Bach Toccata in C minor BWV 911

This keyboard toccata is one of Bach’s earliest works, and is an example of the stylus phantasticus, a fanciful and imaginative style of composition that was popular in Bach’s time. The piece is a mix of free improvisatory sections and more organized contrapuntal sections. It was completed when Bach was almost 30 years old (about 1714), but it remained unpublished for 125 years (1853).

The opening fantasy blends into the adagio, and then into the fugue (which I will record later). Based loosely on an ascending natural minor scale, the music thickens and modulates through several keys. As this section progresses, the imitative quality gives way to a more dramatic and improvisatory section.

Most people play the Adagio faster (I would argue that they play it faster than “Adagio.”). I think this is inappropriate, because they just blow right by all of the rich and dramatic harmonies and key changes it unfolds, and does not go justice to the material. On the other hand, Glenn Gould’s recording, while slow (almost Lento), to my sense of things is so slow you lose a sense of where you are in the harmonic progressions, which dilutes the beauty of this section. So I stuck with Adagio, a pace too slow to walk to, but not quite a death march either. This also affords the pianist an opportunity to decorate the section as was appropriate for the time period and style, using simple mordents. I also use a technique to call your attention to certain harmonic resolutions by playing the base note a few milliseconds early to “stretch” the harmony a bit.