Guys, I DO happen to have some acquaintance with the works of J. S. Bach. At both the School of Music at the University of Washington and in the Music Department at the Cornish School of Allied Arts, going through folios of the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart with a pencil in hand was central to the classes in music analysis and the more advanced classes in music theory.

Speaking specifically of J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565, after the class at Cornish had spent the better part of a week analyzing it as described, the professor, John Cowell (who happens to be a reasonably well-known modern composer) convened the class at a large Episcopal cathedral in Seattle where he was the organist on Sundays. He demonstrated the church's organ (pipes ranging from as large as tree trunks down to smaller than a penny whistle), showed us what could be done with different manuals and couplers, then uncorked the monster with a couple of selections, one of which was the aforementioned Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565. Standing around the console and within a few yards of the banks of pipes, it was pretty impressive, to say the least!

I know that there are chickens out there squabbling over whether Bach wrote Bach or did Buxtehude write Bach, did Mozart really write Mozart, or was that Rossini on vacation in Vienna? I've heard some of these mewlings and pewlings, but I've neither heard nor seen anything that could qualify as definitive proof.

There is no shortage of twerps out there. Conspiracy theorists fall into the same bucket.

You did know, of course, that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, I don't think that pipe organ at St. Marks going full blast would be all that great an instrument for accompanying a solo-voice rendition of, say, "Wild Mountain Thyme." Not immoral. Just tasteless.