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The Art of Fugue or The Art of the Fugue (original German: Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV 1080, is an incomplete masterpiece[1] by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). The work was probably started in the beginning of the 1740s, if not earlier. The first known surviving version, which contained 12 fugues and 2 canons, was copied by the composer in 1745. This manuscript has a slightly different title, added afterwards by his son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnickol: Die Kunst der Fuga. Bach's second version was published in 1751 after his death. It contains 14 fugues and 4 canons. "The governing idea of the work," as the eminent Bach specialist Christoph Wolff put it, is "an exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject."[2] Each of the 14 fugues except the final unfinished one (however, see below) use the same deceptively simple subject in D minor:
[edit] Sources of the workIn the 1751 printed edition, the various movements are roughly arranged by increasing order of sophistication of the contrapuntal devices used. The Arabic number in the title indicates the number of voices in the fugue, with the exception of the last one, where a 3 Soggetti means "with 3 subjects": Simple fugues:
Counter-fugues, in which a variation of the main subject is used in both regular and inverted form:
Double and triple fugues, with two and three subjects respectively:
Mirror fugues, in which the complete score can be inverted without loss of musicality:
Canons, labeled by interval and technique:
An arrangement of Contrapunctus XIII, see below.
Unfinished quadruple fugue:
The order of the fugues and canons has been debated, especially as there are differences between the manuscript and the printed editions appearing immediately after Bach's death. Also musical reasons have been invoked to propose different orders for later publications and/or the execution of the work, e.g. by Wolfgang Graeser in 1927. The 1751 printed edition contained — apart from a high number of errors and other flaws — a four-part version of Contrapunctus XIII, arranged to be played on two keyboards (rectus BWV 1080/18,1 and inversus BWV 1080/18,2). It is however doubtful whether the printed indication "a 2 Clav.", and the fourth added voice, that is not mirrored according to Bach's usual practice, derive from him, or from his son(s) that supervised this first edition. The engraving of the copper plates for the printed edition would however have started shortly before the composer's death, according to contemporary sources, but it is unlikely that Bach had any real supervision in that preparation of the printed edition, due to his illness at the time. The first printed edition also includes an unrelated work as a kind of "encore", the chorale prelude Vor deinen Thron tret Ich hiermit (Herewith I come before Thy Throne), BWV 668a, which Bach is said to have dictated on his deathbed. A 1742 fair copy manuscript contains Contrapuncti I–III, V–IX, and XI–XIII, plus the octave and augmented canons and an earlier version of Contrapunctus X. [edit] InstrumentationManuscript copies of the Art of Fugue, as well as the first printed edition, use open scoring, where each voice is written on its own staff. This has led to the assumption[3] that the Art of Fugue was an intellectual exercise, meant to be studied and not heard. However, musicologists today, such as Gustav Leonhardt,[4] agree that the Art of Fugue was probably intended to be played on a keyboard instrument.[5] The fact that it is playable on a keyboard at all is evidence for some that this was Bach's intended instrument, as it is not possible to play most of his ensemble pieces on a keyboard instrument.[6] [edit] The unfinished fugue
Contrapunctus XIV breaks off abruptly in the middle of the third section at the 239th measure. The autograph carries a note in the handwriting of Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach saying “Über dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme B A C H im Contrasubject angebracht worden, ist der Verfasser gestorben.” (“At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died.”) However, modern scholarship disputes this version, in particular because the musical notes are indisputably in Bach's own hand, written in a time before his deteriorating vision led to erratic handwriting, probably 1748–1749.[7] In Glenn Gould's recording, the music deliberately stopped at full volume on the first beat of bar 233, the end of the 1751 print edition; the manuscript continues until the first beat of bar 239 and the tenor voice until the end of that bar. Most performers add these bars, and execute a fade out on the last few notes. Many scholars, including Gustav Nottebohm (1881), Wolff and Davitt Moroney, have argued that the piece was intended to be a quadruple fugue, with the opening theme of Contrapunctus I to be introduced as the fourth subject. The title Fuga a 3 soggetti, in Italian rather than Latin, was not given by the composer but by CPE Bach, and Bach's Obituary actually makes mention of “a draft for a fugue that was to contain four themes in four voices”. The combination of all four themes would bring the entire work to a fitting climax. Wolff also suspected that Bach may have finished the fugue on a lost page, called “fragment X” by him, on which the composer attempted to work out the counterpoint between the four subjects. A number of musicians and musicologists have conjectured completions of Contrapunctus XIV, notably music theoretician Hugo Riemann, musicologist Donald Tovey, organists Helmut Walcha and Lionel Rogg, and Davitt Moroney. Ferruccio Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica is based on Contrapunctus XIV, but is more a work by Busoni than by Bach. In 2007, New Zealand organist and conductor Indra Hughes completed a doctoral thesis about the unfinished ending of Contrapunctus 14, proposing that the work was left unfinished not because Bach died, but as a deliberate choice by Bach to encourage independent efforts at a completion.[8][9] Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach discussed the unfinished fugue and Bach's supposed death during composition as an illustration of the Church-Turing Thesis, specifically the notion that logical systems can be made to "destroy themselves" by proving contradictions in their own rules. [edit] The permutation matrixIn 1991 a theory was published by Zoltán Göncz answering the question of how Bach planned the appearance of the fourth subject, the main subject of the cycle: In the course of the exposition of the first three subjects (first subject: mm. 1–21, second subject: mm. 114–141, third subject: mm. 193–207), Bach applied a serial sequence of voice entries decided in advance, by which he determined the space and time parameters of the subject entries. The superimposition of the three exposition matrices foreshadows, and develops as a negative, the sequence of the voice entries of the fourth subject. The copying of the four subjects onto each other displays a characteristic construction of Bach’s oeuvre occurring mainly in the vocal fugues: that of the permutation fugue.
However paradoxical, it follows from the logic of composing a quadruple fugue that the combinations joining all four subjects (i.e. those combinations which appear last when performing the work) were already completed in the very first stage of composition, because the possibility of overlapping the four subjects (1+2+3+4) is the sine qua non of writing a quadruple fugue. The process of composition does not proceed in a linear way from the beginning, but with all four parts in view. [10] One of the striking features of Contrapunctus XIV is that in this movement Bach applied the stretto of whole expositions, layering the first two expositions atop each other prior to introducing the third subject. In the exposition of the first three subjects he “programmed” the later permutation stretti, then applied the expositions as “programs”, “algorithms”. The permutation matrix, apart from originating authentically with Bach, can be proved to have been ready at the time of the genesis of the work (that is, earlier than the surviving section). The discovery of the permutation matrix was one of the most essential requirements for achieving a reconstruction of Contrapunctus XIV which might approach the original form planned by Bach. (Göncz, Z.: Reconstruction of the Final Contrapunctus of The Art of Fugue, in: International Journal of Musicology Vol. 5, pp. 25–93. 1997 ISBN 3-631-49809-8; Vol. 6, pp. 103–119. 1998 ISBN 3-631-33413-3)[11] [edit] A Pythagorean EnigmaThe theory is advanced[12] by the 'cellist Hans-Eberhard Dentler (a pupil of Pierre Fournier's, and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science) that the Art of the Fugue was written to display Pythagorean philosophical principles. The arguments revolve upon Bach's friendship with Johann Matthias Gesner, whom he had known in Weimar and who in 1730 moved to the Thomasschule at Leipzig (where Bach was Cantor) as rector. There Gesner taught Greek philosophy with an emphasis on Pythagorean thought. Among Gesner's students was Lorenz Christoph Mizler, who became a pupil and friend of Bach's. Mizler founded the Korrespondierenden Sozietät der Musikalischen Wissenschaften (Corresponding Society of Musical Sciences), which Bach joined in June 1747, and of which Handel and Telemann were also members. The society was concerned with the union of music, philosophy, mathematics and science in Pythagorean theory, and required each member to contribute a practical work in demonstration of this approach, for which Bach produced his Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her for organ, BWV 769. The Society's work commenced with the publication of a Bibliography (Musikalische Bibliotek) referencing works of Marcus Meibom, John Wallis, Leibniz, Kepler and Robert Fludd.[13] The points of this analysis are that the work constitutes an Enigma in the classical sense of a puzzle contained within its structure. This subsists in the numerical and philosophical relations of Unity (one key signature throughout and the thematic synthesis); Tetraktys (the relation of 1,2,3 and 4 as arranged to form the perfect triangle), the mirror or speculum principle, Contrapunctus as derived from Aristotelian terminology referring to balancing opposites, the Music of the Spheres is possibly reflected in Fugues 1-7, and in the term Fugue, meaning 'flight', which refers both to the flight of the musical phrases and the flight of the soul to God.[14] [edit] Some notable recordings of the Art of FugueSee http://www.jsbach.org/1080.html for a more complete list. Harpsichord:
Organ:
Piano:
String quartet:
Orchestra :
Other:
[edit] Notes and references
[edit] Media[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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