Johann Sebastian Bach
II LIFE
Early LifeArnstadt: 1703-1707Mühlhausen: 1707-1708Weimar: 1708-1717
Köthen: 1717-1723III WORKS Cantatas
Motets Oratorios and PassionsMagnificat and B-Minor MassOrgan WorkClavier WorksWorks for Solo InstrumentsWorks for Instrumental Ensemble
Musical Offering, Canonic Variations, Art of Fugue
In the last decade of his life Bach demonstrated his consummate achievements as a master of counterpoint in three works devoted to the craft of strict fugue and canon. The Musical Offering, BWV 1079, based on a theme proposed by Frederick the Great during Bach’s 1747 visit to Berlin, contains two large ricercares (old-fashioned fugues in Renaissance vocal style), a trio sonata, and a sequence of puzzle canons (canons that need to be solved). In 1747 Bach also composed the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel Hoch, BWV 769, to mark his entry into the Society of Musical Sciences, whose select membership of 20 composers and theorists included George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann. Based on the Christmas chorale “From heaven above to earth I come,” the variations present a sequence of five elaborate canons for an organ with two manuals and pedal.
Die Kunst der Fuge (“The Art of Fugue”), BWV 1080, once thought to date from Bach’s final year, is now known to have been compiled over a period of a decade or more. Around 1740 Bach assembled the core of the collection: a series of fugues and canons of increasing complexity, all based on the same principal theme. In the first version of the collection, the fugues include pieces for one, two, and three subjects. At the very end of his life Bach picked up the collection once again, this time with an eye to publishing it, perhaps as yet another part of the Clavierübung series. He revised and expanded the music, and added a climactic concluding fugue for four subjects, the last of which spelled in music his own name: B A C H (with B as B-flat and H as B-natural in the German scale). Bach died before bringing the gigantic quadruple fugue to an end, however, and the music breaks off, unfinished, in the 239th measure. The incomplete collection was printed after his death by members the family. Although The Art of Fugue is commonly performed on various combinations of instruments—strings, brass, woodwinds, full orchestra, or even saxophone quartet—it is clear that Bach intended the piece for keyboard (harpsichord or possibly organ).
Method of Composing
IV THE REVIVAL OF BACH’S MUSIC
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