The Great Leipzig Chorales  

or Eighteen poems for a desert island

& Canonical Variations

In the last period of his life, J.S. Bach, partly freed from the obligations to produce inherent in his position as 'Director Musices', followed a narrow path, one that led him to create works of quintessence, in which, from material limited to the extreme, he created rare works that are charged with symbolism and that embraced the ideal of the Renaissance, of the Musica reservata - that language that can only really be understood by the initiated. These include the Clavierübung III, and above all the Art of the Fugue BWV 1080, the Musical Offering BWV 1079 and the Canonical Variations on the Chorale Vom Himmel Hoch BWV 769. 

It is admirable to see, in the extreme degree of elaboration that conferred on this last work the rank of ‘magnum opus' and opened the doors of a community of scholars, the Mitzler Society of Musical Sciences, to the composer shortly before his death, the height of inspiration and seduction to which the work attains, even though it is composed exclusively of various canons which are constantly combined with the chorale statement. 

At the same time, Bach continued to create sensitive, highly varied and expressive works: just as he conceived his Mass in B minor BWV 232 on the basis of cantatas previously created, and reworked it right up to his last years, the act of constant improvement ran parallel to the composition of great recapitulatory cycles such as the Clavierübungen I and II, and the Well-Tempered Clavier II. 

The Leipzig Chorales are contained in a manuscript that also includes the Six Trio Sonatas BWV 525-530, the Canonical Variations BWV 769a and the chorale Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein / Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit BWV 668 (which was later added to the first 17 chorales). They fall between these two approaches: created in the Weimar years alongside the Orgelbüchlein BWV 599-644 (an open collection of chorales in concise versions), Bach reworked this vast collection in the form of ‘various Preludes and Chorale Fantasies’, i.e. the most beautiful accomplishments , rather a collection than a cycle in that there is no obvious logical order, in contrast to Clavier-Übung III. 

The new versions are sometimes more imposing (the first Komm Heiliger Geist), always more elaborate. Opening and closing with two organo pleno blocks invoking the Holy Spirit, they include a succession of: ornamental chorales (including the very famous Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, but also two of the Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr with their richly ornamented melody; figurative chorales in the manner of Pachelbel; partitas on O Lamm Gottes unschuldig; and, finally, concertante trios in the manner of the Six Trio Sonatas; all these solutions nourished and exalted by the genius of a composer who is at the peak of his art.

The chorales make use of the rich sound resources of the central German organ, such as the one built by the Thomas workshop in the church of Saint Loup in Namur, Belgium. The possibility of recreating plenos of different characters, thick, harsh or brilliant, alongside a wide variety of reeds, principals, flutes, gambas and quintatons, invite us to celebrate a rich palette of sounds rarely heard, which surprised listeners when they heard the composer's astonishing inventiveness in the art of registration*.

For me as a performer, it is a challenge as well as an immense pleasure to follow and extend the creative process of a masterpiece which, like the Partitas for harpsichord (see my recording for the Ligia label), constitutes, in its spirit of diversity and synthesis, an absolute summit between the eminently sensitive art of the cantatas and the intellectual and rarefied final Bach works. 

Martin Gester, 2025

* In gathering information for his Bach biography, Forkel asked C.P.E. Bach about his mode of organ playing. On the subject of registering, Emmanuel replied :

"No one understood registration at the organ as well as he. Organists were often terrified when he sat down to play on their organs and drew the stops in his own manner, for they thought that the effect could not be good as he was planning it. But the they gradually heard an effect that astounded them. These sciences perished with him". 

Quoted in :  Stauffer, George : Bach's Organ Registration Reconsidered in J.S. Bach as Organist, Indiana University Press 1986, p. 193 sq. 

cf also  Stauffer, George B., J. S. Bach: The Organ Works (New York, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195108026.001.0001.