Masterpiece from a Friendly Man

Bach's The Art of Fugue does not enjoy the kind of popularity it deserves. Because it is such an extraordinary display of Bach's unapproachable skill as a contrapuntist, many listeners are afraid of The Art of Fugue thinking they will not be able to understand it, much less enjoy it. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, for Bach's understanding of fugal procedures was so complete and so natural that his fugues are never dry exercises, but are always gems, whether big or small, that make for most enjoyable listening, simply as music without regard to the extraordinary craft with which they have been constructed.

Perhaps people's apprehensions and diffidence about approaching the more monumental works of Bach is somehow colored by the general misconception that people have about Bach as a person. He is generally conjured up as this dour, old-fashioned cantor in black robes churning out cantatas on a regular basis, unappreciated by his peers except for the occasional noble man stunned into a generous act after hearing the Master's keyboard playing.

Wrong. Argumentative though he may have been in his zealous defense of what he considered to be his professional perogatives and his musical standards, Bach was a friendly man, who laughed easily and enjoyed a glass of good wine as much as the next person. In Leipzig, he was on good terms with students at the University of Leipzig, some of whom were his pupils and also classmates of his sons who matriculated there. And the Cantor who presided over the musical affairs of Leipzig's two main churches also was, for at least ten seasons, music director and conductor of the Collegium Musicum, a group who presented the most popular concert series in Leipzig at the time. A family man, an amateur theological scholar of high standing, a musician whose favorite composers among his contemporaries included Handel, Zelenka, Hasse, and the two Grauns, the Bach that the surviving documents and letters reveal to us was a far different man from the devout but litigious sourpuss that past generations considered him to have been.

Listen to Vladimir Feltsman perform "Art of Fugue, I. Contrapunctus No. 1"

So think of the real J.S. Bach when you ponder The Art of Fugue, that last collection of pieces Bach prepared for publication. Bach published little during his own lifetime, and all but two of the compositions that were published were issued on Bach's own initiative. These works include The Six Partitas, The Italian Concerto, The Ouverture in the French Manner, The Third Volume of “the Clavierubung, the “Goldberg” Variations, the Six Schubler Chorales, the Canonic Variations on ‘‘Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her," The Musical Offering, and lastly, The Art of Fugue. (He also planned to publish the 18 Chorales of a Different Type, but did not live long enough to do so.) These publications represent Bach's own distillation of what he felt was most important to him with respect to his craft and art. It is significant; of course, that he himself published none of his vocal music, for reasons that are unclear and too complex to speculate about here.

The Art of Fugue was not complete, apparently, when Bach died; a great quadruple fugue, one of the subjects of which is, in German musical notation, BACH (B Flat, A, C, B Natural) breaks off shortly after the introduction of that subject. On the testimony of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, the unfinished fugue was to have been followed by a four part fugue on four subjects invertible in all four parts, note for note. However, the actual history of the work, and its composer's intentions, are cloudy and may never be satisfactorily resolved. Suffice it to say, however. that neither C.P.E. Bach nor his brother Wilhelm Friedemann Bach were living at home during the last two years of their father's life.

Since Bach's day, a number of editions of The Art of Fugue and completions of the unfinished fugue have appeared. The work was largely written and, in the first edition, entirely printed, in open score, that is, with each part on a separate staff with no indication of instrument. While a keyboard instrument (most likely without pedals, although an instrument with pedals is certainly admissible) surely was the intended vehicle for any realization, all sorts of instrumentations have been proposed, and the work has been recorded in versions ranging from full orchestra to a quartet of saxophones. The Swingle Singers have even recorded a Contrapunctus or two. Which helps in proving my initial contention that The Art of Fugue is not an intimidating work.