Bach, "Little" Fugue in G minor, Organ

smalin · 4.3M views · 2013 · 3:46

Open on YouTube

Music performance & songsmusic

Why Hacker News recommends it

Linked as the original organ version of the piece, with a visual score that makes the fugue easy to follow.

What it is

Stephen Malinowski performs Bach's Little Fugue in G minor on organ, accompanied by an animated graphical score. Pedalboard playing carries one of the melodic lines.

Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2018 to 2026.

What Hacker News said

Cites pfooti · 2018-09 · on “You can't play Bach on Facebook because Sony says they own his compositions”

Headline seems demonstrably untrue [0]. Better framing should be, "contentID incorrectly identifies YouTube sample as being part of a totally legally copyrighted recording of a Bach work". (Bracketing for now the rightness or copyright at all, I suppose) 0: [this video]

Cites username223 · 2025-05 · on “The Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus I (2021)”

Bach in general is amazing in terms of surviving all sorts of transcription and mutilation. Compare the Little Organ Fugue as originally intended: [this video] to the a cappella version by the Swingle Singers: [LINK] Some music is very much tied to a particular instrument, but Bach is more or less universal.

Cites kortex · 2026-07 · on “EEG shows brain can simultaneous encode two speech streams”

One of the first ways I learned to meditate/access different states of mind was a technique described as "overload trance" (IIRC). The premise was, listen to a piece of music, focusing on one musical component, then while keeping that focus, add another element, and another, etc. It works best with pieces with a lot of ostinato (repetition/vamp) and Bach's Little Fugue in G minor was and is one of my favorites. Really fun to play too, though i get tripped up as soon as the feet get involved. Also, Utopia by Astral Projection (that whole album Trust in Trance 3 is great for this). Bonus points to mentally visualizing something in time with the music (I like orbs whirling around like atomic or