Program notes by Eric Bromberger

The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080
Contrapunctus I
Contrapunctus IV
Contrapunctus IX
Johann Sebastian BACH
Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig

About 1740 Bach’s life underwent a quiet but profound change. While he retained his position as cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, his musical interests began to evolve. He had long before given up his initial responsibility to compose cantatas, passions, and other liturgical music, and in 1741 he relinquished the directorship of the Collegium Musicum, the small semi-professional orchestra he had led over the previous decade. Now, at age 55 (and perhaps with the first indications of the eye trouble that would eventually leave him blind), Bach felt a renewed interest in what had always been a consuming passion: contrapuntal music and its possibilities.

In 1747 came one of the most famous signs of this interest. On a visit to Berlin, Bach played before Frederick the Great, who in turn gave Bach a theme and asked him to extemporize a six-part fugue on it. Bach improvised a three-part fugue for Frederick on the spot and then–back in Leipzig–took that “royal” theme through thirteen further contrapuntal extensions, which he presented to the King as A Musical Offering. But Bach’s interest in exploring the contrapuntal possibilities of a single theme extended well beyond the famous visit to Berlin. About 1740 Bach had begun a lengthy work consisting of a series of fugues and canons based on one theme. His work on this project continued across the decade, even during the years of his increasing blindness, and in fact the project would remain unfinished–at the time of his death on July 28, 1750, Bach was working on a triple fugue that was left incomplete. Bach had prepared the first eleven fugues for publication, and after his death all of the pieces based on this one theme were gathered by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and published in the fall of 1751 under the name The Art of the Fugue, a title the composer probably never heard or imagined.

This concert opens with three of the fugues from The Art of the Fugue. Bach himself arranged these fugues (in this work he preferred the title Contrapunctus, or “counterpoint,” to Fugue) in a sequence of increasing complexity, and the present program preserves this notion of increasing complexity. Bach’s fundamental theme seems simplicity itself: in D minor, it is only four measures long, and–even at a steady tempo–it gives the impression of increasing speed, as the half-notes of the opening measures give way to quarters in the third and to eighths in the final measure. Contrapunctus I introduces Bach’s fundamental fugue subject in its simplest form, worked out here without countertheme. Contrapunctus IV has the fugue subject in inversion, here developed with unusual harmonic freedom. The brief Contrapunctus IX is a spirited double fugue on a new theme. As it progresses, it incorporates as its second subject the original fugue theme, combined at the interval of a twelfth, and so it is sometimes called alla Duodecima.

Concerto in D Minor for Harpsichord, BWV 1052

In April 1729, shortly after leading performances of his monumental St. Matthew Passion, Bach made a significant change in his musical life. After six exhausting years as cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig–during which he had composed cantatas, oratorios, and passions for religious observances–Bach was named director of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum. The Collegium Musicum corresponded somewhat to the modern university-community symphony orchestra: it was an ensemble of student, amateur, and professional instrumentalists who rehearsed weekly and performed orchestral music. The orchestra gave public concerts on Wednesday afternoons from 4 to 6 in a coffee-garden called Grimmische’s Thor during the warm months and inside Zimmerman’s coffee-house on Friday evenings from 8 to 10 during the winter. After six years of having to produce a new cantata almost every week, Bach was doubtless glad to put his responsibilities for church music behind him and turn to the quite different pleasures of secular music.

As director, Bach was responsible for choosing the music the Collegium Musicum performed, and he quickly discovered that he needed new keyboard concertos, probably for his talented sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel to perform with the orchestra. He turned to his library and recycled eight concertos he had written much earlier–often for other instruments–by arranging them as keyboard concertos for the Collegium. The Concerto in D Minor is one of the works Bach transcribed from an earlier version, and evidence suggests that the original version was for violin and may have been written as early as Bach’s tenure in Weimar, 1708-1717 (working from the keyboard transcription, scholars have been able to reconstruct the original version for violin). Bach would have thought of this as a clavier concerto–a work for such keyboard instruments as harpsichord or clavichord–though early in the nineteenth century Ignaz Moscheles performed the Concerto in D Minor on the piano in London, and it is often performed today on that instrument. At this concert it is heard on the harpsichord.

The Allegro bursts to life with a hard-edged ritornello that will be tossed antiphonally between the violin sections over the span of this movement. The harpsichord quickly makes its distinctive entrance with a passage full of characteristic 32^nd-note runs, and listeners will recognize in the keyboard part a number of figurations that suggest this music’s origin as a violin concerto. Bach was no believer in virtuosity for its own sake, but at the center of this movement he does write out what amounts to a cadenza for the soloist–a series of brilliant runs–and provides further solo passages before the movement comes to its close on a firm reprise of the ritornello. The expressive Adagio moves to G minor, and Bach opens with a long introduction for the orchestra in octaves before the soloist enters with quite different music–disconsolate and intricate–that is eventually taken up by the orchestra The concluding Allegro returns to D minor. Its ritornello is full of energy, while the solo passages encompass a wide range of expression–sometimes powerful, sometimes delicate. Bach brings matters to a pause with a brief Adagio before the ritornello leaps up to thrust the movement to its animated cadence.

The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080
Contrapunctus XIV

Program note provided by the artist

The earliest surviving source for The Art of the Fugue is a manuscript, written in Bach’s hand and including early versions of most of the fugues and canons, that scholars now assign to the years around 1740-42, and since the manuscript mostly consists of fair copies in full score, it can be assumed that the original composition of The Art of the Fugue must have been undertaken still earlier, in working manuscripts now lost, perhaps in the late 1730s. But if The Art of the Fugue was not literally Bach’s last work, it was the project that occupied him the most in his last decade: the sources suggest that composition and revision continued, intermittently, throughout the 1740s, with Bach continuing to refine the music even as it was being edited and prepared for the engraver, around 1746-49.

Even if The Art of the Fugue was intended for the harpsichord, there is no denying that the music – like so much of Bach - is eminently suited to transcription. (Bach himself was a prolific transcriber of his own music.) Even his most idiomatic keyboard music is amenable to transcription, as Bernard Labadie showed spectacularly a few years ago with is arrangement of the Goldberg Variations, a work written specifically for a two-manual harpsichord. The notion that Bach’s music is “ idealistic “has always been based more on the nature of the music than on historical sources anyway, and in this respect it has validity. Transcription of a work like The Art of the Fugue is not only possible but in some ways positively advantageous, it reveals Bach’s part-writing with astonishing clarity, for instance.

The Art of the Fugue is cyclical, based on a single theme, and reveals Bach’s propensity for exploring every possible option for variation and development of the given material.

No. XIV is a quadruple four-voice fugue on three new themes combined with the main theme. The third theme begins with notes B-flat, A, C, and B-natural, in German musical nomenclature, BACH. This last fugue is a fitting climax not only contrapuntally but symbolically: 14 being the sum of the numbers corresponding to the letters BACH, and Bach himself worked this numerological reference into some of his works.

- Bernard Labadie & Davitt Moroney

Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066

If Bach were to attend this concert, he would not recognize this music by its title on the program page. The name “suite” is the invention of scholars and musicians who came a century later, when Bach’s four works in this form were given a name that corresponded to later musical practices. Bach himself called these four works ouvertures, a spelling that makes clear the French origin of the form. The French ouverture was an instrumental work in one movement divided into a slow-fast-slow sequence: a slow introduction led to an extended fast section, usually in fugal form, and then a conclusion on an abbreviated return of the slow opening material. The ouverture movement was followed by a collection of dance movements, but Bach used the title to refer to the entire work.

To complicate matters further, Bach may in no sense have intended this as orchestral music. His original manuscripts have vanished, and the scores have been re-created from the surviving parts; evidence suggests that he may have intended this music for a chamber ensemble of about eight string players. Modern performance practices usually offer this music with a chamber orchestra-sized ensemble, however, and it profits greatly from the richer sonority. Scholars have also had trouble dating this music. It appears to belong to Bach’s period as Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen (1717-1723), when the bulk of his secular music was composed, but no one is sure.

What is not in doubt, however, is the quality of the music itself. Bach’s First Orchestral Suite is buoyant music, full of energy and good spirits. He scores the suite for two oboes, bassoon, strings, and continuo and appends a varied collection of dances to the opening Ouverture. This opening movement is without tempo indications–the marking Grave for the opening and Vivace for the fugal section are not in Bach’s hand and are considered spurious (though they do reflect the general thrust of the movement). The slow opening section is based on sturdy dotted rhythms, and the fugal section has a powerful main theme; Bach occasionally lets the wind instruments take over the development of this theme. The Courante flows smoothly on its propulsive main idea (that French title originally meant “running”), while the fourth movement, Forlane, is based on a stately old dance of Venetian original–it has virtually disappeared today, though Ravel used that title for the slow movement of his Le Tombeau de Couperin. The other four dance movements all have first and second parts and are in ABA form: the first section is presented with repeats, followed by a second section, again with repeats; each movement concludes with a return of the opening section, now without repeats. Bach preserved the French titles for all his dances (it was the usual practice in Germany to use French titles for movements). These movements–gavotte, minuet, and bourrée–require little comment. The Passepied–that title means “pass-foot”–was originally a French sailors’ dance in triple time; Bach’s Passepied, which features distinctive writing for the oboes in the middle section, brings the suite to a lively close.