I always knew that someday I would have to learn The Art of Fugue by Bach. I had rather purposely put it off while performing and recording all the rest of his keyboard musicwhich was enough of a challenge in itself. What I had heard of it never seemed to excite me very much. Neither could I believe that Bach in his final years had at last managed to write something boring. Wachet auf, ruft uns die StimmeBWV 645 Wo soll ich fliehen hin Auf meinen lieben GottBWV 646 Wer nun den lieben Gott. QuickCheck Developers Koen Claessen, John Hughes Initial release 1999 Stable release. Bass Clarinet Music Updated 7 November 2017 For the convenience of bass clarinetists, we have listed all of our bass clarinet music and two pieces for contra. Contrapunctus 14 Abruptly' title='Contrapunctus 14 Abruptly' />It was therefore with great determination that I set to work on it in 2. Londons Royal Festival Hall to perform it during the 2. It was also good to approach The Art of Fugue with so many years of Bach playing behind me. The Goldberg Variations and much of the Well Tempered Clavier seem like childs play in comparison. In The Art of Fugue there are no Preludes for comic reliefjust one fugal masterpiece after the other. Its severity can be daunting, but also completely overwhelming, both intellectually and emotionally. And now I realize it is anything but boring. Bach was sixty three years old in 1. By the end of 1. 74. His last known signature dates from 1. December of that year. Contrapunctus 14 16 BitHis eyes were giving him serious problems after a life and especially a youth of unheard of zeal in studying as written in his obituary. It is very likely he also had diabetes. At the end of March 1. London surgeon Dr John Taylor to remove cataracts in both eyes. A second operation followed a few days later. The after effects of the surgery severely weakened his system and he never regained his health. Ten days before his death he briefly regained his sight, but only hours later suffered a stroke. He died on 2. 8 July 1. At the time of this final illness the plates for the engraving of The Art of Fugue were being prepared. The work, however, had its genesis much earlier, most likely around the time of Book 2 of the Well Tempered Clavier c. Goldberg Variations 1. An autograph score containing twelve fugues and two canons and bearing the title Die Kunst der Fuga d. Sig. Joh. Seb. Bach written in the hand of his student and future son in law Johann Christoph Altnickol was largely finished by 1. Berlin. Bach was always one to keep perfecting things, and when the plates were being prepared in those final years he added more pieces and changed the existing order. It is interesting that at a time when composers were beginning to turn towards the simplicity and elegance of the galant style, Bachs music became even more contrapuntally complex. Back in 1. 73. 7 the composer Johann Adolf Scheibe had attacked Bachs style in an anonymous letter, calling his music turgid and confused, saying it was overladen and extremely difficult to play. Bachs supporters came to his defence. Not surprisingly, Bach didnt change his style one bit, but instead gave us glorious creations of even greater complexity. In his advertisement for the publication of The Art of Fugue in 1. Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Category People Blogs License Standard YouTube License Music Contrapunctus XIV Fuga a 3 Soggetti unfinished from The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080. The Art of Fugue or The Art of the Fugue German Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080, is an incomplete work of unspecified instrumentation by Johann Sebastian Bach 1685. C P E Bach wrote Those who are knowledgeable in the history of music will admit that such a work, in which the entire study of fugue is so thoroughly elaborated upon a single theme, has so far nowhere appeared. Since all the parts involved are singable throughout, and one is as strongly worked out as the other, each part has been given its own system, with the appropriate clef, in score Nevertheless, everything has at the same time been arranged for use at the harpsichord or organ. One of the problems facing the interpreter is that the whole work is in the key of D minor and most of it is in the same alla breve time signature. It would be terrible to play all the movements in the same mood. Each must have its own character and say something different. What C P E Bach writes aboveabout all the parts being singableis, I feel, extremely important. The painstaking work I did during the learning process involved singing each voice in turn and marking in the breathing pointswhich come at different times in different voices. There is no escaping that if you want it to make musical sense. Contrapunctus 1 For a work that is so complicated, Bach could not have chosen a simpler beginning. There are no fugal games in the first contrapunctus, only entries of the subject as indeed is the case with the first four contrapuncti. Ties and syncopated rhythms play a big role in the accompanying material, but there is no formal counter subject. Raise Your Game Synonym. We have one overlapping entry at bar 3. Bach always includes the tail of the subject, those final four descending notes, something he never neglects to do in the whole Art of Fugue one false entry in the alto in bar 4. These last five bars were an afterthought and didnt exist in the original version. Much of the episodic material has the same up and down movement for instance in bars 1. The mood is lyrical and expressive. Contrapunctus 2 By the simple addition of some dotted notes to the tail of the subject, Bach completely alters the character of his theme. By continuing this dotted rhythm throughout the entire contrapunctus, he gives us a piece that really has some swing At the beginning he slurs each group of four notes in this dotted rhythm. To me this has always meant that they should not be interpreted as notes ingales in the French manner but played exactly as written. I dont think it means you have to play them completely legato. Especially when there is a tie to the next group as in bar 5 in the left hand00. Not surprisingly, this dotted tail forms the basis of all the accompanying material. In bar 4. 4 11. F major, changing the colour in a very attractive way. The entrance in the bass in bar 6. D minor, needs special emphasis. The tenor in bar 6. It is interesting that in the original Berlin autograph, the piece ends in the dominant at bar 7. It is then followed by what we know today as Contrapunctus 5. As Tovey points out, this must mean that Bach envisaged at least some of the work being performed in sequence. Contrapunctus 3 The third contrapunctus is a beautifully expressive piece. Quietly assured, chromatic and very vocal in character, it was originally placed second in the cycle. By changing it to third position and inserting Contrapunctus 2, Bach gives us the chance to alternate moods more effectively. It presents the subject only in its inversion, now accompanied by a chromatic counter subject, crawling up and down. Unusually he inserts a two bar episode bars 1. The subsequent episode bars 1. A variation of this same episode will be repeated in bars 3. In bar 2. 3 05. Its third appearance in F major bar 3. From then on, the ornamented version is presented alongside its original. The fugue takes six bars to wind down after the final entrance of the subject. In its original version there were only four bars at this point, the piece ending in bar 7. Bach really knew how to improve things even more. Contrapunctus 4 Contrapunctus 4 is one of the best fugues in the whole cycle. It didnt exist in the early version, so it must have been written in Bachs final years. The subject is again inverted, this time with its initial entry starting on the dominant A instead of the tonic D. The episodes are mainly based on two motifs that four note tail is everywhereright way up and upside down and along with it, often combined together such as in the episodes which begin at bar 5. Belkin Wifi Pcmcia Card. Tovey calls a cuckoo like figure of a descending third, which Bach inverts in bar 6. Special attention must be given to an enhanced form of the subject beginning with the entry in bar 6.