Johann Sebastian Bach: Art of the Fugue Johann Sebastian Bachs Art of the Fugue was inspired by his Musical Offering and his compulsion to memorialize his art. After addressing its theme, opening fugue and structure, we note some performance challenges and consider pioneering recordings by harpsichord, piano, organ, quartets and ensembles, plus an extreme arrangement that goes off the deep end. After a final thought, we list some sources of further information about the work. Few composers have ended their careers with a work that serves to epitomize their skills. Classical Classics Many succumbed long before they could anticipate their demise, while others lingered on as their inspiration and energy dissipated. As his blindness advanced and his health declined, Johann Sebastian Bach poured his final strength into one of the truly great creations of the human mind (Karl Geiringer), a philosophical breviary, every measure of which invites reflection and thought (Paul Henry Lang) that even Bach himself never produced before in his life (Philipp Spitta). Even today Bachs final work, Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of the Fugue), stands as not only the ultimate monument to his own wide-ranging genius but an enduring shrine to the art of an entire epoch. Yet it is no dry memorial. Although incomplete, quixotic and partly abstract, it has attracted, challenged and enthralled musicians, scholars and listeners of every era. The Fugue The fugue arose long before Bach. Its basic components and techniques were in place a century earlier. The subject or principal theme is given alone at the outset and pervades the entire piece. It immediately reappears, perhaps modified, in a second voice as the answer, while the first voice continues with an accompaniment, known as the countersubject. The piece comprises expositions, in which the subject is heard (once in each voice for the first exposition), separated by episodes, which may comprise fragments or variants of the subject such as augmentation (half-speed), diminution (double-speed), inversion (in which all intervals are the opposite of the originals, i.e.: a rising fifth would become a falling fifth), retrograde (backward) or stretto (overlapping by launching a new statement before the prior one ends), as well as rhythmic and harmonic transformations. Yet commentators constantly remind us that despite these basic rules and devices fugue is not a rigid form but a springboard for creativity – Donald Francis Tovey calls it a texture rather than a design, and Glenn Gould considers it an invitation to invent a form relevant to the idiosyncratic demands of the composition. Indeed, Bachs glory is that he transcended conventions even while exemplifying them, crafting masterworks that combine the seemingly irreconcilable poles of dazzling traditional technique and vast far-reaching imagination to satisfy both intellect and emotion. Although often studied in microscopic detail by the most sophisticated musicians, a Bach fugue rewards even purely intuitive listeners with a sense of structure that unifies formality with flights of fantasy, at once soothing and provocative. The Musical Offering The primary model for the Art of the Fugue often is traced to Bachs prior work, the Musical Offering. In May 1747 Bach travelled to Potsdam to visit his son Phillip Emanuel, who was serving as harpsichordist at the court of King Frederick II. According to a local newspaper account, upon Bachs arrival: His Majesty immediately ordered his admission and, upon his entry, went to the so-called ‘Forte and Piano’ and without any preparation personally condescended to play Capellmeister Bach a theme that the latter should improvise into a fugue. This was accomplished by the aforesaid Capellmeister Bach so successfully that not only was His Majesty inclined to indicate his pleasure, but all other persons present were given to great astonishment. [Bachs first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, reported that the King was so enamored of the new-fangled pianoforte, a forerunner of the modern piano, that he bought 15 of them.] Other accounts add that Bach extemporized not only a fugue in three voices but another in six parts, which Spitta claims was based on his own theme, rather than the Kings - an extraordinarily difficult undertaking, as the parts had to be distinct, yet so closely interwoven as to fall within the compass of two hands; indeed, Spitta believes the feat to have been previously unheard of on a clavier without pedals (on which the lowest voice could be played). In any event, according to the newspaper, Mr. Bach found the [Kings] theme so exceedingly lovely that he wanted to write it down on paper as a proper fugue and have it engraved in copper. Indeed, upon returning home, Bach composed a three-voice fugue (for which he used the old term of ricercar, which initially meant a prologue to establish tonality but had evolved into signifying an elaborate composition displaying all the techniques of the fugal style) and sent it to the King along with six canons and another fugue, all based on the royal theme. In the typical toadying fashion of the day, Bachs accompanying dedication, dated July 7, 1747, asserted that:lacking an opportunity for the necessary preparation [for the improvisation], I was unable to give a performance worthy of so excellent a theme. I then determined to develop this right royal theme in a more perfect manner, and immediately applied myself to the task, so that it should become known to all the world. He soon followed with a second beautifully-bound dispatch that added three more canons, a six-part ricarcar, and a four-movement sonata for flute, the Kings own favorite instrument. Nikolaus Harnoncourt asserts that, notwithstanding Bachs praise, the royal theme was entirely unsuited for use as a fugue subject (indeed, its overly long, chromatic and fitful), and that the musically-versed King had deliberately posed such a difficult subject to challenge the famed composer, but that Bach got the last laugh, as the sonata flute part he wrote for the King was almost impossible to play on instruments of the time, presumably leading to much royal frustration had the king tried to enjoy his gift. The canons enabled Bach to display his astounding technical skill. A canon requires strict imitation by sequential overlapping voices. Its simplest form is a round, in which each voice enters at the same regular interval and plays the same melody at the same pitch (such as Three Blind Mice or Row, Row, Row Your Boat), but Bach takes a vastly more sophisticated approach with brilliant results. Thus, the second canon (and one of the simplest) consists of a single line that generates its two parts by being played simultaneously forward and backward. The fourth (in contrary motion) features the second part as an inversion of the first heard a half-measure later. The subject of the sixth canon is repeated through successively higher keys until finally returning back to home base. Munchinger conducts the Musical Offering (London LP) Just as Bach found religious symbolism in the unity of the fugue, so here - he prefaced the sixth canon with an inscription (in Latin): Like the ascending modulation, may the Kings glory also rise and before a canon of augmented notes: Like the note values, so may the Kings happiness increase. The two ricarcars also display the range of Bachs style - Charles Rosen characterizes the first as light, playful, fanciful, informal and almost improvisatory, perhaps reflecting Bachs extemporaneous playing before the king, whereas the second (which Rosen considers the greatest fugue ever written) is massive, grave, deeply expressive and formally structured. Christoph Wolff further credits the slow middle movement of the flute sonata, with its melodically twisted, rhythmically differentiated, harmonically surprising and dynamically shaded gestures, as the embrace of the Old Bach (as he was increasingly called) of the emerging musical fashion of sensitivity, and thus (rare for Bach) a glimpse into the future. The Musical Offering is full not only of invention but considerable wit and a touch of mystery. One canon (teasingly inscribed he who seeks shall find) is a puzzle, printing only the first part and requiring would-be performers to determine where, of all the possible permutations of transposition, inversion, retrograde, rhythm and note-value, to insert the same theme as the second part to make the most musical sense. (The generally accepted solution is to use the inversion, transposed a seventh lower, 2½ measures later, although some recordings present alternatives.) Bach even used an acrostic of the word ricercar in his dedication: Regis Issu Cantio Et Reliqua Cononica Arte Resoluta (the theme given by the Kings command with additions resolved according to the canonic style). Indeed, Bach may have meant ricercar - literally to seek out - in the strict sense of searching for various incarnations of the kings theme throughout the work. One puzzle that eludes consensus, though, is how to organize the work. Should the pieces be played in the order in which Bach engraved them, or should they lead to a climax with the six-voice ricercar (the most complex invention) or culminate with the flute sonata (which the King would have considered the pinnacle)? Performance, too, poses questions - except for the flute sonata and a canon for two violins (which also requires a cello for a bass accompaniment), Bach did not specify instrumentation - nor, for that matter, any tempos. Due to their origins at the royal concert, the ricercars are generally presumed to be for a single keyboard player, although, perhaps to focus attention upon the complex interplay of its individual lines, Bach wrote the second one in open score on a system of six staves, with one staff per part. The canons, though, can be played on strings, keyboards, winds, or any other ensemble to differentiate the intertwining lines. Indeed, various recordings take each of these approaches. The king apparently never sent Bach any gift, nor even an acknowledgement, in exchange for this marvelous tribute. Yet it served a higher purpose. The meeting with the king enhanced Bachs reputation and he was so proud of his six-voice ricercar that he had 100 copies printed. But beyond that, the concept of a relatively abstract, intellectual display of compositional prowess presenting a vast realm of invention on a single theme flowered into a final and even more astounding summation of his art. The Fugue Why did Bach create the Art of the Fugue? Wolff posits a practical concern. In 1737, a former pupil, Johann Scheibe, possibly in retaliation for Bach having passed him over for a coveted appointment, published an attack in which he savaged Bachs style as turgid and confused, decrying its beauty darkened by an excess of art that buried the melody, detracted from the beauty of the harmony, had excessive ornamentation, and was extremely difficult to play. In retrospect, we now recognize this as a harbinger of the vast change that was about to forego Bachs counterpoint in favor of the emerging homophonic style, consisting of a dominant melodic line supported by harmony, that persists to this day (and of which, ironically, Bachs sons were in the vanguard of promoting). Bach never wrote about his own music, but a colleague, Johann Abraham Birnbaum, came to his defense (and panned the new style), asserting that one very soon becomes tired of insipid little ditties that consist of nothing but consonances and that harmony becomes far more complete if all the voices collaborate to form it. But it was a losing battle - a mere two years after Bach died, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, a respected critic, expressed regret that the fugue (and, by implication, polyphony in general) already had declined into an ancient aberration, even as he saluted the Art of the Fugue as a bulwark against contemporary rubbish. Wolff feels that Bach, plunged into the midst of this esthetic debate, felt compelled to memorialize the art to which he had devoted his life and to create a compendium of its range and techniques. As Herbert Parry put it, the Musical Offering had been for the benefit of one king, but Bach created the Art of the Fugue for all musicians. Although ignored at the time, and for a century to come, the Art of the Fugue is now universally hailed as not only the ultimate treatise on counterpoint and thus the foremost embodiment of Bachs esthetic ideals, but one of the supreme summits of art, in which a wealth of invention is crafted from a single idea (and in that sense serves to exemplify Bachs core belief in the perfect and inviolate order of the universe, structured according to a Divine plan). John Stone calls it tantamount to a sacred text, an artwork so quintessentially perfect in form, so unutterably beautiful from the dual perspectives of the mind and heart, intellect and emotions. While many of us enjoy it on a superficial level, perhaps the most meaningful tribute is from those having a lifetime of expertise and the deepest familiarity, who consistently declare their studies and analyses to be incomplete and its depths to be limitless, not only as an encylopedic compilation of past technique but as a visionary guide to inspire the creativity of future generations. The Art of the Fugue At first, it logically was assumed that Bach had written this unfinished work in his final year until, as Spitta put it, “death overtook him.” Scholars now attribute much of the autograph to 1742, although Bach proceeded to supervise its engraving only in 1749. As characterized by Wolff, the autograph, which comprised twelve fugues and two canons, was organized so as to present a rational order and well-rounded structure based on two principles: increasing difficulty and complexity, and increasing animation of the subject. Wolff notes that between the autograph and engraving, “clearly fascinated by the works perplexing challenges and unique opportunities,” Bach continued to develop it, adding a new fugue and two new canons to broaden the conceptual dimensions of the work. Wolff cites in particular a highly innovative new fugue that altered the intervals of the subject to open up an unprecedented expansion of the harmonic spectrum. Bach also enlarged and rewrote several movements; thus, the autograph version of the first fugue ends with a full cadence right after a dramatic pause, whereas the revised version resumes the former bustle (with some sputtering) before finally coming to a well-deserved rest. Bach also added an entire page to Fugue VIII to introduce and explore its theme, a passage which Tovey considers “one of the most beautiful and profound that Bach ever wrote.” Bach was able to supervise at least some of the engraving, and provided a correction sheet for five of its 18 pieces, thus suggesting to Geiringer that he was unable to oversee the rest. The remainder has generated considerable controversy over perceived publication errors. Thus, Malcolm Boyd states that the editors (two of Bachs sons and Marpurg) were ignorant of Bachs intentions, or perhaps misunderstanding them. Spitta was less charitable, asserting that the editors put everything on the plates as it came - sketches beside completed movements, original settings beside arrangements, parts that had a connection beside those which had none, in dreadful disorder. Although their work was hardly that haphazard, it is true that they included an earlier, shorter variant of Fugue X as a separate piece and illogically scrambled the order of the canons to lead with the most complex. Entire treatises have dissected the Art of the Fugue in minute detail (far beyond my understanding), so it seems more suitable here to address the theme and the first movement and then consider the overall structure. Theme - The choice of a theme to serve as the foundation for such a massive work is crucial, and Bachs creation was masterful. As Cherubini quipped generations later, the subject of a fugue needs to be neither too long nor too short; that is, it must be memorable yet significant, with enough content to develop yet (unlike a melody) it cannot be a satisfying whole but rather open-ended, so as to invite and even demand growth and exploration. Moreover, given the permutations to which it is to be subjected, it needs to make musical sense when inverted, reversed, accelerated, slowed, overlapped, transposed, and treated in numerous variegated combinations of these techniques. In its mere dozen notes, the Art of the Fugue theme is astoundingly rich and facilitates all these functions. It begins with a triadic outline of strong harmonic direction and uniform rhythmic pacing, introduces an accidental, doubles the pace (and then again), rises and then falls, lingers on a prolonged minor third to create both expectation and syncopation and finally glides into home base. But beyond bursting with countless inventive possibilities, it has a poignant, haunting quality - in the several months that Ive been exploring the Art of the Fugue, its theme constantly slips into my thoughts. The First Fugue - Even the first (and the simplest) fugue takes substantial liberties with the established conventions of the genre and asserts its own personality. It begins with the expected regular sequential introduction of the theme in each voice, alternating tonic and dominant, with no overlaps or gaps, each entry beginning at four-measure intervals just as the prior one ends. But immediately Bach eschews strict form. Although each of the answers (extending the end of each statement of the theme) all project an entirely different character, they share a persistent eighth-note rhythm that will permeate the movement - indeed, from bar 10 through 70 a new note falls on every single half-beat. Yet, Bach avoids any threat of monotony by distributing the phrases and even single notes among the four voices, so that the overall steady, rapid figures flit in a constant panoply of diverse phrases and textures, even as each individual line retains its own integrity. Indeed, this immediately announces the very essence of Bachs inspired counterpoint - as distinguished from later music in which the inner voices are often of marginal interest by themselves and mostly serve to complete the harmony, here each line is fascinating and lucid on its own, yet they compel full attention in combination. Moreover, typical of the dual nature of this work as performable music and as pedagogy - and Bachs supreme artistry - the interplay is as fascinating to see in score as to hear. Even so, just before the persistent rhythm might become tiring, it serves to set us up for a dramatic close - the only one in the entire work - in which the motion suddenly - and quite unexpectedly - halts for three beats of silence, followed by a single stark d-minor chord, another three-beat rest, a tentative resumption of the prior motion over a deep pedal D, and in a final surprise resolves with an unaccustomed smile into a concluding D-major cadence. Structure - In its published, albeit incomplete, form, the work can be split into five major sections. The first comprises four simple fugues (that is, with the theme as the only subject). Fugue I is based on a persistent lively eighth-note rhythm. Fugue II dots the rhythm of the concluding eighth-note figure to inject a lilting motion that pervades the entire piece. Fugue III inverts the theme altogether, imbuing it, and the entire movement it heads, with a wholly new, yet clearly related, character. It also adds a true countersubject, notable for its chromaticism, that accompanies each appearance of the subject. not only inverts the theme and harmonically alters it, but also derives from the falling eighth note pattern of the original theme two simple but distinctive figures that accompany the subject, add further character to each appearance and serve to foretell more complex variants to come. Tovey hails these first four fugues as a remarkable tour de force in pure composition without any counterpoint devices and shaped only by inventive episodes derived naturally from the theme itself. The second portion consists of three stretto fugues, in which the traditional techniques are explored. Tovey considers these to be the fugues for which the theme was designed. Fugue V is a stretto fugue in contrary motion, featuring overlapping statements of a rhythmically-modified version of the theme and its own inversion, increasing the intensity by shortening the intervals between statements of the subject from three measures to a single beat. Fugue VI - a solid mass of stretto in Toveys words - not only overlaps the subject in its direct and inverted forms but thickens the texture by using both versions in diminution (halving the themes note-values) to yield a total of four variants heard together. Bach also designates the sixth fugue in the French style, not only heavily dotting the rhythm (possibly to be construed as double-dotting, consistent with the French custom of the time) but adding ornamentation of trills and shakes, which Rosen, for one, takes as an invitation to the performer to add his own tasteful elaborations. Fugue VII reaches an apex of density, adding augmentation to diminution, intensifying the appearances of the theme by separating them with only a single brief episode, and building to a weighty conclusion by adding an additional voice to the standard four. C. Herbert Parry describes Fugue VII as so crowded with allusions to the subject in every conceivable way that Bach had to take leave of it for a while - and so he does. The third major division - the central business of the work, to Tovey - introduces new subjects to which variants of the theme become a second or third subject. Samuel Baron notes that all the themes are related to the original, and likens them, as offspring, to the proliferation of a family tree. Fugue VIII lightens the texture to only three voices, but is a triple fugue with three subjects, the first two chromatic and the third a close relative of the main theme, each developed sequentially, and then combined; as Jeffrey Hall notes, at that point the music simply explodes with energy. Tovey nails the challenge here for a fugue with multiple subjects: the themes must be strongly contrasted and distinctive, yet so disposed that any can be a bass or treble to the others to yield a satisfying harmony - far easier said than done. Next come two double fugues (with two subjects) of contrasting moods, but displaying similar contrapuntal feats - invertible subjects that can be placed above or below each other at intervals of the 12th (Fugue IX) or 10th (Fugue X). As Tovey notes, the object here is to obtain two different harmonic schemes from a single pair of themes. Following this slight respite, the section closes with a staggering feat - a highly chromatic triple fugue based on inversions of all three subjects of Fugue VIII (which eventually are re-inverted to their original form), resulting in a tremendous conflict and clashing of themes, ideas and feelings … extending from the most inner and secret utterances to the most outspoken defiance yet all sublimated in the form of pure music of the most profound order (Baron) and culminating in amazing resource and ingenuity. (Boyd) The fourth section comprises two ingenious mirror fugues, which can be played either as written or with the score inverted - literally turned upside down - and make complete musical sense either way. Fugue XIII is a four-voice fugue, so that the inversion places the soprano in the bass, the tenor in the alto, the alto in the tenor and the bass in the soprano. The process can be seen in a brief passage showing two systems from Bachs autograph. Fugue XII is for three primary voices, with the inversion rotating them so that the bass becomes the middle part, the middle the treble and the treble the bass. In this fugue alone, Bach steps aside from formal strictures to add a fourth, free voice and specifies a 2. Clav. - his only suggestion of instrumentation (necessitated by the spread of the voices beyond the realm of two hands). The final section contains four canons. Rather than presented as a puzzle, as in the Musical Offering, Bachs autograph provided the first canon in a single voice, followed by his own resolutio on two staves. Bachs realization of the remaining canons is far from simple. Thus, the last one presents its theme along with its inverted augmentation, and then swaps the positions with the lower voice on top. Yet, despite their technical facility, Tovey, for one, considers them a letdown in difficulty or spontaneity and questions their inclusion, commenting that it is no more difficult to extend a two-part canon for 100 bars than to confine it to the length of the subject and suggesting that technique here degenerates into idle mechanism. Indeed, Robert Simpson considers them anomalies and better suited to a separate, unrealized Art of the Canon. Yet, there is one more piece that has proven the most intriguing of all - a massive yet fragmentary quadruple fugue of which Bach wrote 239 measures. Bachs son, Carl Phillip Emmanuel, perpetuated the melodramatic view that Bach died in the throes of composing it, and even inscribed on the last page of the autograph: While working on this fugue, in which the name BACH appears in the countersubject, the author died), but Wolff, for one, discounts that assertion by considering it an editors afterthought while the posthumous engraving was in process. The portion Bach completed drops off after the introduction and working out of three subjects, none of which is directly related to any others in the work, thus leading early scholars to question its inclusion in the Art of the Fugue. Spitta stated that it has nothing whatever to do with this work and that it crept into the original editions by misunderstanding. That changed in 1881 when Gustav Nettebaum discovered that all three themes fit well with the original theme of the Art of the Fugue and contended that Bachs unrealized intent all along had been to bring his work full cycle to a brilliant conclusion by culminating with the very theme with which it had begun. In 1990 Zoltan Göncz went further to posit that the missing subject would fit with full contrapuntal validity into a 4x4 “permutation matrix” based on the order of voices in which Bach’s subjects enter in their three separate expositions. On that basis Göncz crafted a completion of the final fugue, including a dramatic pause that echoes the same device in the first fugue and thus brings the entire work full circle. Even though the score still manages to sound intuitive (and clearly was written by a genius who had no need of blueprints to guide him), the result is quite convincing, and the whole notion of using detailed mathematical analysis to elucidate the structure and method is itself a fascinating approach. The significance of the final incomplete fugue is magnified by the third subject which begins with B-flat-A-C-B-natural, or B-A-C-H in German notation, thus serving an autobiographical function and a signature stamp to conclude his lifes work - and the first and only time that such a figure appeared in the composers entire oeuvre. Rosen notes that the portion of the final fugue using the B-A-C-H theme is tersely chromatic and leads to far-reaching modulations, as if Bach were drawing the most significant effects of his art from his own name. (A further intriguing possibility: in an obituary, C.P.E. Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola stated that Bachs last fugue not only was to contain four themes but in a final bravura demonstration of staggering complexity was to have been inverted note for note with all four voices.) Indeed, Leonhardt reasons that had Bach lived he not only would have finished the fugue but might have substantially revised it. David Johnson goes further to speculate that Bach may have been planning a yet more grandiose finale. Performance Challenges Performers face a difficult decision of how to treat the final fragment. It has been suggested that Bach stopped on purpose, so as to invite his successors to grasp the initiative to complete it. Thus, William Malloch contends: “His manuscript stops at altogether too neat a spot … . At this point, the fugue’s three subjects … meet for the first and only time. Bach leaves us at the crossroads. He knows that his life goes on elsewhere; he knows that the music will remain alive and well without his help, and he invites us to continue practicing the art of counterpoint” by carrying on his work. Accepting the invitation, attempts range from adding a simple cadence (Riemann) to several minutes of development following insertion of the primary Art of the Fugue theme as a fourth subject (Tovey). Most, though, let the music trail off, just as Bach left his manuscript. Ostensibly as compensation for the lack of a completed finale, the first edition ended with a chorale setting that Bach reportedly dictated shortly before his death - When We Are in Greatest Need, adapted from the hymn Before Your Throne I Now Appear - both highly apt as the final thoughts of a man of deep faith. As described by Albert Schweitzer, each phrase of the chorale melody is made the subject of a little fughetta unified by a common countersubject. Deeply moved by its aura of transcendent peace, Schweitzer rhapsodized: No longer did the tumult of the outside world press through the curtained windows. The dying master was already surrounded by the harmony of the spheres. Not a whisper of suffering survives in this music. Its calmly flowing eighth-notes partake of a world of peaceful blessedness into which Bach is preparing to pass. Yet while its gentle calm provides a lovely ending, it clearly has no connection to the body of the work and often is omitted to even greater effect. As Charles Rosen wrote of ending the Art of the Fugue as Bachs final tentative notes trail off into silence: There is no page in all music more disquieting or more deeply moving. Indeed, it leaves listeners imaginations hanging on the threshold of an unexplored realm of infinite possibility. The issue of realizing the Art of the Fugue has challenged performers from the start. The Emerson Quartet plays the Art of the Fugue (DG CD) For more than a century there was no problem, simply because there were no performances. Indeed, the most fundamental question is whether to perform it at all. Early musicians viewed the work as purely abstract and didactic, an approach fostered from the outset by C.P.E. Bachs efforts to sell copies for that purpose. (As a sad afternote, in September 1756, he offered the copper plates, weighing about 100 pounds, for sale as scrap metal, pledging to accept the first reasonable offer, as only 30 copies had been sold, even at a reduced price.) While hailing its educational purpose, Spitta pronounced portions to be very difficult, nay impossible, to play. Others consider the work wholly abstract and thus diminished through attempts at performance; thus Lang decries the distortion of soulful rendering by instrumentalists and praises its superhuman aloofness to preserve the purest dematerialized spirit of the highest form of Baroque art. Noting that it contains no indications of tempo, dynamics or even instrumentation, Johnson opines that the human and the emotional are not its real concerns. Like the figures on Keatss urn, it has passed out of time and accident, and wears the changeless beauty of pure thought. Schweitzer contends that it inhabits a still and serious world … deserted and rigid, without color, without light, without motion; it does not gladden, does not distract; yet we cannot break away from it. Geiringer disagrees: Even if he had wanted to do so, Bach would have been unable to write only dry instructive precepts. Under his hands, the textbook changed into a poem imbued with the mystery of pure beauty. Leonhardt emphatically calls it Art of Fugue rather than Art of the Fugue, so as to stress that it is a work of art in fugue form rather than a set of craft lessons. Questions have also been posed as to whether the work is best heard as a whole or in excerpts. Lang declares: An integral performance is the worst that can be done to it and affords perhaps the best proof that we still have to blaze a trail to this summa of the Baroque, for the work is a philosophical breviary, every measure of which invites reflection and thought. It is only through long and intimate acquaintance with the individual fugues that we can arrive at a true understanding of their message. Tovey takes a middle ground, asserting that the first eleven fugues are effective in their given order (although he feels that the stretto fugues tend to sag), but proposing that for maximum impact the others be paired with preludes and movements from Bachs other works. Yet, the balance of views tend to side with Spitta who considered the entire work to comprise a single gigantic fugue, in which an understanding of the ingenious intricacy of the latter sections requires the preparation provided by knowledge of the antecedent portions. Fretwork plays the Art of the Fugue (Harmonia Mundi CD) Imogene Horsley agrees that the ordered presentation produces a broad sense of total form that can only be felt when the work is heard as a unit. Johnson urges: Put the score away and the infinitude of detail will be subsumed by the massive unity of the thing and the microscopic will give way to the cosmic. Turning from abstract philosophy to the practicality of performance, an immediate issue challenges performers with the order of presentation. Bachs manuscript followed the first fugue with the one having an inverted subject, and then the one with dotted rhythm, whereas the engraving, the first portion of which he supervised, presented the one with dotted rhythm before the two inverted ones. Either order seems logical. The matter becomes more complicated - and controversial - with the canons. Should they interrupt the progress of the fugues, or, as Simpson asserts, be relegated to some sort of appendix? Various editors, arrangers and performers freely assemble the second half of the work to group fugues with similar structures or to vary the organization for a more dramatic and varied progression. A further question looms as to the appropriate instrumentation. As Johann Philipp Kirnberger stated, “if one finds the right style of performance for them, even the most learned fugues sound beautiful.” But how? Bach was silent on the matter, and a wide variety of musicians have supported their choices with exemplary recordings. None is exclusive; reflecting the outlook of those who regard the work in abstract splendor, Stone says, “The amazing thing is, the musical ideas themselves, the pure relation of note to note and voice to voice, are so consummately worked out that the music ‘works’ on virtually any instrumental combination. Timbre really does seem beside the point with such a composition.” Bach himself had fostered the realm of performance possibilities by having written the work in open score, with each line on a separate staff. To some this underlines a didactic purpose to facilitate understanding of the interplay of the voices, which admittedly are easier to follow and compare on individual staves. But it also is consistent with the way Bach wrote his scores for ensembles, and thus invites adaptations for multiple players.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 05:05:43 +0000
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