Leopold Stokowski wonderfully transformed music he loved into vibrantly colored orchestrations of his own. The compositions that inspired him varied widely, ranging from pieces by Baroque masters to Romantic opera arias, from medieval plainchant to the piano music of Chopin and Debussy. Partly through the influence of Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940)—which begins with a striking image of Stokowski conducting Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor (and later with him shaking hands with Mickey Mouse)—these transcriptions became emblems of the conductor’s long relationship with Philadelphia and its orchestra.

Stokowski was particularly drawn to the music of J.S. Bach and over the years arranged some three dozen organ, instrumental, and vocal pieces. The largest number were those for organ, which was Stokowski’s own instrument; when he emigrated from England to America he served as organist at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. This attraction seems natural as well because the organ is itself an orchestra in the sounds and instrumental colors it can produce.

In his study Stokowski and the Organ, Rollin Smith notes that Stokowski’s orchestrations, unlike those of others who arranged Bach’s works in the first decades of the 20th century, do “not stray far from the organ or its effects. The conductor’s orchestration emulates the organist’s registration.” The organs of Bach’s time, especially early in his career, were manually pumped pipe instruments that produced nowhere near the volume of sound we now associate with great cathedral organs, let alone with a modern symphony orchestra. Yet some of Bach’s organ pieces anticipate such a sonic future. As Stokowski himself declared: “Bach foresaw … this immense volume that a modern organ or orchestra can produce. That showed foresight of a tremendous nature.”

Toccata means a “touch piece” and in the Baroque era usually signaled a fast and free work with a good amount of virtuoso scales and arpeggiation. Bach’s piece opens with a dramatic flourish, an ornament that then leads through various sections of free writing before a four-voice fugue. The piece concludes with a toccata-like coda. In the preface to the score Stokowski wrote:

Of all the music of Bach this Toccata and Fugue is among the freest in form and expression. Bach was in the habit of improvising on the organ and harpsichord, and this Toccata probably began as an organ improvisation in the church of St. Thomas in Leipzig. In this lengthy, narrow, high church the thundering harmonies must have echoed long and tempestuously, for this music has a power and majesty that is cosmic. One of its main characteristics is immense freedom of rhythm, and plasticity of melodic outline. In the sequence of harmonies it is bold and path-breaking. Its tonal architecture is irregular and asymmetric. Of all the creations of Bach this is one of the most original. Its inspiration flows unendingly. Its spirit is universal so that it will always be contemporary and have a direct message for all men.

Stokowski seems to have gotten the chronology wrong—recent scholarship suggests the work dates from early in Bach’s career, long before he moved to Leipzig in 1723. That is, if Bach wrote the piece in the first place. A number of prominent Bach scholars don’t think he did. There would certainly be some irony if one of Bach’s most famous compositions turned out not to be by Bach.

In any case, Stokowski’s observation about the freedom and boldness of the music is right on the mark. In a letter he likened the piece to

A vast upheaval of nature. It gives the impression of great white thunderclouds—like those that float so often over the valley of the Seine—or the towering majesty of the Himalayas. The Fugue is set in the frame of the Toccata, which comes before and after. This work is one of Bach’s supreme inspirations—the final cadence is like massive Doric columns of white marble.

—Christopher H. Gibbs