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Geoffrey Winch

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor  

(J S Bach, c. 1708)

 organs must be heard:
 stilled air within  
 their ranks of pipes   
 just waiting
 to be stirred  

Notes tumble precipitously down into the deeps where they waver around priming manuals,  pipes, and stops. Virtuosic fingers and feet then drive them back up, and down again as if testing the capacity of their scales before settling into resounding block-chords of proclamation to signal the conversation-proper to begin. It sings with arpeggios and runs, seemingly too many, for soon they start to spill one over another and gradually creep towards argumentation—no voice giving way until they realise there is the need to calm down and proceed more genteelly for a prolonged discussion concerning the intricacies of their urgings, but knowing they really ought to stop short of exhausting their audience’s ears. Relief comes as the composer, in his wisdom, has granted the organist the gift of latitude, and so the exchange continues light-heartedly with improvised and enchanting melodic lines—all mesmerising and entertaining before the collected voices begin to call and answer vigorously once more, sometimes overlapping, sometimes weaving fugue with toccata until it’s time for the lead-up to their highpoint when reverberating chords again quake the venue in which the piece is being performed, shifting drifting spirits into wakefulness in readiness for a build-up of harmonies to twist and trill their way into a coda, and then to announce their conclusion, emboldened.

 music    
 disclosing insights  
 lyrically       
 speaks      
 in its many tongues   

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About the Author

Geoffrey Winch, a retired highway engineer, writes free form poetry; haiku; haibun; tanka; tanka prose and cherita. He is the author of five poetry collections and lives on the south coast of England.