Bach’s Famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

My elementary, middle, and high school years were spent in Belleville, Illinois, where my father built a successful ophthalmological practice and surgical center.  After I moved from the study of the piano to the study of the organ during my high school years, I would drive across the river to St. Louis to spend my Saturday afternoons at Shattinger music, located at 1810 S. Broadway. 

Shattinger music was a storied, traditional music store, and at one time, publishing house.  It had specialized music departments – choral, band, strings, piano, handbells, etc. and a large, expert staff.  Most exciting for me, was the fact that it had its own organ department, managed by a man named David, with filing cabinet after filing cabinet of organ music.  I would spend hours looking through the music, stealing away to the practice room to try out some newly discovered piece that I might find fun and interesting to learn, or at a minimum, have a read through a famous work that, at the time, seemed so far out of reach. 

The employees there became my friends.  In high school I directed a very capable and enthusiastic handchime choir at Immanuel United Church of Christ in East St. Louis, so I would spend some time with Nancy, who would guide me through the new releases for handbells, ensuring that what I purchased would work equally well for handchimes.  I kept a handful of young piano students, mainly from my neighborhood, and I would search through pedagogical piano books, seeking just the right thing for each student to have the best possible chance to be inspired to become a great pianist.  I can still hear the deep bass voice of Dick Boyd, who was the staff choral expert, but also a former student of my high school organ teacher, Glenn Freiner.  Dick was always so encouraging to me, and he was certain to spend some time chatting with me about music and relating stories to me about “Prof. Freiner,” although I knew him as Mr. Freiner.  Without a doubt, Shattinger’s and the wonderful people of that store shaped my life and helped narrow the focus of my career path.  In those formative years, that store was a wonderland, and practically all of the money I earned mowing lawns and babysitting was spent on purchasing music at that store.

I bought my first organ recording at Shattinger’s one Saturday afternoon.  It was a cassette tape titled, “Classical Moments: Majestic Organ.”  The tape was a compilation of recordings.  No individual organists are credited, although in later life I could tell that Carlo Curley was the performer of Saint-Saëns’s French Military March.  It was through that cassette recording that I first heard so many works that are synonymous with the organ – Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, Sheep May Safely Graze, Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary, and the famous Widor Toccata.  However, none of those pieces could trump the first selection on side one, Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.  I was immediately hooked, and before I formally learned the work, I would hack through it and play various parts of it, amazed as its musical genius.  

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is a piece that has captured the public imagination like few others.  No musical work is more famous than it and it is instantly recognizable just from its opening mordent.  Only the opening of Beethoven’s 5th symphony is as recognizable, and unlike the first movement of Beethoven’s symphony, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565, has been transcribed for and can be played by almost any instrument or musical ensemble.  I have heard it played by symphonies, on the violin, the harpsichord, the harp, and by concert band, just to name a few, but it sounds best on the organ. 

This Sunday, I will perform Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor as the prelude to our 10 A.M. Sunday Eucharist.  While cinema has created an association of the piece with things macabre, the work certainly wasn’t conceived that way.  Composed in D minor, the key is a modernization of the Dorian mode, which was the mode of kings.  The work of a youthful Bach, perhaps it was conceived in the same manner as works composed by Dietrich Buxtehude, who used D minor in works honoring royalty.  Perhaps this is a work that honors the King of Kings? 

The Toccata does not exist in Bach’s hand.  The earliest copy is the one preserved by Johannes Ringk.  While Mendelssohn declared without hesitation that the work was by Bach, scholars have debated the Toccata’s authorship and even whether the work was composed for the organ.  There are valid arguments that the work was conceived for harpsichord or clavichord, as the writing and some of the figuration shares common elements with Bach’s early harpsichord music.  There is some speculation that perhaps the work is a transcription of a lost violin piece.  The work could simply be a written-out improvisation.   I attended a conference that featured the famous Bach scholar and German musicologist Christoph Wolff.  He spent an entire afternoon lecturing on the authenticity of the attribution of Bach to this famous work.  Wolff is convinced that it is by Bach.  Besides, if not Bach, then who else?  Well, that is the question that no one has the answer to, and why would this not be a work by an exuberant and energetic musical genius in his late teens or very early 20s?  Much of Bach’s early organ music is lost, but this gem, which is certainly in contrast to the masterpieces Bach composed in his mature years, is full of life and musical brilliance.

If you want to explore more about this incredible work, I invite you to seek out a film by Will Fraiser, released in 2024, “Bach: The Great Toccata.”  It is a fascinating documentary, led by Daniel Moult, that takes the viewer on an incredible exploration of this work. 

The principal choruses of our pipe organ, that is, the primary foundation stops of the organ, are modeled after German Baroque organs, making a performance of BWV 565 at Emmanuel, as authentic as one can get in this part of North Carolina.  Admittedly, the Halloween season is certainly my inspiration for offering this work as part of our Sunday music, but as you listen to it in preparation for our worship, I ask that you separate it from Hollywood associations. Instead, hear it as a captivating work of virtuosity.  In its time, and like today, this work would have been used as the prelude for a feast day, or perhaps to display the marvels of a new pipe organ at its dedication.  It has been suggested that this work could have been composed or performed in celebration of the completion of the organ built 1696-1707 under Bach’s first cousin once removed Johann Christoph’s direction for St. George’s Church in Eisenach.   Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, spent his early years there, and St. George’s Church is where he was baptized.  My undergraduate college professor, Dr. Rudolf Zuiderveld, viewed the Toccata and Fugue as a musical expression of the Credo – I believe in one God – with its unison passage work, and the opening three notes, as a musical representation of the Trinity.

Without a doubt, Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue has captivated and inspired listeners for more than three centuries.  If you want to hear the most famous opening three notes ever composed, be certain to be in your pew by 9:50 A.M.  I invite you to close your eyes and let the brilliance of this great music embrace you as it fills our sacred space with notes like the swirling of the cosmos.  It is timeless, it is enduring, and it is eternal.