Bach Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (Arr. for Orchestra, Stokowski)

For my 100th video, I WAS planning on Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead, but my movie maker on my computer refused to allow it because anything over fifteen minutes is "too long" despite the fact that YouTube allows me to upload videos of any length now. So I couldn't use Rachmaninov, but I really wanted an orchestral piece to offset my nearly-all-piano videos. I decided to use this beautiful transcription of Bach's organ masterpiece, set to various paintings by various artists.

Bach's great Passacaglia is a work that is assumed to have been written early in his career. "Passacaglia" (from the Spanish, Pasacalle; cross-the-street) is a type of dance where the melody is in the bass. In this passacaglia, the melody is repeated multiple times in the bass as variations are brilliantly intertwined above it. Robert Schumann described the variations of the passacaglia as "intertwined so ingeniously that one can never cease to be amazed." This variation form influenced many passacaglias in the 19-20th centuries.

The double fugue is made from the Passacaglia theme, and goes on to show off Bach's impressive skills in countrapunctual writing. The dramatic pause near the end is my favorite part of the piece.

Since people have been asking, here are the titles of each painting, and their artists, in order of appearance:
August Strindberg – Pack Ice at the Beach
Angela Alonza – Intimacy
Cass Gilbert – Antwerp Cathedral
Ettore Aldo de Vigo – L’annunciazione
Ettore Aldo de Vigo – Le tentazioni si S. Antonio
Evelyn de Morgan – Port after Stormy Seas
Francesco Foschi – Winter Landscape with a Peasant Family
Gabrial J.M.A. Ferrier – Moonlit Dreams
Gaetano Previati – Dance of the Hours
Francesco Foschi – Winter Landscape with Figures
Ivan Aivazovsky – Ship in the Stormy Sea
George Frederick Watts – Paulo and Francesco
Herbert James Draper – The Lament for Icarus
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot – Orpheus Leading Eurydice through the Underworld
Joao Figueredo – Madness
John Atkinson Grimshaw – The Lady of Shalott
John Atkinson Grimsaw – November
Joseph Farquharson – The Joyless Winter Day
LyKy Dragos – Space Dreams
M.C. Escher – Eye
Marc Fishman – Gabriel’s Lament
Michel de Saint Ouen – Darkness at the Edge of Sanity
Oleg Grabchuk – Night Narrator
Sanford Robinson Gifford – The View from Eagle Rock, New Jersey
Sean Hopp – Blind God
Thomas Doughty – Lucky Fisherman
Don’t know the painter or the title, sorry
Wilhelm August Lebrecht Amberg – Distant Thoughts
Witold Pruszkowski – Falling Star

Played by: Nikos Athenaos and the Frankfurt Brandenburg State Orchestra

Видео Bach Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (Arr. for Orchestra, Stokowski) канала maestoso-allegro