INTERPRETATION in 1973 and continues to grow through his recording career
with over eighty recordings, many of which have received awards. Wolfgang Rübsam performs
frequently in major international festivals and concert halls, including the Los Angeles
Bach Festival; Wiener Festwochen, Vienna; Lahti International Organ Festival, Finland;
Royal Festival Hall, London; Alice Tully Hall, New York, and conducts master classes both
in interpretation of early and romantic organ repertoire, and in interpreting the keyboard
music of Johann Sebastian Bach on the modern piano.