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Part 3

To hear a midi file, just click on any organ graphic. To stop the music before it has finished, refresh the page. NB Firefox may refuse to play some tracks or cut them short. Try a different browser!

Here are the three movements of Bach's Organ Trio Sonata number 3, together with a Two-part Invention. Click on the organ graphics to hear the midi files. Of the three midi files as first downloaded (from Bryen Travis' page of Bach midi files - see below for link), the first was sequenced for church organ. The second and third movements were sequenced for grand piano. Therefore the first movement to me sounded like the end of an Anglican church service, where the organist plays something pleasant, whilst the congregation slowly emerge from the nave into the sunshine outside, lingering to greet the rector and to say hello to one another before dispersing to their Sunday roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Meanwhile, the organist, in unconscious revenge for the fact that few are listening, stumbles several times with the keys: it's a piece he had inadequately rehearsed the day before.

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The second and third movements, when presented on grand piano, recall for me  a certain person playing reflectively in his dimly lit book-lined study for his own relaxation in the evening. I am almost expecting him to hesitate for long intervals, to stumble, to resume, to abandon the piece halfway through.
All this is really unfair to Bach, but more unfair to myself, a layman when it comes to music. My ear has not been tuned to appreciate the music for itself, free of these rather personal associations. What I hear is merely "pleasant".

But thanks to some "tweaking", I can transform the context and give the entire Trio Sonata a new twist. For me it evokes the ensembles that I would listen to in 1961: The Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane.The tweaking often consists of little  more than altering the instruments. All that has been done is to assign the parts to soprano sax, vibraphone and bass.This is not really modern jazz; it's not a real sax, vibes or double bass. But surely it is Bach.

 

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This is a two-part "invention" by J S Bach.

Special thanks to Lubbert Schenk of Softart Design, for use of the images which are details from his brilliant digital renderings of organs: Digitale tekeningen van bestaande pijporgels, en eigen ontwerp. To see these paintings in all their glory, click this logo:

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Grateful thanks also to Bryen Travis and his site: "A Johann Sebastian Bach Midi Page", from which all the pieces on this page have been downloaded and then "tweaked".
For more midi files, orchestrated in various ways, click the Bach portrait alongside.

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More like this:

Cacophonia  Part 1

Cacophonia Part 2

Cacophonia Part 4

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