Download the Complete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

“The best proof we have that life is good is that to each of us, on the day we are born, comes the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach,” writes J.M. Coet­zee in Diary of a Bad Year. “It comes as a gift, unearned, unmer­it­ed, for free.” While the respect­ed nov­el­ist voiced that thought, as he often does, through a high­ly opin­ion­at­ed pro­tag­o­nist, I can’t help but sus­pect that author and char­ac­ter to some extent agree on this. Some of us dis­cov­er Bach right away, in child­hood; oth­ers do it much lat­er. And whether or not we’ve earned or mer­it­ed his music, it now comes to us more freely than ever.

Take, for exam­ple, Bach’s com­plete organ works, which you can down­load at no cost from Block M Records. Per­form­ing them all, we have Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan’s Dr. James Kib­bie — “on orig­i­nal baroque organs in Ger­many,” no less.

They’ve orga­nized the col­lec­tions, released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, into a com­plete cat­a­log (that you can also search)—with down­load­able groups (from trio sonatas and con­cer­ti to the Schübler Chorales and the Orgel­büch­lein), as well as a list of ever­green famil­iar mas­ter­works (such as the Toc­ca­ta and Fugue in D Minor and the Pas­sacaglia in C Minor). They’ve made it easy to access and enjoy an impor­tant part of Bach’s wide, huge­ly influ­en­tial, and end­less­ly endur­ing body of work. The ques­tion of whether life is ulti­mate­ly good you’ll have to set­tle for your­self, but you can eas­i­ly start gath­er­ing the evi­dence right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.