Johann Sebastian Bach (78 page)

 

The true amenity of music consists in the connection and alternation of consonances and dissonances without hurt to the harmony. The nature of music demands this. The various passions, especially the dark ones, cannot be expressed with fidelity to Nature without this alternation. One would be doing violence to the rules of composition accepted everywhere if one wished to slight it. Indeed, the well-founded opinion of a musical ear that does not follow the vulgar taste values such alternation, and rejects the insipid little ditties that consist of nothing but consonances as something of which one very soon becomes tired.
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In Bach's view of nature and harmony, the connection and alternation of consonances and dissonances was governed by counterpoint. And it is the timeless value of counterpoint, way beyond the scope of old and new techniques, styles, or manners of composing, that he thought needed to be upheld. Through Birnbaum, the royal court
compositeur
spoke with authority, and, perhaps even more than before, Bach's compositions written or revised during and after the Scheibe-Birnbaum controversy reflect a deliberate emphasis on the principles of counterpoint. As demonstrated in the concluding quodlibet of the
Goldberg Variations
, even popular tunes could be governed and indeed enhanced by these time-tested rules.

Nowhere, however, could the principles of counterpoint be more richly applied than in the composition of fugue. In this genre, Bach not only excelled, peerlessly, but set new standards of technique, form, and performance. Characteristically, King Friedrich asked him to improvise a fugue, so commonly identified was Bach with the genre. Bach knew both what had been achieved by others in this branch of composition and where his own contributions had a particular impact. He could see that to a considerable extent, his place in history would be that of “fugue master.” Thus, it should hardly surprise us that he devised a plan that would center systematically on fugal composition—unlike
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, without preludes—something neither he nor anyone else had ever done before. Moreover, in designing something like a vocal counterpart, he turned to the timeless genre of the Mass as the type of composition that would most readily lend itself to exclusively contrapuntal treatment.

The Art of Fugue
and the
B-minor Mass
conform to the ever-present Bachian intention of excelling beyond himself and others.
The Art of Fugue
, though linked to earlier fugue compositions, moves to a level that is utterly novel. The entire multisectional work is derived from the same thematic material, a musical plan that presupposes a far-reaching thought process regarding the harmonic-contrapuntal implications of the chosen theme. The result is more than a study of fugue: it is a compendium of the range offered by the utmost concentration and the highest technical demands of instrumental counterpoint. The
B-minor Mass
figures as a fully comparable counterpart. Its dimensions correspond to those of the
St. Matthew Passion
, but the Mass stands out, not just for its dominant choral fugues but for its exclusive focus on contrapuntal settings. It features a dynamic interplay of unparalleled dimensions, pitting vocal against instrumental counterpoint and vice versa, exposing styles conceived both vocally and instrumentally, and integrating many different vocal textures, with and without obbligato instruments, into a large-scale, complex score that has no room for such “lower” categories as recitatives and note-against-note chorale settings.

Two compositional projects played a major role in shaping Bach's work on
The Art of Fugue
:
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, whose score accommodated many but not all fugal devices, and the
Goldberg Variations
, which exhibited the potential of a multimovement monothematic cycle. Thus, in the absence of a datable composing score of
The Art of Fugue
, we can logically trace its true genesis to the beginning of the 1740s, when the composition of both part II of
The Well-Tempered Clavier
and part IV of the
Clavier-Übung
were completed. Indeed, an early version of
The Art of Fugue
emerged by around 1742, when Bach made a fair copy of the work.
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The governing idea of the work, whose title came later (the title page of the autograph fair copy was originally left blank), was an exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject. The carefully constructed subject would generate many movements, each demonstrating one or more contrapuntal principles and each, therefore, resulting in a self-contained fugal form. Bach selected the key of D minor (closely related to the traditional first, or Dorian, mode) and crafted an easily identifiable subject with distinct melodic contours and a sharp rhythmic profile, whose regular and inverted versions, if sounding together in a contrapuntal relationship, resulted in flawless and attractive harmony, and whose chordal structure presented a pivotal cadential scheme (Ex. 12.1).

In the course of the work, the main subject (theme) would be joined by various kinds of derived and freely invented counterpoints, would itself be gradually subjected to variation, and would also be combined with contrasting countersubjects (new themes).

The early version of
The Art of Fugue
(still without title)
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comprised a total of fourteen movements (also lacking headings), which can be regarded as a complete cycle in that the twelve fugues and two canons present a rational order and well-rounded structure (the first column in Table 12.2 indicates the movement sequence in Roman numerals). Its overall organizational design is based on two points.

First, types of counterpoint are introduced according to increasing difficulty and complexity, and sometimes—if particularly significant—are designated in customary Latin or Italian terminology (in the later printed edition):
per augmentationem et diminutionem
= with the subject in augmented (doubled) and diminished (halved) note values;
in contrario motu
= with the entire part in contrary motion;
contrapunctus inversus
= the entire setting inverted, that is, read in mirror image;
in contrapunto alla terza, quinta, decima, or duodecima
= the distance between the subject and its counterpoint at the interval of the third, fifth, tenth, or twelfth.

Second, Bach gradually increases the animation of the subject, giving us a sense of developing variations, with the rhythmic-metric arrangement adding a new dimension to the compositional makeup of the movements.

The changing rhythmic-melodic textures contribute significantly to the overall stylistic variety of the work, which takes as its point of departure the classic simplicity reminiscent of sixteenth-century counterpoint, then touches on prominent models such as the French style, and proceeds to the most sophisticated contemporary mannerisms, as exposed particularly in the translucent web of the capricious two-part canons:

T
ABLE
12.2.
The Art of Fugue
, BWV 1080: Synopsis of Earlier and Later Versions

The autograph fair copy from around 1742 represents
The Art of Fugue
in this fourteen-movement version. Bach, however, clearly fascinated by the work's perplexing challenges and unique opportunities, continued to develop it. Between 1742 and 1746, he revised and expanded individual movements—notably the fugues nos. I–III, which received longer concluding sections, and the augmentation canon no. XII, which was completely rewritten. He also added four entirely new movements, two fugues and two canons. The revisions and additions considerably broadened the conceptual and compositional dimensions of the work. For example, the newly composed Contrapunctus 4, added to the group of simple fugues, introduced a highly innovative modification of the inverted theme by breaking traditional rules of interval order (Ex.12.2).

This change allowed the subject to trigger modulations, within the key of D minor, to E major and B major, an unprecedented expansion of the harmonic spectrum. Bach also added a quadruple fugue (mislabeled “Fuga a 3 soggetti” in the original edition) in which he presented, as the fourth theme, a subject constructed on the musical letters of his own name: B-A-C-H (B and H being the German note names for B-flat and B-natural).
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This chromatic motive permitted him to explore chromatic harmony, prevalent in a number of movements, on a plain thematic level as well—apart from the fact that the B-A-C-H theme emphatically personalized the work. But, most important, Bach completely reorganized the work so that the various movements make up a practical textbook on fugue in five chapters: simple fugues, counterfugues, multiple-theme fugues, mirror fugues, and canons—remarkably predating any theoretical textbook on the subject.

It was at this point, in 1747 or later, that Bach formulated the title
Die Kunst der Fuga
(added in the hand of his son-in-law Altnickol to the autograph fair copy of the earlier version) or, entirely Germanized,
Die Kunst der Fuge
(the title of the 1751 edition).
³⁴
Although the title does not appear in Bach's own hand, there is no reason to doubt its authenticity. Moreover, the fact that he used the term “contrapunctus” for the individual fugues indicates that he wanted the pieces to be seen not exclusively as fugues but, more generally, as examples of contrapuntal settings.
³⁵
Bach intended, probably from the start, to publish the work. However, not before 1748, and definitely after the publication of the
Musical Offering
, the
Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch
,” and the Schübler Chorales, was
The Art of Fugue
ready to go into production. For the most part, Bach was able to supervise the engraving process, even though he would not see it through to the end. A note written posthumously on the proof sheets by his second-youngest son, Johann Christoph Friedrich, indicates how meticulously Bach went about movement headings:

 

Canon p[er] Augmentationem contrario motu.

NB: The late Papa had the following heading engraved on the plate: “Canon per Augment: in Contrapuncto all ottave,” but he had crossed it out on the proof plate and put it in the above-noted form.
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