19 Introduction The present volume combines all of Bach’s organ compositions transmitted with the Unlike in the circle of the Sweelinck School, where the “Fantasia” mutated to the title “fantasia,”1 the (few) fugues belonging to individual fantasias, as well as all sepa- “stylus phantasticus” of the North German organists, its significance was reduced in rately transmitted fugues. Closer inspection shows no single authorized and complete most other parts of Europe in the second half of the 17th century to a kind of make- pair of fantasia-cum-fugues for organ. In the sources for BWV 542, fantasia and fugue shift term for polyphonically designed, usually smaller compositions that could not mostly appear separately, whereas with the two C-minor pairs, BWV 537 and 562, the be identified, for instance, as “fugue,” “canzone,” or something similar. That is also fugues (probably so in the case of BWV 537) have remained incomplete. Especially true of the Middle German keyboard music at the end of the 17th century, where owing to this circumstance and the fact that the majority of fantasias have come down “Fantasia” also occasionally turns up as a generic name. Central here are Johann as single works, it is appropriate to combine the fantasias with the single fugues in one Pachelbel’s six extant examples.4 The most important parameters appearing here are volume. It also enables publishing together the two parts of the G-minor work BWV free imitation of one or several brief subjects or motives as well as the use of 542 – in its two-part form it is one of the most famous of all of Bach’s compositions “ostinato” (Fantasias in C major and D major), of the “figura corta” (rhythm: eighth – , although the source findings may perhaps suggest otherwise. note – two sixteenth notes; Fantasias in D minor and G minor), and of “durezze” (“harsh” harmonic dissonances; Fantasias in E-flat major and G minor). The Fantasia Concept in Bach’s Music It is this liberal and rather unpretentious fantasia type that the young Bach took up.5 In order to properly grasp the concept of the Fantasia in Bach’s music, it is necessary His engagement with the fantasia did not constitute any continuum, but occurred in to sketch its previous history. The origin of the genre lies c. 1500 and is a consequence two clearly separate phases: An early phase (BWV 563, 570, 571, 917, 922, and 1121) is of the historically significant level of contact between humanism and music. connected to the search for his own voice, emanating from the Pachelbel model. After “Fantasia” was an idea from Greek body of thought associated by humanistic aesthet- the sharp rise of the North German influence – a tradition deliberately ignoring the ics with contemporary arts. The abstract concept stands for the “highest” that an artist fantasia as a genre – probably under the impression of the journey to Lübeck in the as an individual can attain.2 It was gratefully adopted for the new instrumental music winter of 1705/06, the term disappeared for some time from Bach’s work. Accordingly, of the 16th century that, lacking the traditional support of a text, sought a coherent no fantasias as independent works are known from the Mühlhausen and Weimar concept and suitable terminology. The aspect of the “highest” was applied as a matter period (1707–17). Bach used the term in this decade simply as an accessory in the case of course to the most artful kind of music then composed, namely that of the imita- of several especially expansive chorale arrangements (BWV 651a, 654a, 658a, 659a, and tive counterpoint of the Franco-Flemish school. This particular feature of the 713) where the North German element of the “fantastic style” and/or the chorale “Fantasia” required of the composer a high degree of originality. Without the formal fantasia unmistakably resonated.6 The fantasia itself was apparently considered a genre or content-related support of a text or, for instance, the framework of a dance, he had of the past – just like the toccata and the chorale partita from which the young Bach to create, so to speak, his own fantasia type. It is therefore not surprising that this definitely took his leave only a little later. But unlike these two genres, the fantasia individualizing tendency took place predominantly in the realm of keyboard music: resurfaced in Bach’s late work. In this second phase, probably first starting in the Not only because a single player was responsible for the presentation of the total Cöthen period, the term is then very deliberately used, but apparently not without polyphonic structure, but also especially because composer and interpreter were here united in one person. Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s fantasias form the climax of this “humanistically”-oriented clavier keyboard fantasia.3 The formal scheme is as a rule 4 Johann Pachelbel, Sämtliche Werke für Tasteninstrumente, vol. 6: Fantasien, Ciaconen, Suiten, Variationen, that of a classical, three-part speech, consisting of exordium, medium, and finis [begin- ed. by Michael Belotti (in preparation). 5 In this conjunction the definition by Friedrich Erhard Niedt (1674–1717), one of the Bach con- ning, middle, and end], and this with carefully thought-out proportions. temporaries coming from Jena, is also important: “Fantaisie, ist Frantzösisch / und wird auf Italiänisch Fantasia genannt. Es heißt auf Teutsch ein eingebildetes Ding / eine Phantasey / und wird in musicalischen Sachen solchen Stücken beygeleget / die ein jeder nach seinem Sinn / wie es ihm 1 With two exceptions: [a] The Praeludium in D minor BWV 549a is designated “Praeludium ô Fantasia einkommt / oder gefällig ist / ohne gewisse Schrancken und Maasse verfertiget / oder extemporisiret. pedaliter” in the main source (Möllersche Handschrift). But since the C-minor version BWV 549 always Die Organisten halten viel davon: Denn / wer ein Organist will heissen / muss sich der Phantasie confines the title to “Praeludium” and “Fantasia” is used in the Möller manuscript only as an alter- befleissen … [Fantaisie, is French / and is called Fantasia in Italian. In German it is called an native to “Praeludium,” the work is assigned to volume 1 of the new edition (Praeludien und Fugen I). imagined thing / a fantasy / and such matters are added to musical pieces / which everybody [b] The singular three-part G-major piece BWV 572 was long known primarily as “Fantasia” (especially according to his mind / has found acceptable / or pleasing / creating without certain limits and due to the Peters edition), however most sources transmit the designation “Pièce d’Orgue;” the piece proportions / or extemporizing. The organist thinks much of it: For / whoever wants to be called an appears therefore in volume 4 (Toccaten und Fugen, Einzelwerke). organist / must zealously fantasize…]” (Friedrich Erhard Niedtens Musicalischer Handleitung Anderer 2 Cf. on this, in particular, Arnfried Edler, Fantasia and Choralfantasie: on the Problematic Nature of a Theil, Hamburg, 1721, Reprint Buren, 1976, p. 97). Genre of Seventeenth-Century Organ Music, The Organ Yearbook 19 (1988), pp. 53–66. 6 Cf. Werner Breig, Der norddeutsche Orgelchoral und Johann Sebastian Bach – Gattung, Typus, Werk, in: 3 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan P. Sweelinck – Its Style, Significance and Influence, Gattung und Werk in der Musikgeschichte Norddeutschlands und Skandinaviens, ed. by Heinrich W. Muziekhistorische Monografieën 15, Utrecht, 1997, pp. 327–492. Schwab and Friedhelm Krummacher, Kassel, 1982, pp. 79–94. 20 15 encountering specific problems. On the one hand, it was used for singular, rhetorical- well-authenticated keyboard works by Bach which are all datable before c. 1712, ly-cast chromatic compositions (harpsichord fantasia BWV 903 and organ fantasia among them all seven harpsichord toccatas BWV 910–916, as well as the organ works BWV 542), unmistakably showing Bach’s knowledge of the North German “stylus BWV 532/2, 550, 564, and 574b. The source as a whole is hence probably based on a phantasticus;” on the other hand, the conceptual draft [Konzeptschrift] for the organ cohesive early Thuringian composite manuscript. The G-major fantasia appears, fantasia in C major BWV 573 was abandoned early on, which, significantly, was furthermore, to form a logical compositional development of BWV 570 and 563: it also the case with the fugues for the harpsichord fantasia BWV 906 and for the organ expands the two-section form of BWV 563 to three sections. It thereby unmistakably fantasia BWV 562 (and probably also for the fugue of the organ fantasia BWV 537). combines the three most important parameters of the Pachelbel fantasias identified above in a closed composition: free imitation with a brief theme (first movement), The Early Fantasias the same (with the first movement’s theme inverted) in combination with The Fantasia in C BWV 570 is probably Bach’s earliest extant, independent organ “durezze” (second movement), and freely-handled “ostinato” (third movement). work, if not one of his first compositions altogether and could have been composed Like BWV 563, BWV 571 can be attributed to the period c. 170412, underscored in Ohrdruf.7 It is therefore not surprising that it directly follows the Pachelbel model. by the great resemblance of the closing configuration (mm. 118–127) with the His Fantasia in d shows a similar structure with a full-voiced, key-defining introduc- close of the chorale arrangement Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern BWV 739 tion, followed by a freely-imitative main section based on the “figura corta” with (mm. 65–75), extant in an autograph from the same time. “durezze”-like harmonic progressions. The Fantasia in c BWV 1121 long eked out an anonymous and shadowy existence The beginning of the Fantasia in b BWV 563 strongly resembles the main section of in ABB, transmitted, moreover, in tablature notation (albeit it was already recognized BWV 570, although the “figura corta” is used with more freedom, especially harmon- by its first editor Max Seiffert as a significant composition13), until the manuscript ically.