Helmut Walcha, the great German organist, may have had the distinction of knowing more keyboard music of Bach by heart than any other individual in history, including quite likely the composer himself. Walcha, who would be 100 years old this year, was born in Leipzig; he became blind at the age of seventeen, and could boast as his innermost possession virtually all the organ works of J. S. Bach, the harpsichord works, including the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations, and the entire Art of the Fugue. The first portion of the following three-part study formed part of a contribution to Bach-Stunden, a Festschrift for Helmut Walcha on the occasion of his 70th birthday, published by Evangelischer Presseverband in Hessen und Nassau, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
