The Art of Fugue Contrapunctus XIV w 4th exposition completed скачать в хорошем качестве

The Art of Fugue Contrapunctus XIV w 4th exposition completed

To try to complete the last fugue in The Art of Fugue is to step into treacherous and controversial waters. There are those who maintain it was deliberately left uncompleted and should remain so; that it is a quadruple fugue, with the last subject being the motto theme, (which may or may not require a separate exposition and fugue); that the work itself was intended for harpsichord / organ etc; that it was not intended for performance at all, but simply as an academic study in counterpoint. It has also been suggested that Bach allowed six pages for the completion of the final fugue, and that since five were completed by Bach himself, the ending would not have been far off. It is further suggested that the number of bars lacking is forty-one, (the sum of the numbers in “J.S. Bach”), in accordance with a theory of proportional parallelism, and that Bach may have intended its completion by members of the Mizler Society. One other suggestion is that he intended to write a “permutation fugue”. Whatever the merits of these various positions, they cannot be gone into here. Suffice it to say that this completion is not an “academic” one. Rather, it is simply an exploration of some of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in the subjects, as if Bach had set an exercise for his students, independent of what he, himself, might have written. A reasonable stylistic fidelity and musicality are two obviously important criteria in attempting any completion, since no-one could ever equal his contrapuntal ingenuity and style. It is, perhaps, something of a blessing for students of fugue, in that Contrapunctus XIV was left incomplete, for it provides an unparalleled opportunity for them to get to know the work better, and to exercise their contrapuntal ability in trying to complete it. Fortunately, Bach provided many of the pieces of the puzzle, and it is up to the student to try to put them together with imagination and skill. I suggest, for example, that a student might first begin by copying out only Bach’s subject entries in each voice for the whole fugue as we have it, (239 bars), and then to write his or her own counterpoint in response to these and then to see later how Bach himself dealt with the material, (no peeking when desperate!). Episodes must be independently developed from given themes. The result will possibly teach him or her more than any dry analysis. No doubt, due to my own limited knowledge, there are many infelicities, and even mistakes here; questions, whether of style, counterpoint, tonality, harmony, structure, balance, or the choice and sequence of keys, repetition, redundancy, or whatever, which I am sure more knowledgeable musicians will be able to point out for the benefit of all, including myself. There is also the question of whether or not Bach intended an exposition and fugue on the fourth, ‘master’, subject, and whether or not all four subjects would actually have been combined and inverted. Here, rather than combining the “master subject” with the other three, “cold”, as it were, I have provided a fourth exposition and fugue. Perhaps that is a mistake, for it makes the whole fugue very long, (some might say inordinately so,) and naturally, opinions will vary, (though one might ask, “How long is a piece of string?”) As to whether or not Bach also intended to invert all the subjects, as C.P.E Bach and Agricola claimed, I have given just one example of this. (I have also provided a shorter completion, available elsewhere, without a fourth fugue.) Bach loved full harmony, which I have accordingly used at the close, gradually increasing the number of voices to eight, in what I hope is a sonorous ending to a magisterial work. I have also placed his name in the soprano for the final entry, in a small tribute to his incomparable and unrivalled genius and art.