18 BACH TO NOTRE-DAME The Pièce d’orgue, whose very title shows its French inspiration, features markings that raise a smile with French performers: ‘très vitement’, ‘gravement’, and ‘lentement’. It’s undoubtedly a homage to the style of composers like Couperin and Grigny, and it works perfectly on a French classical Grand Plein-Jeu. I also play one of the chorales from the Orgelbüchlein, In dir ist Freude BWV 615. As in all his chorales, Bach uses certain notes in the musical text to illustrate a word or translate an idea into musical terms. It’s curious here, for example, that the chorale melody is not heard complete even once. But the text of the hymn explains it to us when we read the phrase ‘You break our bonds’ (Du . . . rettest von Banden). There is something amazing in the symbolism of this music intended for the eighteenth-century believer, whether learned or illiterate; it doesn’t matter which, because everyone is able to understand the musical narrative in the same way that a cathedral offers us a visual catechism through the presence of the statues of the saints that decorate the pillars. Bach, for his part, offers us a catechism in sound . . .
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