Bach’s contemporaries regarded Art of Fugue to be a practical work - one that would be both studied and played. C.P.E. Bach’s advertisement announcing the first edition in 1751 mentions that Art of Fugue had been “arranged for use at the harpsichord or organ.” Yet until recent decades it has been assumed that Bach intended Art of Fugue as a theoretical work only. How did this change of view come about? Part of the reason is that the fugue fell out of favor, beginning even in Bach’s own lifetime. One of Bach’s critics wrote in 1737 that Bach’s compositions would be admired more widely if Bach did not “darken their beauty by an excess of art,” a reference to supposedly over-labored and over-ornamented fugal techniques. Bach was really the last exponent of the fugue and, after his death, the form virtually died with him. Art of Fugue met with so little response that the copper engraving plates were sold as scrap. Bach’s music - and with it the fugue - languished in obscurity for nearly a century. Even Mozart and Beethoven had to be introduced to the beauties of Bach’s fugues by an aficionado, Baron von Swieten, who played Bach’s fugues at his Sunday salons in Vienna; and both composers began to incorporate fugal elements into their compositions. [1] It was only in the mid-19th century - thanks to a revival begun by Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann - that Bach’s keyboard works, cantatas, and instrumental music made their way back into concert programs. Art of Fugue, however, was still regarded as too abstruse. The Art of Fugue is comprised of 14 fugues and four canons. Though the order of the fugues and placement of the canons is a matter of endless debate, it is clear that Bach had a progression from the simplest to most complex counterpoints in mind when he conceived the compendium. Like Bach’s other monothematic works, the Canonic Variations, A Musical Offering, and the Goldberg Variations, Die Kunst der Fuge is an exercise in how far one can develop a single theme. There is little true key change in any of these works (though of course, extremely deft modulation at play); instead, Bach devotes his considerable inventiveness and genius to the focused treatment of one theme, one key. In this case, we remain in the serene and gray sphere of d minor as Bach ups the ante with each successive fugue, treating his somber, elastic theme to a whole catalogue of contrapuntal appropriations— inversion, diminution, augmentation, mirroring, doubling, retrograde, and so on. The final fugue (the one which in performance ends so abruptly, shockingly mid-phrase) was incredibly a planned quadruple fugue, that is, four different themes working in simultaneity. The very existence of such a collection at this point in history is already unusual, to say the least; fugues were already considered archaic, fusty, dogmatic, turgid. Though Bach paid great service to the upcoming trends that favored a lighter, more melody-driven touch, he turned his back completely on the fashion of his day by venturing forth on projects such as the ones that occupied him in the 1740s. And yet, while stylistically, there is much in the fugues that looks backwards to the so-called stile antico practices of Palestrina and other Bach predecessors, there is also ample evidence of Bach the harmonic innovator and vanguard. Indeed, the B-A-C-H section of the final fugue contains dissonances that would not be out of place in early Schoenberg, Wagner, or Mahler. Going a step further, we can say that the music— in its absolute purity and genius of design— really transcends period and place. One of the many, seemingly inexhaustible pleasures of listening to and studying this music is admiring the skill with which Bach varies the main theme, opening it up as he does to countless permutations. (Really, the same can be said for his Goldberg Variations, Chaconne for violin solo, etc.) The theme is stretched and shrunk in time, flipped upside down, turned backwards, coupled with other themes, rendered in mirror form. A further pleasure lies in witnessing the ways in which Bach alternates between tightly packed counterpoint and the freer episodes (moments when the statement and answer pairs of fugue are absent), giving a sense of contraction and release throughout the music. The music affords intense intellectual excitement as one tries to hear all four lines (or voices) in their horizontal independence and vertical unification. Emotionally speaking, Bach covers enormous ground all the while sticking to his one theme; though a general tone of seriousness and even melancholy pervades the work, there are elements of intense joy, exuberance, vivacity, and freshness. youtu.be/4uX-5HOx2Wc
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 22:21:34 +0000
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