BaroqueFest 2025 celebrates “Bach’s Passion.”  Of course, this references the genre of the passion story, captured by the St. John Passion performance on Sunday afternoon.  But our concerts will celebrate many of Bach’s passions, including musical techniques and forms that inspired him, as well as other composers that influenced his artistic growth.  We begin today with Bach’s contemporaries. Included are composers born a generation earlier and thus fully mature when Sebastian was still a boy, as well as composers whose lives directly overlapped with his own. Even though Bach himself never traveled very far, even by standards of the 18th century, he did hold significant positions in numerous cities and courts.  Bach kept himself abreast of recent developments in European Baroque music without ever leaving central Germany. 

Born a generation before Bach, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) is one of the giants of Baroque music, and his works have graced Festival programs for many years.  Pachelbel spent his early years in Nuremberg.  By most accounts he was gifted both musically and intellectually.  He also benefited from having excellent teachers, in particular Kaspar Prentz. After filling several posts as an assistant organist, Pachelbel landed a prestigious job in Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Empire and cultural locus for southern Germany and northern Italy.  In Vienna he observed the latest sonatas and concertos coming north across the Alps, while continuing to respect the central German traditions upon which he had been reared. Pachelbel’s style lacks some of the density and sophistication we find in figures like Johann Jakob Froberger or Dietrich Buxtehude, for example, but his contributions to organ music and sacred vocal music are second to none.  He played a seminal role in developing the chorale prelude for organ, of which he composed over one hundred. 

Although Pachelbel’s catalog of published works exceeds 500 entries, most listeners can name only one.  The Canon in D Major is the most recorded and widely recognized piece of classical music on earth.  But familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes, and it is all too easy to overlook the real merits of Pachelbel’s Canon.  Two structural principles are at work: chaconne and, not surprisingly, canon.  Pachelbel sets the canon at the unison – in other words, all three violins start on the same pitch – and the entries are separated by two measures. Canon offers a kind of compositional puzzle since the trick is to write a single continuous line that will harmonize against itself at various points. Some canons break off in mid-course, but not this one.  Pachelbel maintains the imitation all the way to the final cadence. Our love of this piece can be chalked up to the way Pachelbel combines a recurring, hypnotic bassline with constantly evolving variations above.

And let us not forget the companion Gigue, a piece too often ignored when the Canon is heard as processional or background music.  This movement, though quite short in comparison, also features contrapuntal imitation between the three violin parts.  Here the imitation follows the basic outlines of a fugue (which is like canon, but now the entries each start either a fifth above or a fourth below the previous voice).  The binary-form movement modulates to A major at the midpoint, after which the fugal entries are reversed in order to restore D as the home key.  In terms of simplicity and grace, the Gigue yields nothing to its famous partner, and its lilting theme is equally infectious.

The name of Pachelbel’s contemporary Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714) will probably be new to everyone attending today’s concert.  His case typifies the vicissitudes of fortune, and Bach himself might rightly have said, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”  Erlebach was the son of a musician, born and raised near the North Sea coast.  So good was his early training that Erlebach was hired at age 20 by the prestigious Thuringian court, later the home region of Bach himself.  He eventually attained the highest job (Kapellmeister), which necessitated weekly cantatas, special music for ceremonial occasions, and direct oversight of the cathedral’s choristers.  Erlebach produced well over 1,000 works during his lifetime in all major genres, including operas, cantatas, passions, masses, as well as dozens of instrumental and keyboard works.  Anyone familiar with Bach’s biography will note several striking parallels.  The two possibly met when Erlebach visited Mühlhausen in 1705 (Bach worked there as organist in 1707), and one of Erlebach’s organ students later studied with Bach.  In the cases of both figures, many unpublished works were lost due to accident and changing tastes.  Sadly, the situation is far more extreme regarding Erlebach’s legacy, for less than ten percent of his music survived a fire that destroyed the building in which it resided.  

One of those surviving works is the sacred motet Wer sich dem Himmel übergeben (Whoever surrenders himself to Heaven) scored for solo alto, violins, and continuo.  Erlebach uses a strophic structure to handle the four stanzas of text.  His music flows easily across multiple phrases, each one based on traditional harmonic sequences and all governed by a lilting triple meter.  Instrumental sections are interspersed among the vocal phrases, and nothing – neither dense counterpoint nor dazzling virtuosity – overshadows the pure expression of devotion: 

Whoever thinks calmly, keeps quiet, and shows a heart full of hope, will still be victorious . . . 

I have given myself over to Him; He watches, and so in the dark night my heart can also take courage.

Like Erlebach, Louis Marchand (1669-1732) will hardly be a familiar name.  His career, from early training in a household of musicians to prominence as a harpsichord virtuoso and highly-sought-after organist, mirrors the trajectory of a more famous contemporary, François Couperin.  Where Marchand gets the upper hand is in striking anecdotes told about his tempestuous personality – not all of them verifiable.  For example, Marchand was apparently an abusive husband, and his wife successfully sued for divorce.  Thus the French King ordered that half of Marchand’s annual salary should be paid out to his ex-wife.  To express his chagrin, Marchand reportedly stopped performing midway through an organ mass service, informing the King that “If my wife gets half my salary, then let her play half the service” – a brilliant retort, perhaps too brilliant to be entirely true.

Marchand had a direct connection to Bach.  The two were supposed to hold a public harpsichord duel in Dresden in 1717.  Numerous later writers claim the Frenchman bailed out rather than be upstaged by the German.  The tale is probably only partly accurate.  It is more pertinent to note that Marchand was in Dresden at the time as the leading candidate for court music director.  The “contest” was organized by local musicians who bristled at Marchand’s arrogant personality and who wanted to undermine his chances to become their boss.  Bach, as you may know, was no angel himself, but apparently Marchand was even worse!

Marchand’s Suite in D Minor for harpsichord (1702) demonstrates a brilliant command of the instrument.  Even hearing just the opening Prelude and concluding Chaconne – two of the suite’s seven movements – Marchand earns his glowing reputation.  In the best French manner, nearly every important or sustained note shimmers with added ornamentation.  The opening movement suggests the hypnotic allure of older, “unmeasured” preludes, but later passages regale our ears with brilliant scale runs.  The powerful Chaconne actually combines elements of the high-toned Sarabande dance (note the emphasis on the second beat) with structural elements of a Rondeau; the main theme/section recurs at the conclusion of each succeeding variation (called a couplet).  Marchand’s four couplets retain harmonic ties to the Chaconne theme while also exploring a wide range of textures and simple counterpoint.  

During Bach’s own lifetime, he was certainly not the most well-known composer in Germany, let alone all of Europe.  The laurel at the time rested on the brow of Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767).  Wherever you went, this immensely prolific composer’s name was on people’s lips.  He moved often, composing piles of instrumental works and cantatas, and was sought out by nearly every major city, church, and court.  Somewhere along the way, in the annals of historiography, attention centered more on Bach.  But from an 18th-century perspective, the judgment was clear: one music encyclopedia from the day accorded Telemann four times as much space as Bach.  Even more tellingly, Bach was third in line for the post at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche and got the job only after the top choice (guess who?) declined.  

As a university student in Leipzig years earlier, Telemann had already made an impact on the city’s musical scene.  In 1702 he founded the Collegium Musicum, a mostly amateur music society that met regularly to give concerts.  Typical fare included such gems as Telemann’s Concerto for Four Violins in C Major.  Excluding the conventional basso continuo, Telemann allows the instruments to suggest a kind of virtuosic string quartet.  Leading and supporting functions pass freely among the players.  There is a beautiful richness when strings alone play close harmony.  In formal terms, this concerto derives from the rigid four-movement framework developed in the older sonata da chiesa, alternating between slow and fast sections.  The Grave movement opens and closes in serene C major, but in between Telemann’s chromaticism and polyphony make for a powerful experience.  A flurry of rapid 16th notes govern the playful Allegro, whereas the Largo e staccato movement offers a study in detached versus legato articulation.  The closing Allegro is as fine as any by Vivaldi or Corelli; only a touch more counterpoint makes it clear that this superlative movement comes from north of the Alps. 

All of this talk about Bach, it is high time we heard from the man himself.  Today’s program includes two movements from Bach’s Partita in A Minor for unaccompanied flute.  Hearing this work, listeners may call to mind similar works he composed at the time: six unaccompanied sonatas and partitas for violin, as well as six suites for solo cello.  Indeed, the original title for Bach’s Flute Partita was simply Solo pour une flûte trans-versière (solo for transverse flute).  Like these other chamber works, it is probably was written at the very end of his time in Köthen and passed down to the modern world in a copy made in 1723.

The Partita unfolds across four movements, from an etude-like Allemande to an “English” Bourrée at the end.  In between Bach adds a brilliant, virtuosic Courante and a tender Sarabande.  As in his works for solo violin and cello, he welcomes the challenge of creating something greater than seems possible with a single melodic instrument – which, it must be noted, can only produce one pitch at a time.  Despite this limitation, the solo flute creates an impression of multiple lines and a rich harmonic structure by a device called compound melody. Particularly in the Allemande and Courante, Bach creates the aural impression of two independent lines.  The lower voice outlines the harmonic structure, thus freeing the upper line to embrace its virtuosic nature.

Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758) was an exact contemporary of Bach’s and important as a transitional figure between the High Baroque style and the emerging Classical idiom.  Born near Weimar, Fasch moved into the home of a relative when his father died in 1700.  It was there that he seems to have received his first musical training.  He soon enrolled at St. Thomas’s School in pre-Bach Leipzig, though he was largely self-taught as an instrumentalist.  Fasch eventually produced his own suites and enjoyed a growing reputation as a superlative violinist. He accepted a position in Prague before returning to his final residence in Saxony.  Like Telemann, Fasch was invited to apply for the top job at St. Thomas’s in 1722 but withdrew his name from consideration, so the school had to “settle” for Bach.  The vast majority of Fasch’s music has not survived; a large portion, including dozens of secular cantatas, was still extant in 1900 but destroyed during World War II.  Evidence suggests that he sought paths forward from the dense polyphony of Bach’s generation toward the leaner, melodically driven style of the early Classical era.

In 1708, while studying law at Leipzig University, Fasch formed the “second ordinary Collegium musicum” as a complement to Telemann’s group.  The fortunes of instrumental music in Leipzig were clearly on the rise, and music like Fasch’s Concerto in D Major would become increasingly coveted for a variety of settings.  The Concerto is scored for clarino (a type of valveless natural trumpet particularly suited for playing in the highest registers), two oboes, strings, and basso continuo.  Formally, it is governed by two large Allegro movements separated by a short Largo.  Fasch prefers a crystalline tonal structure in which the ensemble provides harmonic padding for the brilliant timbre of solo trumpet.  His finale is a curious mixture of virtuosity and regal charm – the latter carried by the periodic returns of the main theme played by the ensemble, the former projected in clarion tones from the soloist.

Today we rightly celebrate J. S. Bach.  His achievements are incredible; his influence and significance are beyond doubt.  Still, we should find it encouraging that so many fabulous musicians from the past still await their chances to garner wider acclaim.  Bach was a genius, agreed, but he was not created in a vacuum.  

Jason Stell, © 2025