RESOURCE AND INVENTION

Bach: "The Art of Fugue" · "A Musical Offering"

        During the last decade of his life Bach increasingly found inspiration in what might be termed the "Mathematical abstractions" or the "scientific bedrock" of music. Counterpoint --- the art of combining different melodic lines to form a harmonious whole --- had always been at the root of his musical thinking and imagination, but in the 1740s the most rigorous contrapuntal techniques, those of canon and fugue, assumed a new importance at the forefront of his work. The "Goldberg" Variations (published in 1741), in which every third variation is a canon at a different pitch interval, show the new trend very clearly; the Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch" of 1747 are, as the title implies, permeated by canonic techniques.

        In the case of these two works there is at least no dispute about which instruments --- harpsichord and organ respectively --- they were intended for. But when we turn to the two greatest masterpieces of these last years, The Art of Fugue and A Musical Offering, Bach's intentions in this respect are by no means as clear, and indeed it seems that the medium of performance --- one might even say performance itself --- was of minor importance to him. No instrument at all is mentioned in either the manuscript or the printed sources of The Art of Fugue; the Musical Offering calls for flute, two violins and keyboard, but it is not always stipulated what each instrument is to play, and neither is it clear what additional instruments (if any) are required. Add to this uncertainly other questions regarding what is to be included and in which order, and it will readily be understood why both these works have attracted various theories about Bach's intentions in composing them and various solutions to the special problems entailed in performing them.

        Bach seems to have begun work on The Art of Fugue in the early 1740s and to have returned to it at various times in the ensuing years; in the last year or two of his life he was engaged in preparing it for publication, but he died before the engraving was complete and the work appeared the following year in a form which failed to reflect the composer's final intentions. (Even the title is not Bach's; he used the term "Contrapunctus" for the pieces it contains.) It begins, logically enough, with two straightforward fugues on the main Art of Fugue theme, heard at the very beginning, and two others on the inversion of that theme. There follows a group of three fugues which use the theme and its inversion simultaneously; Contrapunctus VI also employs it in diminution (i.e. in shorter note lengths) and No. VII in both diminution and augmentation. In Contrapuncti VII-XI versions of the Art of Fugue theme are introduced into figures on newly invented subjects; No. XI is a miracle of counterpoint in which all three subjects of Contrapunctus VIII (including the Art of Fugue theme) are inverted, reordered and combined to form a four-part fugue of amazing resource and invention.

        From this point on, the organisation of the original print appears increasingly haphazard. Two mirror fugues (Contrapuncti XII and XIII) are followed by an earlier and shorter version of Contrapunctus X, which ought never to have been included (and which the present recording omits), and then by four canons. Each of the mirror fugues appears in two versions, the second being an exact "morror-image" of the first, with each line of the texture inverted so that the notes rise where originally they fell, and vice versa. This astonishing feat of the musical intellect cannot, however, be appreciated by the listener, since each version must be performed separately. Similarity, it is unlikely that anyone without a sight of the score would be aware that the second voice to enter in the canon "per augmentationem in contrario motu" repeats the music of the first, but upside-down and in notes of twice the length; at mid-point the two voices exchange roles.

        There follow arrangements for two keyboards of both versions of the second mirror fugue (Nos. 18 and 21 in this recording), to which Bach now adds a free part for good measure, and the whole compendium, as printed in 1751, ends with the problematic and incomplete "Fuga a 3 soggetti" --- problematic because it does not include the Art of Fugue theme, incomplete either because Bach left it unfinished or because those responsible for the print (mainly Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel) failed to recognise its completion. As it stands, the fugue breaks off at the point where the third of the "3 soggetti", which spells out Bach's name in the musical notes B flat-A-C-H ( =B natural), is combined with the other two. Several musical scholars have completed Bach's work for him, but in this recording the music is allowed to peter out as it does in the composer's manuscript. Purchasers of the original edition were compensated by the inclusion of the chorale prelude Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein, which however, has noting to do with The Art of Fugue itself.

        Features of the 1751 print suggest that, insofar as performance was part of the design, Bach thought of The Art of Fugue as being for keyboard, but it is extremely unlikely that he would have envisaged a complete performance of such a long work in an instrumental monochrome and centred on a single tonality (D minor). For the present recording Sir Neville Marriner and Andrew Davis sought to achieve variety by distributing the four canons among the fugal movements and by supplementing the organ and two harpsichords with string and woodwind instruments.

        The events leading to the composition and publication of A Musical Offering are among the most important and fully documented in Bach's life. In May 1747 he visited the court of Frederick the Great at Potsdam, where his son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed as harpsichordist to the king. Many years later Bach's first son, Wilhelm Friedemann, who had accompanied his father on this visit, recalled how the Prussian monarch

        The edition went on sale the same year at the Michaelmas fair in Leizig, and a presentation copy was prepared on special paper for the king himself. What Wilhelm Friedemann failed to mention in this account (as set out by Bach's first biographer, J.N. Forkel) is the trio sonata for flute, violin and continuo, which is the most substantial and, in many ways, the most satisfying item in the collection. Into each of its four movements, as into all the other pieces in the work, the "royal theme" is woven in one form or another.

        As with The Art of Fugue, it is doubtful that Bach ever envisaged cyclical performance. This recording adopts an order close to that proposed by the Bach scholar H.T. David, in which the trio sonata occupies a central position. It is preceded by a three-part fugue (or ricercar) --- perhaps a considered recollection of the one Bach improvised for the king, here played on the organ --- and five canons. The second of these is a "crab" canon, in which the imitating part proceeds backwards. In the other four the royal theme is heard in various guises as a counterpoint to the imitating parts; the last one is a modulating canon against which, in the margin of the presentation copy, was placed a Latin inscription which might be translated: "As the modulation rises, so may the glory of the King."

        The trio sonata is followed by five more canons, including a mirror canon (No. 10) and another in which one of the imitating parts proceeds in both inversion and augmentation (No. 11), giving rise to another marginal inscription, "As the notes grow, so may the fortune of the King." Placed last is the famous six-part ricercar, as supreme an example of Bach's mastery of the ancient style (stile antico) as is the trio sonata of his command of an up-to-date idiom.