Bach is Back

Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Prelude in E flat Major” starts with a bang.

Sitting in a dark auditorium, the wall of sound coming from the 3,945 pipes of the Jacobs School of Music’s new Maidee H. and Jackson A. Seward Organ in Auer Hall can hit the audience like an oncoming train. Ranging from light voices to massive pedal tones, it is able to convey emotions, textures and sounds on its four keyboards.

The “Prelude in E flat Major” is the opening piece in Bach’s Clavier-Ubung III, a collection of keyboard exercises for organists. The collection of about 30 pieces mirrors how a German church service would have been structured in Bach’s time. A new edition of the Clavier-Ubung III was released this weekend at the Jacobs School of Music Bach to School organ conference.

“This was one of the only volumes that Bach was actually involved with in terms of seeing it published,” doctoral student Patrick Pope said. “Most of Bach’s organ music and a lot of his other music come to modern day through transmissions and copies from either his sons or his students or someone who is in succession to Bach.”

Along with celebrating the release of the Clavier-Ubung III and the Seward organ, the conference also served as a reunion for the alumni group, Indiana Organists United. The conference included performances and workshops from David Schrader (MM ’76, DM ’87) and George Ritchie (DM ’74), co-recipients of the Oswald Gleason Ragatz Distinguished Alumni Award. A posthumous award was also given to Michael Farris (MM ’85).

On Thursday evening, Schrader gave a two-hour recital by memory, pausing only for a brief intermission and a small error during Max Reger's "Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor."

Law student Anthony Marek, who majored in piano performance at New York
University, said the range of the organ’s sound impressed him.

“Compared to the piano, you can do a lot more with it. You can have six, seven, eight voices at one time,” he said.

Junior Alex Nelson and masters student Alana Murphy attended the performance Saturday. They said they are both studying piano performance and the Bach to School concert was a good way for them to hear other works by Bach.

“To hear that whole cycle and to hear it together was extraordinary,” Nelson said. “You can’t idly listen to this kind of music. It’s an exercise in concentration.”