Seven Toccatas for Harpsichord

Johann Sebastian Bach: Harpsichord Toccatas
Pieter Dirksen

Bach's sequel of seven Toccatas for Harpsichord BWV 910-916 has always presented something of an enigma in his oeuvre: on the one hand old-fashioned in its use of multisectional forms, on the other full of dramatic contrasts and unabashed virtuosity. However, renowned harpsichordist Pieter Dirksen has found a new approach to these pieces. He discovered that one of them, the Toccata in f# minor BWV 910, actually forms a tombeau on the death of Bach's mentor Dietrich Buxtehude. What is more, they seem to depict the nature of the seven planets of the by then already old-fashioned, Ptolemaic planetary order: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Bach not only paid a final tribute in these works to an archaic genre (the toccata), an older music tradition as well as to its supreme master, Buxtehude, but at the same time to a world view that was quickly losing ground as the "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century started spreading its wings. These youthful, exuberant masterpieces can thus be heard from a completely new perspective.