Bach - "Little" Fugue in G Minor, BWV 578

"Little" Fugue in G Minor, BWV 578
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Peter B. Calabro, organist
Sample set of the Johann Cyriacus Werner historic baroque pipe organ (1743) at the parish church in Strassburg (Austria), made by Piotr Graboski- piotrgrabowski.pl/strassburg/
Converted Allen ADC 430 (formerly 2 manuals) running GrandOrgue on Windows 10. github.com/GrandOrgue/grandorgue
Registration: ORGANO PLENO
HAUPTWERK
Prinzipal 8'
Gedeckt 8'
Gemshorn 8'
Oktav 4'
Flöte 4'
Quint 2 2/3'
Oktav 2'
Oktav 1'
Mixtur 1 1/3'
POS. - HW.
POSITIV
Gedackt 8'
Prinzipal 4'
Flöte 4'
Oktav 2'
Mixtur 1'
PEDAL
Kontrabaß 16'
Subbaß 16'
Oktavbaß 8'
Gedacktbaß 8'
Oktave 4'
Posaun 16'
HW. - PED.
POS. - PED.

[@evanofelipe]

Thanks Peter, absolutely brilliant voicing, clear and precise. I have no idea how you enable your brain to manage and separate the melodies required of left, right hands and feet simultaneously. Let alone how Bach was able to devise his music in the first place. Devine intervention, I guess?

[@hymnistic]

Thank you! The fugue is my favorite musical form! I love holding down notes in one part of the hand while the other fingers play something else. It's a fine balance between making it happen and letting it happen.

[@eitantal726]

Separating left/right hands: Do you type on a keyboard with both hands? Have you ever tried playing an instrument? If you can type well on a keyboard, you might have a chance of playing an instrument

[@evanofelipe]

@@eitantal726It’s certainly a gift bestowed by God

[@decepti]

​@@evanofelipeit's just practice!

[@philippehuysmans3159]

Sir, you are brilliant. I just heard one tiny little "imprecision" in the whole fugue which is a very difficult piece (and surely not a "little" one). You are at the level of the bests, on that piece. Thanks for sharing!

[@hymnistic]

Thank you for the kind compliments! It's good for my playing to do these recordings, trying to get them as perfect as possible knowing that people can listen over and over again, picking out every little thing. I learn from them too, and would likely do some things differently the next time, hopefully even better.

[@sophia6_8hemiola-circleof5]

You did such a great job playing this! One of my new favorites🙂!

[@hymnistic]

Thank you! Glad you are getting to know this wonderful piece!

[@eitantal726]

Thank you, KZbin algorithm, for bringing me here!

[@hymnistic]

And thank you too!

[@emanuelecicchino7256]

bravo.

[@hymnistic]

Thanks for stopping by and for the support!

[@iratemormon6183]

Damn, son!

[@hymnistic]

🤣 Thanks for stopping by

[@gwentchamp8720]

Very nice, didn't even have to read from a score. Guess you've played this enough to memorize it.

[@hymnistic]

Thank you! You got it, I've played it many times.

[@christopherunsworth]

Just wonderful. So enjoyable to listen to.

[@hymnistic]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!

[@norbertlenz7711]

Sehr gut gespielt 👍

[@hymnistic]

Danke schön!

[@pacojonesvaior9212]

Impresive…bravo❤❤

[@hymnistic]

Thank you!

[@marycschlumberger5028]

Beautiful

[@hymnistic]

Thank you, Mary!

[@c-historia]

amazing!!

[@hymnistic]

Thank you!

[@JSB2500]

Very nice! Nice and rhythmical throughout! Somehow this one has escaped being learned by me 😆.

[@hymnistic]

Thank you! This was my first organ piece I ever learned (at 48), in spite of working as a church organist for decades before that. I never thought I could learn to use my clumsy feet as an adult and if I didn't start as a kid. I was deathly afraid of even touching those scary pedals! And then cam this piece and I made up my mind. I see you are learning Rach II at 55. So if I can learn the pedals late, so can you learn Rach II! Just play it and keep on playing it.

[@JSB2500]

@@hymnistic I think you've done well with you pedal technique. As I mentioned, I never learned 578, but I do recall playing it through once as a teenager and thinking that the pedal coordination was difficult (demonstrated by too many students crawling through the piece rather than playing it rhythmically). In short ... Well Done!! The Rach II is a new project for me. I can play all the notes from the score at reduced speed, but playing it without the score is proving a major challenge for me atm. Having said that, since Thursday I have got the opening of the first movement up to speed (66) and can play most of it from memory (one section to go). AND I've got the next section up to Anna Fedorova speed 😮 - albeit RH only. My Bach BWV 542 performance on my KZbin channel home page is my favourite so far, in case you're interested. Anyway, if I can help in any way at any time, do ask! 🙂

[@JSB2500]

@@hymnistic I'm not in the least surprised to learn that you majored in piano. I noticed immediately that there was something good about your playing - something that I only ever see in people who have the capability of playing entire pieces accurately from memory. Organists nearly always in my experience serve up the music piece piecemeal - read a bit, play a bit, etc. For me that ruins (yes ruins, not hyperbole) the immersive experience, and subsequently only interests other organists who want to talk details. About the pedals: I went the opposite way to you. I learned the pedals when I was 14.5 having never learned the piano before hand. That was in 1982. My pedalling was then better than my left hand until 2008 when I took up the piano. So here are some tips, in case useful, to be taken as a group (altogether): • Play in socks so that you can FEEL the pedals. It MUST be a tactile experience IMO. [Edited] • Make the pedals LEAD everything else. Pianists often add the pedals as an afterthought. That doesn't work. There would be no impetus. • Never ever look at the pedals to check you're about to press the correct pedal! Even when it REALLY matters e.g. when about to play a loud chord under a conductor. ALWAYS, find the correct pedal by FEEL! (When you're 100% secure in pedalling you can maybe look for other reasons e.g. to do with playing from memory). • Establish specific small contact points on your feet. (Don't just push your foot down and hope something on your foot presses the correct pedal). This causes your brain to develop a great understanding of that part of your foot, and you become like a blind person able to "read" amazingly by feel! With these tips you may well go backwards for a bit, but I think within a few months you'll love it. (I did play in shoes for years, but despite starting young, I never felt so happy and secure as I do now, and the transition only took a few months. There IS a transition though! A new technique IS required).

[@hymnistic]

@@JSB2500 Thank you for your comments! Check out my last video which I did in socks (also notice the hierarchy of beats in the articulation...more about that below) TBH, I'll never do that again as it looks terrible and is distracting to watch, imo. I prefer a professional look. I practice in socks about 90% of time. I know where all the notes are by feel. However, I play in a highly articulated style (Bach with toes only!) and have found that I want to begin the stroke directly over the note without hesitating to "feel" it first. This gives confidence that you don't HAVE to go through a two-step process and I think it has made my pedal playing more accurate. Feeling my way was how I first learned tho, back in the day and of course, it's part of practice and general use. Heal-toe technique is more as you describe, where you feel the 'interval" which I use for hymns and romantic literature. I am comfortable with either although Bach is my favorite. I mastered the Minuet in G in 1971 and have never stopped for a long period. JSB is my best and longest friend! You won't see me playing by memory very often, as I've grappled with the time-management, pros and cons of memorizing everything for decades and refuse to be stigmatized by the fact that it's not my strength. Maybe you will inspire me to reevaluate! I am more visually oriented (as you see with the comment about the socks!). Memorizing this went easier than I thought it would and it's crazy that my memory seems to be improving with age. Here are some insights for your finger technique (could be applied to feet as well). I have a conservatory degree in piano performance, but out of all the teachers I ever had, it took only one lesson with a Russian pianist and pedagogue (I met her when I was accompanying a voice teacher and she was secretly taking voice lessons). This happened AFTER I already had a master's degree. It took me a number of years to "program" it in, then I spent over 15 years teaching it to others, honing the technique and making my explanations concise and so easy, even young, beginner children could understand it. I teach it better than it was taught to me and improved upon it. I call it the Pulse Technique. It is so defining that I can tell whether or not a pianist (or organist) utilizes it. Most do not. Here are the basics: There is no such thing as "playing relaxed". Playing a note, by definition, takes muscle contraction. The relaxed hand is closed with fingers curled and tips touching. The open hand, by definition, is tense, the more open (fingers straightening and stretching outward), the more tension there is. The trick is to follow every muscle contraction with relaxation between the notes! You cannot play faster than you can release the tension from an individual note! This must be programmed into muscle memory! Every note should be practiced staccato followed by a complete relaxed hand in between the notes. (hence "Pulse Technique"). Legato is merely a staccato note using the required "tension" to produce the desired dynamic (the louder, the more muscles or arm weight needed), and IMMEDIATELY releasing that tension down to the MINIMUM pressure required to hold the note down. Think of an EKG. Try pushing down the notes silently to see how much tension is "minimum". Practice "leggiero" a lot by playing as softly as comfortable, highly staccato notes, from the bridge of hand (third knuckle), with fingers touching the keys at the beginning and end of stroke, making sure that none of the rest of the hand moves along with that finger. Don't worry over the 4th and 5th fingers tending to stay together, that is natural. THEORETICALLY, "independence" means you are using less muscles to play the same thing. That would be only the individual finger. You cannot always tell I am doing this when I play because this is only my base technique. I flex my muscles needlessly "for the fun of it" maybe because it feels good (ex. I am a man and like manly work!) and holding back too much, or posturing stoically can also be fatiguing. I can use only the minimum muscle contraction required anytime I want to, with complete efficiency. Sitting too long is the only thing that tires me. There is a special problem with organ technique as there is less differentiation between playing and holding a note (and you can't play with dynamics on organ). In short there is not enough resistance at the beginning of the stroke and there is too much holding tension. The "correct" amount is a balanced compromise but it's never ideal. Tracker organs simulate the double-escapement mechanism of a piano much better, making it more like the desired EKG effect. I may not leave these long commentaries up forever. I want to make a video on my Pulse Technique. Happy playing!

[@JSB2500]

@@hymnistic We're on the same page on pretty much everything. I totally agree with you on the Pulse Technique - I learned it from Kaoru Bingham and Danny Driver, and actually have to learn it again every time I transition from my horrible digital piano to a Steinway - otherwise I pin the keys down and tense up my hands, leading to wrong notes. Sadly, I've not got it to work with my digital piano - the action is stodgy and fights me - nothing like a grand piano at all IMO. When I return from a Steinway to my digital, the opposite happens - I release notes before I intend because with the pulse technique there is not much "holding down force" (as you already know). I also agree with you re relaxed muscles don't play notes. Pulses of force are great for oxygen, nutrients etc reaching tendons, whereas sustained forces are very bad for that. So using this technique you can play more notes with less anatomical damage. I think a video on the Pulse Technique would be great. I made Episode 2 of Rach 2 series today. I'll publish it in a few minutes. There's no certainty that I'm usually the PT in it given that it's on my digital, and the tempo is slightly rushed at one point, but it's in my brain now, and it's where I've got to. I've tried adding the orchestra part using my violin and using the strings sound on my Yamaha digital, but I've not included that in the recording. All best.

[@ivardozon8064]

Great!

[@hymnistic]

Thanks!

[@asmakabbous7019]

les notes organ sont tres brillantes🎉envoutantes

[@hymnistic]

Merci beaucoup!

[@hugosalazar6000]

1:45 💯🌎

[@hymnistic]

Thanks!

[@TermiteUSA]

My favorite practice Bach is possibly also the cause of my insanity.

[@hymnistic]

Ah, welcome to Bachoholics Anonymous. Your first step is to submit to his higher power.

[@danielmeaton1303]

I’d love to play like this. What organ/setup do you use?

[@hymnistic]

Info is in the description. GrandOrgue. I had to rewire the entire organ for MIDI. That took me about three months...still more to do. I'll try to do a video on that process at some point.

[@GermanFriedel]

Schön gespielt aber falsch registriert. Hörst du nicht. dass Manual und Pedal nicht zusammenpassen?