Year 8, Day 194

Hey guys. Today's song is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor performed by Rousseau.

Alright I mentioned Bach yesterday and once you speak his name you are obligated to show his work. So this piece is from German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and is also an incredibly well known composition today. It is also another piece in which people don't know when it was written, with theories falling anywhere between 1704 and 1750. So this piece was written to be played on an organ, and the name Toccata and Fugue is from the fact that that literally is what the piece is. It starts with a toccata, which is fast moving passages for piano and string instruments meant to show the player's dexterity, and then transitions into a fugue, a musical form with multiple voices hinges on counterpoints. I'll try to explain. Fugues start with a subject, the beginning melody, then go into the answer, which is the melody again but from a different voice and key, and after fugues can potentially then go into a countersubject. Then they have episodes, which modulate between different keys. There are usually reintroductions of the subject throughout a piece that can be done in different keys, or layered on top of each other in a canon through a stretto section before culminating in the ending, or the coda. To non-music people that sounds very confusing and I don't even know if I technically got it right, but you can kind of hear the steps in this piece. And Bach was known for having some of the best fugues in composition, so you know this is a pretty good example. I found a video from Rousseau on YouTube who does piano covers, and I like this because you can see the note scroll coming as they play. Helps to get a feel for how the piece really works. Enjoy.

Peace.