June 3: Orgelbüchlein & Other Organ Works (Jörg Halubek, organ)
Channeling the analog.
A hollow wooden tube filled with human breath. A vibrating string spun from cow intestine, scraped by horsehairs over a resonant wood box. Wind pushed through valves, careened off stone walls, and absorbed by church pews and people in prayer. These sounds of Bach are fundamentally analog.
Push forward a few centuries. We meet the protagonist of Steely Dan’s “Don’t Take Me Alive,” in media res, as he threatens to blow up a building while half-heartedly negotiating a hostage surrender. For leverage with the cops, he feigns madness and sings:
I hear my inside
The mechanized hum of another world
Much about this song would be alien to Bach — prosaic matters like the state of Oregon, megaphones, dynamite, and Jews singing in public — but also the modernist concept of technological alienation. Or as another Steely Dan lyric goes, “Any world that I’m welcome to is better than the one I come from.” Even one more mechanical than LA in the ‘70’s.
Bach knew no radio static, refrigerator buzz, amp feedback, or overdrive. No clicking radiators. No hospital beeps and drips.
The organ may be the most complicated analog instrument Bach knew — it’s certainly the largest. There can be no mistaking the sounds of its pipes for an mechanized substitute. (You’ve likely ran your fingers over a synthesizer with buttons above the keys to change the ersatz ‘instruments’, it’s been decades of tinny nonsense.)
One of the pleasures of listening deeply to Bach this year has been reconnecting with the primacy of the analog. Today we’ll listen to various works recorded by Jörg Halubek in 2021 as part of his Organ Landscape series. This album, 53°14'52.7"N 10°24'47.8"E, features organs in the German cities of Lüneberg and Altenbruch. It includes BWV 599-644 (the “Orgelbüchlein” studies for student organists), 766, 767, 768, and 770. (YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify.)
Jörg recorded these works on some beautiful organs.
To the music! My highlights:
A break your heart chord, from BWV 604 (0:10):
A very surprising ending to BWV 622. What? I was not prepared for the chord at 0:15, or how Bach resolves the rotten tomato he’s thrown on himself:
BWV 607 giving strong aquarium vibes:
In another world, a slow tempo BWV 643 replaces Canon in D at weddings:
Here Bach writes the soundtrack to the mating of whales (BWV 611):
It’s drizzling (BWV 614):
Cool organ timbre of the bass line of in the fifth movement of BWV 768 — it sounds like a cello:
In the eighth partita of BWV 767, fun squish chords as the melodies descend:
In closing, from BWV 619, so very gentle:
Delightful post, especially the aquarium reference. And heavily chromatic Bach is often just the best Bach.
Paul Elie makes the point that the organ wasn’t just the most complicated instrument, it was the most complex machine of the era - the supercomputer of the baroque. With Bach as its great master (as player, composer, and technical evaluator) he was something of a tech giant in his day.