Sonic Groove Live, Week 2, Johann Ludwig Krebs, Prelude f minor, KWV 407 (original....)

In my entry for the first week of the Sonic Groove Live contest I wrote that the distinction the distinction "original" and "cover" does not fit classical music very well. Most of the music was written a long time ago and there does not exist a recording of an 'original'. It is the performance itself that is the original form of art.

In her judges selection @Krystle wrote: "However in the spirit of debate: one could also argue that whilst there is no original to have been influenced by, there have probably been other renditions by other artists that could influence your interpretation.". And that is of course very true. The way I play is influenced first of all by how I was taught to play, and to a lesser extent to how I hear others play. What I like in their playing I emulate. And in small ways my playing influences others. Each instrument has it's playing traditions, and organ is no exception. In a sense, my individual playing is not original at all.

How about the classical composers? They were of course constantly influencing each other as well. A nice example is Johann Ludwig Krebs, the composer of my entry for this week. Krebs (1713 - 1780) was a pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach. In his organ compositions Krebs often takes one of the organ works of Bach as a model to base his own composition on. The prelude I play today is one of those compositions. It is modelled on Bach's b minor prelude, BWVB 544. That prelude has as the first important musical motif the next few bars:

Krebs begins his prelude in similar way, though where Bach goes up, Krebs goes down:

Bach's second musical motif goes like this:

And again Krebs follows this closely, both in the closing of the first musical episode (the first bar in this example) as in the next musical motif:

So, not original at all? It is undeniable Krebs was heavily influenced by Bach. He modelled his compositions in both structure and style closely on Bach's example. Yet he is more then only a copy cat. In the prelude I play here today, he writes chords for the lowest keyboard octave in a way that was unprecedented. I also quite like the eposides where the hands have lots of 32-the notes to play, and the pedal part moves stately in 8th-notes underneath it. The effect is a bit like pizzicati played contrabass notes.

This f minor prelude is a fantastic, powerful composition. Even if you deem Krebs a mere copy cat, he did leave the organ world some phenomenal works to play. This prelude is one of my favorite compositions and I enjoy playing it very much.

It is also rather difficult and took me a lot of practice to master. And even then, with so many notes each performance is bound to have playing mistakes. A work like this takes a lot of concentration and control to play and it is very fatiguing. The lowest of the three staves is played with the feet. If you follow the score, you can see both hands and feet have quite a lot of work to do. In the video you can see my relieve at the end for having pulled it of.

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