Contrapunctus XIV, from The Art of Fugue

Die Kunst der Fuge, or The Art of Fugue, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) stands at the end of a long and incredibly productive life. A mythical aura surrounds the work, and its puzzles have continued to exercise scholars for the last 250 years. His compositional career, so rich in polyphonic music, culminates in a grand and admittedly complex way with The Art of Fugue. Left incomplete at his death, almost all the material survives in Bach’s own hand in a copy written out five years earlier. It epitomizes Bach’s desire to comprehensively explore, sometimes in breathtaking detail, the musical possibilities inherent in a deceptively simple melody. The end result in The Art of Fugue is fourteen movements each called Contrapunctus, plus four canons arranged in order of increasing complexity. Different fugues present the motto theme upright, inverted, expanded and contracted in terms of rhythm, with numerous counter-themes, and in various styles and articulations.

Most of the fugues are short and resemble typical four-voice examples found in the Well-Tempered Clavier. But Contrapunctus XIV, which ends the collection, is far more substantial. It is as interesting for what it includes as for what it does not include. Lasting over ten minutes and touching on three distinct themes, Contrapunctus XIV features a fugue built on the pitch pattern of the composer’s own name: B-A-C-H, which translates to B-flat, A, C, and B natural (based on the German system of labeling pitch). At the same time, it is the only piece in The Art of Fugue that does not include the basic subject that occurs in all other movements of the collection. Moreover, Bach did not complete the piece; the manuscript cuts off mid-phrase. Some scholars take the absence of the motto theme as a reason to exclude Contrapunctus XIV from the collection altogether. Others believe Bach was leading up to a final, motto-based grand finish that he did not have time to write before his sight and strength failed.

(c) Jason Stell