Produced by David Newman, Chuck Greif, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected without note. In the index, a caret character followed by a number (e.g., ^2) represents a superscript in the original, which denotes a footnote on the cited page. Helmholtz musical pitch notation is represented by single quotation marks (e.g., c''), and other musical symbols are represented by their names in brackets (e.g., [sharp].] JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH _THE ORGANIST_ _AND HIS WORKS FOR THE ORGAN_ BY A. PIRRO WITH A PREFACE BY CH.-M. WIDOR TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY WALLACE GOODRICH NEW YORK G. SCHIRMER 1902 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY G. SCHIRMER 16219 [Illustration] Table of Contents PAGE PREFACE v INTRODUCTION xxi THE PRECURSORS OF BACH.--FRESCOBALDI--FROBERGER--PACHELBEL-- BUXTEHUDE 1 THE PRELUDES AND FUGUES OF J.S. BACH.--TOCCATAS--FANTASIES-- PASSACAGLIA--SONATAS 25 THE CHORALE.--PRELUDES--TRIOS--FANTASIES--FUGUES 58 THE REGISTRATION AND THE ORNAMENTS OF THE ORGAN WORKS OF J.S. BACH 69 APPENDIX. A SUCCINCT BIOGRAPHY OF J.S. BACH 93 THE CATALOGUE OF HIS COMPLETE WORKS 101 INDEX OF REFERENCES TO WORKS OF J.S. BACH 114 Preface "If Beethoven appears to our generation as a Greek statue, Bach, on the contrary, impresses us as one of those Sphinxes of Egypt whose towering head commands the wide expanse of the desert." The comparison is imaginative, but seems to me only partially just. Sphinx in vastness of proportions, I admit; but the image is destroyed when character is taken into consideration. Bach is indisputably the mightiest of musicians; one is seized with awe in perusing the extraordinary catalogue of his works, so seemingly impossible are its dimensions; in casually looking over those forty and more folio volumes; in pausing for an instant to examine more closely any one of the pages, where the smallest detail seems to have been long considered and predetermined, while over all soars the essential thought, always profound and original. But was there ever a thinker less enigmatical? Surely this majestic figure dominates his surroundings; but that frank look, those luminous, kindly eyes, are hardly those of a Sphinx. It is rather the heroic statue of Common Sense.