Virgil Fox

Virgil Fox (May 3, 1912–October 25,1980) was a renowned organist, known especially for his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach for audiences more familiar with Rock and Roll music, staged complete with light shows.

Music

Fox stressed pushing the limits of the instruments available to him, rather than requiring that they be authentic to the era of the music he was playing.

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His style is a counterpoint to that of E. Power Biggs, who had a more traditional approach to the music of Bach. On the album "Heavy Organ", in the introduction to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in Dm, Fox sums up his approach to Bach and music in general:

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:"There is current in our land (and several European countries) at this moment a kind of nit-picking worship of historic im-po-tence. They say, they say, that Bach must not be interpreted and that he must have no emotion, his notes speak for themselves. You want know what that is? Pure unadulterated rot! Bach has the red blood. He has the communion with the people. He has all of this amazing spirit and imagine that you could put all the music on one side of the agenda with his great interpretation and great feeling and put the greatest man of all right up on top of a dusty shelf underneath some glass case in a museum and say that he must not be interpreted! They're full of you know what and they are so untalented that they had to hide behind this thing 'cause they couldn't get in the House of Music any other way!

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