Classical organist Hans-André Stamm plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 on the Trost-Organ of the Stadtkirche in Waltershausen, Germany.
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, two-part musical composition for organ written, according to its oldest extant sources, by Johann Sebastian Bach 300 years ago, First published in 1833 through the efforts of Felix Mendelssohn. It is one of the most Baroque famous works in the organ repertoire – with a particularly iconic opening. However, some scholars believe it’s too crude a piece to have been written by Bach at all!
The first part of Bach’s piece is a toccata. It represents a musical form for keyboard instruments that is designed to reveal the virtuosity of the performer’s touch. It has a great many fast arpeggios (notes of a chord played in a series rather than simultaneously).
The fugue—a technique characterized by the overlapping repetition of a principal theme in different melodic lines (counterpoint)—that is the second part of Bach’s composition reflects the particular popularity of the form during the late 1600s and early 1700s.
Also listen: Moonlight Sonata played on rocks instrument