Looking for Krebs Toccata and Fugue in E Major
  • So far I haven't been able to find it online. If anyone can help, that'd be greatly appreciated. Looking ideally for a free PDF.
  • Schott, for one, has his complete works, as does, I believe, Peters.
  • TCJ
    Posts: 986
    I have a couple books of his music published by, I believe, Breitkopf. I think it's about $40 - 50 per book.
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,482
    Did you try ismlp?
  • It may be common knowledge to many here, but it is interesting to note that, as Bach means 'brook' or 'Stream' and Krebs means 'Crab', it was said in their day that this 'Crab' was the finest in the 'Brook'. He was indeed said to have been Bach's most prized pupil. It is self-evident, though, that all that followed Bach was down hill. Technical skill without magisterial artistry and vision is, relatively, empty.
    Still, Krebs's free form pieces are fun to play, and some of his chorale-based music is quite moving - certainly revealing the tutelage from which they came.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • LarsLars
    Posts: 127
    this one?

    edit:
    2 year old thread, oops
    Krebs complete Orgelwerke:

    imslp.org/wiki/S%C3%A4mtliche_Orgelwerke_(Krebs%2C_Johann_Ludwig)
    Screen Shot 2021-03-02 at 07.47.14.png
    1401 x 1018 - 452K
  • I think that Francis's example just above here illustrates my point quite convincingly. Empty bravado. Bach did similar things, the F-Major Toccata being a good example- but Bach's music is music. Krebs's, as exampled by Francis, isn't. It's sort of in the mold of so much (but hardly all!) of the romantic Liszt's work. Impressive, even astonishing technical skill, but musically hollow.
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,878
    MJO, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. This collection is most excellent and certainly a cut above many other baroque organ compositions. You can't fault anyone for not being "god". Yes, this opening is for show, but don't think for a second that Bach wasn't wearing a wry smile with his F major either.
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,973
    Liszt is underrated, I believe. Yes, he had great technical skill but the works later in his life were leading to taking music in new directions. Had he lived longer it might have been interesting to see where his ideas led.

    Bach is good for musty old Lutherans sitting snobbishly in their knee pants and buckle shoes congratulating themselves on how wonderful and superior they think themselves to be. God is in his heaven and all is right with the world - NOT. So put metal files out in the rain and let them rust which makes rubbing them across German principals sound more authentic.

  • Schonbergian -

    Perhaps I was a little harsh on Krebs, but only a little. He's certainly the finest of the post-Bach era.
    Bach may indeed have had a wry smile (or intellectual delight) as he wrote down the F-Major - and, for that matter, everything else. Yes, it certainly is 'showy', entertaining to boot, but it is music - there is far more here for mental appreciation than the empty, endless, bravado of Francis's example. Note - I have never said that all of Krebs's music was hollow - it isn't. But the strictly virtuosic pedal parts and all tend to be, unlike the genuine intellectual interest in nearly everything that Bach ever produced. While, as we know, Bach in his youth gave us a quantity of stuff that isn't all that good, he still never crossed the line that distinguishes form, art, and taste from the mere showing off of one impressive little trick after another. Except for a few immature works, one never asks when hearing Bach's works 'why am I listening to this?'.

    As for that wry smile, it must have been there while he wrote everything that he wrote. Like few other composers, he lived to compose music like none other, and, for the greater part, succeeded. His last words to his wife, while on his death bed, were 'weep not for me. I go to where music is made'. And, I think that he had a smile on his face, wry or otherwise, when he said it.

    And, Charles, I do agree that there was more to Liszt (who despised Brahms, whom I love) than pure bravado, though he gave us a lot of it. Some of his more intimate music, I'm thinking of the Annees de pelrinage suisse for instance, is pure and unsurpassed poetry of the highest order.

    Our good Charles, in addition to his tendency to put people in boxes, does like to pillory certain of us whom he would label 'purusts' (or some other handy epithet) by putting us in couloches (knee breaches), plus the de rigueur silver-buckled shoes and powdered wigs. Actually, this doesn't offend me at all because, if I had my way, such would be ordinary dress today. It would certainly be more fun and civilised, attractive and imaginative than a modern business suit - not to mention a mere T-shirt, hideous athletic shoes, and deliberately roughed up trousers with their knees professionally ripped out, oh, and green hair thrown in for the 'see how daring I am' effect - or anything in between. (Now, I can't wait for Charles's rebuttal!!! I know it will be good!)
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,878
    As for that wry smile, it must have been there while he wrote everything that he wrote. Like few other composers, he lived to compose music like none other, and, for the greater part, succeeded.


    Indeed.
  • Schönbergian
    Posts: 1,063
    Schonbergian -

    Perhaps I was a little harsh on Krebs, but only a little.

    Jackson, I suggest you may have the wrong user in mind. Personally, I far prefer eating crab to playing it.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,973
    Jackson, I can just see you in a ripped tee shirt as we speak that reads "Trackers Rule," with low-rider pants showing your unhidden assets to the world.

    All kidding aside, I would agree with you on clothing standards these days. I can just hear my mother saying from the great beyond if I wore some of the current fashions, "you are NOT leaving this house looking like that!"

    I like Brahms, too.
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,482
    I for one, and incredibly grateful for the vast corpus of baroque organ literature. I play everything, including romantic and the most bizarre stuff written yesterday, but the baroque remains my favorite period. It is where the organ first matured, and the classical concept of the organ- hauptwerk/oberwerk...recit/grandorgue was established as a working principle. Even great romantic organs keep to this basic principal. When organbuilding moves away from this ideal, it becomes ineffective musically.
  • Ditto, Greg.