Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of the Fugue was the last and one of the most complex and significant works by the maestro (1749–1750). The composer did not live to complete the final fugue of the cycle. In 1752, after Bach’s death, the cycle was published by Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel.
Bach completed the score of the cycle, but he did not indicate for which instrument – or group of instruments – it was intended; and so it is most frequently performed either on the piano or the organ, although there are also orchestral versions. Having made it his task to establish a unique academy of counterpoint, Bach named all of his fugues “counterpoints”, thus underlining the integral unity of the entire cycle.
The Art of the Fugue is a deeply considered and logically structured work. The fugues follow one after the other according to the principle of ascending from the simple to the complex. Counterpoint No 19, which completes this grandiose cycle, is an unfinished fugue to four themes in which Bach’s counterpoint brilliance reaches its zenith. But at this peak, the music … breaks off. Thus the performer is always faced with the question of either completing the composition of the fugue himself or of stopping on the final note written by Bach.
Pavel Velikanov |
