BIOS Reporter – Volume 24, No.3 – July 2000

Those of us who studied assiduously the chorales of J.S. Bach for Advanced Level Music will be aware of Bach’s predilection for organising his chords so that each one is the dominant of the next, producing a drive towards the cadence. The simplicity of the procedure is its strength, with a consequent sure-footedness and finality in the cadence; when extended into the large scale works, what Donald Francis Tovey called ‘Bach’s punctuality’ becomes obvious – in other words, when Bach starts a movement, he know precisely when and where it is going to end, the movement’s progress being charted as surely as a planet orbiting its star…