Alec Templeton: Bach Goes to Town

I was tidying up a pile of sheet music the other day when I came across a piano solo by Alec Templeton – Bach Goes to Town. I gave it a quick play through but discovered it is just a little beyond my technique – at least to play it at the correct bustling speed.

Alec Templeton was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1909. He was blind from birth but possessed perfect pitch. He was a classically trained pianist at the Royal Academy of Music, but latterly he refused to be bound by the mores of classical music. Moving to the United States in 1935,  he joined Jack Hylton’s Jazz Band. He became a radio personality, with a particular panache for his “musical portrait” and his uncanny ability to improvise in the style of any great composer. He was a genuine “crossover” musician who combined his deep respect for the classical masters, with his instinctive feel for jazz and swing. Alec Templeton died in 1963.

Composed in 1938, Templeton’s Bach Goes to Town, is a sophisticated musical “joke.” Whilst strictly parodying the structure and even basic figuration of a Baroque Prelude and Fugue (so beloved of J.S. Bach, Buxtehude, and others) he injected the syncopation and “blue notes” of the Swing era.

The piece begins with a flowing prelude that feels like a 1930s cocktail lounge meeting a 1730s cathedral. This shifts into a rigorous, four-part (or nearly four-part) fugue. While the counterpoint is technically precise - meeting the academic standards of Bach’s own works - the rhythmic drive is pure jazz.

Although originally written for piano solo, Bach Goes to Town gained massive popularity when it was arranged for the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1938. Goodman’s recording helped solidify the piece as a crossover hit, proving that the structural brilliance of the Baroque era could find a vibrant second life on the dance floors of New York.

Listen to Philip Sear playing Templeton’s Bach Goes to Town for piano, on YouTube, here.