Bach
Fugue Master
Johann Sebastian Bach‘s extant compositions are what give us physical evidence and insight to his outstanding musical accomplishments. Among his interests were composing in the fugal style. Systematic yet creative is this method, as shown by Johann Joseph Fux‘s 1725 treatise Gradus Ad Parnassum, a step by step approach to this type of composition. First a literary excerpt and then musical examples.
“Nowhere could the principles of counterpoint be more richly applied than in the composition on fugue. In this genre, Bach not only excelled, peerlessly, but set new standards of technique, form and performance. 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.’
According to the Obituary, Bach ‘through his own study and reflection alone became even in his youth a pure and strong fugue writer’ on models by Bruhns, Buxtehude, Reinken, Froberger, Böhm and others. And the evidence in both instrumental and vocal examples from well before the Weimar period overwhelmingly supports this view. Bach’s inquisitiveness led him to scrutinize and absorb these masters’ different approaches and their enormous stylistic breadth. Of particular interest to him were the various ways they elaborated a musical subject in fugal form.
Unlike the free textures of preludes or dance movements, the rigorous polyphonic structure of a fugue required a firm command of the principles and rules of counterpoint. Bach’s deep immersion in the contrapuntal intricacies of composition and his analysis of many different fugal examples spurred him to form a musical logic that became an unmistakable hallmark of his style.”
– Christoph Wolff; Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician – pages 93, 171, 308, 432.
Bach – Fugue in G minor BWV 578 Ton Koopman
“The Art of Fugue or The Art of the Fugue (original German: Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV 1080, is an incomplete masterpiece by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). The work was most likely started at 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.'”
J.S. Bach: Fuge BWV 998
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