tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/bach-37148/articlesBach – The Conversation2023-10-30T13:06:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165232023-10-30T13:06:49Z2023-10-30T13:06:49ZHow Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor became Halloween’s theme song<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556339/original/file-20231027-22-b2a8z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C15%2C5148%2C3741&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Bach's era, the pipe organ was one of the world's most technologically advanced instruments.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/johann-sebastian-bach-playing-the-organ-at-the-st-thomas-news-photo/526606156?adppopup=true">Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine a grand house on a hill, after dark on an autumn night. As the door opens, an organ pierces through the thick silence and echoes through the cavernous halls. </p>
<p>The tune that comes to many minds will be Johann Sebastian Bach’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/229bLqF7XBz9wWMcZHQKcBf/toccata-and-fugue-in-d-minor-by-johann-sebastian-bach">Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565</a>, an organ work composed in the early 18th century. Most people today recognize it as a sonic icon of a certain type of fear: haunting and archaic, the kind of thing likely to be manufactured by someone – a ghost, perhaps – wearing a tuxedo and lurking in an abandoned mansion. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="45" data-image="" data-title="The iconic intro to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor" data-size="1090383" data-source="Paul Fey/YouTube" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v9EkhF8OkrY" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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The iconic intro to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v9EkhF8OkrY">Paul Fey/YouTube</a><span class="download"><span>1.04 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2896/toccata-in-d-minor-by-j-s-bach-organ-music-church.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>Bach could not have thought that his nearly 9-minute organ piece would become so strongly associated with haunted houses and sinister machinations. <a href="https://uta.academia.edu/MeganSarno">As a musicologist</a> whose current research is focused on the musical representation of mystery, I see the story of this song as a classic example of how the meaning, use and purpose of music can change over time.</p>
<h2>30 seconds of sheer suspense</h2>
<p>Bach was a technically skilled musical craftsman and a scholar of composition. In his work, he sought to dutifully serve his employer, whether that was a Lutheran church, a royal court or a town council. He wasn’t like the famous composers of later eras – <a href="https://www.operaphila.org/whats-on/on-stage-2016-2017/figaro/composer/">Mozart</a>, <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/composers/haydn/">Haydn</a>, <a href="https://www.thecollector.com/franz-liszt-romantic-music-era/">Liszt</a> – who used their talents to build fame and increase their influence.</p>
<p>As Bach scholar Christoph Wolff <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393322569">has pointed out</a>, Toccata and Fugue belongs to the repertory of virtuosic show pieces that Bach created to exhibit his own prowess as an organ player. </p>
<p>For Bach, who left no documents pertaining to this piece, the work would have been merely functional, a way to show the abilities of the organ and to put his talent to good use – not indicative of emotions, stories or other ideas.</p>
<p>The music of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue owes much of its spookiness to the drama it employs: Harmonically, it is set in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43858066">a somber minor mode</a> that is generally aligned with more negative emotions such as sadness, nostalgia, loss and despair. </p>
<p>Within this minor mode, a striking melodic contour is unleashed. The piece’s first pitch is the fifth scale degree instead of the first pitch of the scale. The unexpected note creates uncertainty. Then there’s a quick descent down the D minor scale after the initial flickering ornament.</p>
<p>Add to this the silent background and the pregnant pauses between musical phrases, and the first 30 seconds are sheer suspense. A heavily contrasting texture – with lots of notes stacked up on each other – follows, introducing sonic clashes and rich harmony that swell with power. </p>
<p>The piece moves quickly after this arresting beginning, relentlessly following a pattern of solo figures interspersed with massive, pounding chords.</p>
<h2>The organ’s haunting effect</h2>
<p>The sounds of the pipe organ further enhance the piece’s spooky sound.</p>
<p>During the Baroque era – roughly 1600 to 1750 – <a href="https://interlude.hk/the-baroque-era-the-golden-age-of-the-organ/">the organ reached the height of its popularity</a>. At the time, it was one of humankind’s most technologically advanced instruments, and musicians routinely performed organ music during church services and in concerts held at churches. </p>
<p>But as musicologist Edmond Johnson <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-abstract/30/2/180/63530/The-Death-and-Second-Life-of-the-Harpsichord?redirectedFrom=PDF">has explained</a>, many instruments preferred in the Baroque era, such as the organ and <a href="https://philharmonia.org/learn-and-listen/baroque-instruments/harpsichord/">the harpsichord</a>, had become out of fashion by the 19th century, stashed in storage rooms where they gathered dust. </p>
<p>When music historians and ancient music revivalists first brought these instruments out for public performances after more than a century in storage, the now unfamiliar instruments sounded archaic and creaky to audiences. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421160">Musicologist Carolyn Abbate has argued</a> that music can be “sticky,” collecting new meanings as contexts change and time passes. You can see this in the way <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ave-Maria-song-by-Schubert">Schubert’s famous “Ave Maria”</a> – originally written as accompaniment to the words of Walter Scott’s poem “Lady of the Lake” – became associated with Catholic devotional music. Or the way <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105995/nutcracker-nation/">Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”</a> morphed from an underappreciated neo-Romantic ballet in 19th-century Russia to a popular annual Christmas tradition in the U.S.</p>
<h2>A song that stuck</h2>
<p>So how did the piece become associated with Halloween?</p>
<p>One landmark film likely contributed to the impression that Bach’s Toccata and Fugue portends something nefarious: the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022835/?ref_=fn_rvi_tt_i_1">1931 release</a> of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Rouben Mamoulian’s famous adaptation of <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43/43-h/43-h.htm">Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel</a> uses Bach’s Toccata in the opening credits. </p>
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<p>The piece sets a tone of suspense and suggests the depths of evil that Dr. Jekyll will encounter in his experiments. In the film, Dr. Jekyll is portrayed as an amateur organist who enjoys playing Bach’s music, so it is easy for a listener to apply the dramatic, suspenseful and complex nature of the Toccata to Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego.</p>
<p>Since then, the music has also been used in other spooky films and video games, including “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024894/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Black Cat</a>” (1934) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDRI0ISZhf8">the “Dark Castle”</a> video game series.</p>
<p>Though Bach himself would not have thought of Toccata and Fugue in D minor as spooky, its origins as an innocuous concert piece won’t prevent it from sending a shiver down people’s spines every Halloween.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Sarno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The famous composer certainly didn’t have haunted houses in mind when he wrote the piece.Megan Sarno, Assistant Professor of Music, University of Texas at ArlingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/932372018-03-28T14:19:31Z2018-03-28T14:19:31ZReflections on the historic recordings of an iconic South African composer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211156/original/file-20180320-31596-1qom7gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African born pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanus Muller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the outside, it looks like a barn. But on entering, you step into a spacious hall with a <a href="http://www.steinway.com/pianos/steinway/grand/model-d">Model D Steinway piano</a> and small recording studio. <a href="http://www.pottonhallltd.co.uk">Potton Hall</a> on the UK’s Suffolk coast is located in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/49ae5227-605a-47a8-9b8e-cd89bf01a97c">Benjamin Britten</a> country. To the north, it’s half an hour from Lowestoft where the composer was born in 1913; to the south, 20 minutes from Aldeburgh where he died in 1976. </p>
<p>It was here, on 15 and 16 February, where <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">Daniel-Ben Pienaar</a> sat down to record, for the first time ever, the complete solo piano music of pioneering South African composer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25434572?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Arnold van Wyk</a>. Pienaar’s work has been critically acclaimed in <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/">Gramophone Magazine</a> (Editor’s Choice), <a href="http://www.classical-music.com/">BBC Music Magazine </a>(Instrumental Recording of the Month), Britain’s <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/">Sunday Times</a> (Top 5 Recordings of 2011), <a href="https://www.diapasonmag.fr/">Diapason</a> and <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/">Der Spiegel</a>. Van Wyk was part of the beginnings of Western composition in South Africa in the early decades of the twentieth century. He contributed major works to the local classical music canon. </p>
<p>Van Wyk was Britten’s contemporary. He was born in 1916 in the small South African town of Calvinia and died in 1983 in Bellville, near Cape Town. Although he displays influences of Britten in some of his works, he was never part of Britten’s circle. Studying at the <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/">Royal Academy of Music</a>, Van Wyk encountered other important British composers and musicians. Most significant of these to Van Wyk was composer and editor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/nov/03/guardianobituaries1">Howard Ferguson</a>, who became a life-long friend who supported Van Wyk emotionally and financially. Ferguson also edited and published some of Van Wyk’s work after his death.</p>
<p>Pienaar, who was born in South Africa, has been a <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/about-us/staff/daniel-ben-pienaar">member</a> of the Royal Academy of Music’s teaching faculty since 2005. As he explains on his <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">website</a>, he views the canonic classical repertoire as,</p>
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<p>radically ‘late’ – both with respect to the works themselves, and to the performance traditions and great recorded performances that surround them – demanding an active intervention from the performer.</p>
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<p>This approach, of which <a href="http://www.glenngould.com/biography/">Glenn Gould</a> is perhaps the most famous historical pianistic reference point, situates Pienaar outside conventional notions of “interpretation” that depend on the normative authority of the composer and score. Instead, Pienaar embraces performances, and especially recordings, as radical acts of text creation.</p>
<h2>Against pianism</h2>
<p>Pienaar has recorded extensively, including the complete Beethoven 32 Piano Sonatas, the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2 and the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas. He is the first South African to have done this. </p>
<p>Visiting the Royal Academy of Music in 2014 I was struck by how, during a public lecture, he traversed an expansive piano repertoire without any reference to “style” or “tradition”. Instead, he was concerned with “light” notes and “heavy” notes, and the effect the performer’s choices in this regard had on the logic and creative possibilities of the music. </p>
<p>In a series of lectures in 2017 in Stellenbosch he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213191062032812&set=a.10203655390326979.1073741841.1283378338&type=3&theater">expounded</a> on these ideas. They represented, to my mind, a fundamental challenge to the 19th century construct of concert <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pianism">“pianism”</a>, a practice born from the crucible of virtuosity, composer geniuses and the development of a concert hall tradition.</p>
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<h2>The Potton Hall recordings</h2>
<p>Van Wyk’s mature solo piano music comprises five works: Pastorale e Capriccio (1948, revised 1955), Night Music (1945-1958), Four Piano Pieces (1965), Tristia (1968-1978) and Ricordanza (1973-1979). Of these, Night Music is the major work. Pienaar’s recording of the solo piano music became the first project of the Arnold van Wyk Centenary Fund which was established in 2016 by the Africa Open Institute. </p>
<p>Pienaar explained to me that he wanted to approach the Van Wyk piano music “on the wilder side of control”, much like Van Wyk himself played the piano. Agreeing with recording engineer Philip Hobbs that they would emulate the sound of the Chopin recording they had produced the previous year in the same hall with the same instrument, Pienaar started the recording session with the Four Piano Pieces. </p>
<p>The Potton Hall Steinway is not an instrument with a transparent, projecting brilliance. It requires hard work to achieve the effortless floating of cantabile (songlike) lines. That makes it difficult to discard some of the weight of attack required for the the fast music.</p>
<p>And it was Van Wyk’s fast music that saw the most perceptible reinvention of Van Wyk in Pienaar’s readings. His tempi were furiously fast, exceeding any of the extant recordings of these pieces by a wide margin. </p>
<p>It was the choice of these tempi that allowed Pienaar to test pianistic control against the energy and rhythmic definition imparted by speed. Whereas Van Wyk’s own technically limited pianism often sacrificed “correct” playing for characterful sculpting of sound, Pienaar’s much superior technique could only approach this pervading sense of musical fragility by exceeding the speed limit, as it were. </p>
<p>In the slower music Pienaar took care to differentiate various characters of slowness: the ruminative <a href="https://www.thefreedictionary.com/parlando">parlando</a> (“music to be performed as though speaking”) of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8191679/My_country_my_dry_forsaken_country_On_exile_in_Arnold_van_Wyks_NP_van_Wyk_Louws_and_Ovids_Tristia">Tristia</a>, for example, versus the nostalgic lines of <a href="http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/50602">Ricordanza</a> or the ethereally distant qualities of the coda of Night Music. </p>
<h2>Repository of “lateness”</h2>
<p>In a correspondence preceding the historical recording of Van Wyk’s solo piano music, Pienaar wrote to me that he felt a similarity of approach to performing Van Wyk as he did to performing Beethoven or Bach. Even though the solo piano music had never been recorded as a whole, he felt that, as a performer, he was coming “late” to Van Wyk. He was engaging the music at a contemporary point in time as if it had proliferated in meanings and interpretive possibilities. In imagining the realization of these possibilities in Van Wyk’s music (with single exceptions in lieu of a powerful recorded tradition), he rejected certain fictional readings and embraced others. Ricordanza could therefore become a study in musical line (rather than sonority), and the ‘Scherzino’ from Four Piano Pieces an ironic rather than pedagogic study.</p>
<p>It’s an approach that might serve, when the recordings are released and become known, to draw Van Wyk closer to Britten than to the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1q31scq">English pastoralism</a> with which he has been associated. It is also an illustration that goes beyond the naïve and gauche notions of “interpretation” or “entertainment” associated with pianism. It’s therefore set to give full expression to the performer as creative artist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Africa Open Institute receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Nussbaum Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation. The recording of the Van Wyk piano music was made possible by a grant from the Rupert Music Foundation.</span></em></p>A new recording of South African composer Arnold van Wyk’s complete solo piano music explores new perspectives.Stephanus Muller, Musicology, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/936942018-03-21T08:35:39Z2018-03-21T08:35:39ZThe passion and the beauty: why Easter music will send a shiver up your spine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211223/original/file-20180320-31633-1n1aq6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caravaggio</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Easter is one of those times of year when even the most irregular churchgoer can feel impelled to don their Sunday best and attend a service. This joyful highpoint of the Christian calendar – and the darker-toned days of <a href="https://bible.org/article/chronology-synopsis-passion-week">the Passion</a> which precede it – may not nowadays have quite the same all-pervading presence in the secular consciousness as Christmas. But this time of year has captured the imagination of composers through the ages – not least because the Church was one of the few steady employment options available for composers for centuries. The result has been some of the best-loved, most enduring, and most ethereally transcendent pieces in the choral repertoire.</p>
<p>For many lovers of choral music, <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/johann-sebastian-bach-9194289">Johann Sebastian Bach</a> is the go-to composer at any time of year. But at Easter, his two settings of the Passion story – as told by St Matthew and St John – are monumental presences in any discussion of great Easter repertoire. A devout Lutheran who never had the globetrotting career or musical superstardom of his exact contemporary, Handel, Bach spent almost his entire career in the service of the Church. </p>
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<p>One of his many commitments while Kapellmeister (master of music) in Leipzig was to compose a weekly cantata to be performed in church. On Good Friday, this cantata became a setting of the Easter story running to some two-and-a-half hours. It can only be imagined how long the actual service was that contained this masterpiece, given that a sermon would originally have been preached in the interval between the two parts.</p>
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<p>In keeping with the ideals of Lutheranism, the settings’ libretti are written in the language of the people (German, in this case) – and in earthy, direct terms, rather than florid and inaccessible phrases. Bach was ensuring that even the ordinary person could fully understand and experience this most dramatic of stories. The St Matthew has a reflective, grand character, while the St John is more dramatic and anguished, leaving the listener to muse that Bach would have made an operatic composer to rival his countryman Handel, had his life taken a very different turn.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.biography.com/people/george-handel-9327378">George Frideric Handel</a>, of course, provided his own glorious tribute to the Easter season in the <a href="https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/playbill/2014/12/18/3_1900">second and third parts of the Messiah</a>, his most famous oratorio premiered in 1742. Strangely, the Messiah is now most often heard in the run-up to Christmas, and yet the majority of the work deals with the events of the Passion and Easter. </p>
<p>By the 1740s, Handel’s glittering career as an operatic composer was waning, with public taste moving away from these enormously expensive spectacles. Ever the impresario, Handel moved with the times and began to write oratorio. </p>
<p>The Messiah was a huge success from the start, and can be relied upon to this day to pack concert venues – though perhaps not to the extent of the premiere performance. On April 13, 1742, when the great and the good of Dublin gathered to hear the <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/the-story-behind-the-triumphant-premiere-of-handels-messiah">premiere of Handel’s masterpiece</a>, concern about the capacity of the hall to meet demand was such that male patrons were requested to attend minus their swords, and their female companions to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-glorious-history-of-handels-messiah-148168540/">forgo the customary hoops in their dresses</a>. This allowed an extra 100 audience members to squeeze through the doors.</p>
<h2>Golden age</h2>
<p>For a golden age of religious composition in England, we need to turn back to the turbulent Elizabethan period, when religious affiliation became quite literally a matter of life and death. Thomas Tallis, composer of the famous 40-part motet Spem in Alium, set the Lamentations of Jeremiah not for the sort of public performance that Bach’s works enjoyed, but for the private devotions of recusant Catholics. This gives the rich polyphony, with its suspensions and dissonances, an emotional depth and significance even beyond that provided by the liturgical season.</p>
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<p>At the centre of the Easter story, with Jesus himself, is Mary, and the mother’s anguish expressed in the 13th-century words of the Stabat Mater have inspired many composers. How to choose between the <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/why-are-so-many-composers-drawn-to-the-stabat-mater/">multitude of settings</a> that span hundreds of years? While Vivaldi eschews the Italianate fireworks for which his many concertos have made him justly famous, and presents a stripped-down setting for solo alto and strings, the Polish composer Szymanowski gives us a six-movement, half-hour work for soloists, choir and full orchestra that is full of earthiness and colour.</p>
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<h2>Fruits of guilt</h2>
<p>For those music lovers who prefer to depart from the well-travelled routes and experience some less well-known Eastertide offerings, there are a couple of pieces that would reward the lover of fascinating music stories.</p>
<p>Carlo Gesualdo is hardly a household name as a composer, but his music tends to stay with the listener once discovered – the bizarre part-writing and tortured dissonances can lead the unwary to believe they are listening to 20th-century atonalism, but Gesualdo was in fact a prince who lived from 1566 to 1613. The source of his avant-garde compositional moments was a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2010/mar/18/carlo-gesualdo-composer-psychopath">lifelong sense of guilt and torment</a> at brutally murdering his wife and her lover on catching them in the act of adultery.</p>
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<p>As a prince, he was able to evade justice for his crime, but the effect on his mind is, supposedly, the reason for the astonishing harmonic twists and leaps in his music. His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZAs9LjJAHU">Tristis est Anima Mea</a> is a fine example of his tormented style dovetailing perfectly with the darker moods of Holy Week.</p>
<h2>Mystery of Mozart and the Miserere</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.classicfm.com/composers/allegri/music/gregorio-allegri-miserere/">Gregorio Allegri’s</a> setting of Psalm 51, Miserere Mei Deus, is instantly recognisable to most listeners, with its soprano soloist repeatedly soaring to a spine-tingling top C – all the more effective for the ethereal sound reverberating from the roof of the Sistine Chapel, the venue for which it was originally written, perhaps in 1638. </p>
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<p>As befits a work written for such an exclusive setting, plenty of mysteries and legends surround the work – not least the story that its dissemination beyond the Vatican was banned on pain of excommunication (though this was probably <a href="http://ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/theories.html">just a rumour</a> put around to discourage any attempts). The embargo was finally broken – so the story goes – by the 14-year-old Mozart who, on hearing the piece performed, went forth from the hallowed chapel and promptly wrote it down from memory. The fact that the piece consists of a number of repetitions of the same musical material does perhaps reduce the genius value of this particular feat a little. </p>
<p>However, <a href="http://ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/AllegriBook.pdf">the most interesting tale</a> is how the famous top-C moment found its way into the piece in the first place, through a bizarre series of errors once the piece had made its way “into the wild”.</p>
<p>Perhaps the many musical offerings by composers throughout the centuries to the Easter story provide us with a valuable antidote to the teetering piles of chocolate that greet us at every turn in the high street at this time of year. The list above, while far from exhaustive, should provide a more nutritious Easter experience, for the soul at least.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Breeze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The power of the Easter story gave birth to the most beautiful music of the Christian calendar.Thomas Breeze, Senior Lecturer in Music Education, Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/922412018-02-22T16:54:37Z2018-02-22T16:54:37ZClassical music’s divorce from God has been one of the great failures of our times<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207507/original/file-20180222-152375-gwyml0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Road to nowhere?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/music-score-pages-504817093?src=abvShtqspKJ6A9BnBCinAg-2-65">Sergio Delle Vedove</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Reverend Jonathan Arnold, dean of divinity at Magdalen college, Oxford, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sacred-Music-in-Secular-Society/Arnold/p/book/9781409451709">has written</a> about the “seeming paradox that, in today’s so-called secular society, sacred choral music is as powerful, compelling and popular as it has ever been”. </p>
<p>But is this a paradox? Arguably the power of this music derives from having been written by supremely talented, well-trained composers who just happened to live in a Christian tradition, writing mainly for the church. If the dominant religion over the past millennium had been atheist secularism, say, talented composers might still have written equally compelling music. </p>
<p>The same might also be true elsewhere in the arts – not just for Christian composers such as Mozart, but also for Christian poets like Dante, and Christian artists like Beato Angelico. If so, the power of Mozart’s famous Ave Verum has nothing to do with the mystical body of Christ in the Eucharist and everything to do with the innate genius of the composer. </p>
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<p>A problem with such counter-factual hypotheses, however, is that this is all they are: hypotheses. By contrast, sacred music and extraordinary Christian art is a reality. Many of these Christian artists also experienced their own creative process as “inspired”, believing God had had a hand in their work. </p>
<p>Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI <a href="http://www.anglican.ink/article/benedict-music-encounter-divine">claimed that</a> “in no other cultural domain is there a music of a greatness equal to that which was born in the domain of the Christian faith”. He even added that “this music, for me, is a demonstration of the truth of Christianity”. </p>
<p>Many others have touched on this sense that music springs from faith and can only be artificially separated from it. This includes non-religious people, who often speak of their experience of music in spiritually inflected terms, describing it as “soulful” or “transcendent” or “mystical” or whatever. This is where there really might be a paradox: secular people being moved by the sacred through music. </p>
<h2>The God exclusion</h2>
<p>Classical composers in the post-war period sought to make a clear break with tradition, including with the cultural baggage of Christianity. The Scottish composer James MacMillan, who is also a professor at the University of St Andrews divinity school, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Composing_Music_for_Worship.html?id=ffeTAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">lamented</a> the divorce of music from extra-musical inspiration in this period: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Composers like Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio and the young Turks of the post-war generation wanted to start afresh from year zero, to write a music that was untainted by tradition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>British music departments and conservatoires of MacMillan’s generation in the 1970s saw music as “complete in itself” and that “anything else was extraneous and irrelevant”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">James MacMillan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/konserthuset/5729040883/in/photolist-o5Whkf-7hfJ6M-JFgB7H-okp2Pm-okp3Rm-onqY2p-onqUna-9JfQfX-apkJae-9a5Y9U-FEQYMB-SRK6nA-SUfx9K-RP5f9J-rxuXSH">Helsingborgs Konserthus</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The English-Polish composer Roxanna Panufnik <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Composing_Music_for_Worship.html?id=ffeTAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">described</a> something similar:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I left music college swearing never to write another note again … It was during the mid-1980s when esoteric and cerebral avant-garde music was still considered the right kind of music to be writing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Classical music in this era became ultimately sterile, delighted with its own inaccessibility and unpopularity; a cerebral playing around with notes on the page. MacMillan and Panufnik only discovered their own compositional voices by being true to themselves; allowing the “spiritual dimension to emerge” and reacting against the culture of the time. </p>
<p>The irony, as MacMillan has <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Composing_Music_for_Worship.html?id=ffeTAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">pointed out</a> before, is that mainstream modernist music has often been more plugged into the Judeo-Christian tradition than is sometimes appreciated. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arnold-Schoenberg">Arnold Schoenberg</a> reconverted to Judaism after the Holocaust. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Igor-Stravinsky">Igor Stravinsky</a> was Russian Orthodox, Olivier Messaien was Catholic. From this perspective, Christianity is an extraordinary source of artistic originality; rejecting a search for the sacred leads ultimately to a dead end. </p>
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<h2>21st century composition</h2>
<p>Today, if you go to a concert even of sacred music, you are unlikely to find reference in the programme notes to religious inspiration. There remains a snooty condescension in intellectual circles towards the “extra-musical”, and a privileging of pure musical analysis. </p>
<p>The recording industry is driving technical perfection, while the notion of <a href="https://sohipboston.squarespace.com/what-is-hip/">“historically informed performance”</a> is becoming ever more dominant as part of a wider focus on achieving a supposedly “correct” style. All too easily these become goals, rather than the means to express something deeper. </p>
<p>Our response at St Andrews has been to try to introduce the next generation of composers to the creative power of Christianity, pioneering what we call theologically informed programming and performance. We paired six of the best upcoming composers from around the UK and Ireland with doctoral theologians from the university. </p>
<p>The theologians were tasked with researching passages from scripture that could be set to music by the composers. Participants didn’t need any faith, and were encouraged to engage with the Christian tradition however they wanted. Mentored by MacMillan and part of our wider <a href="http://theoartistry.org">TheoArtistry</a> project, the collaborations have produced six wonderful new works of sacred music, which are available on the CD Annunciations: Sacred Music for the 21st Century.</p>
<p>One great example is by Rebekah Dyer and Kerensa Briggs. Dyer’s research on fire in theology, combined with her hobby as a fire spinner, gave talented composer Briggs a fresh perspective on <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+3">Moses’ encounter</a> with God through the Burning Bush. Using textured sounds of choir and organ, the composition conveys a meeting between earth and heaven, history and eternity. </p>
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<p>When music encounters religion, I see the result as being like the scriptural image of water and wine: the art can be transformed and come not to serve theology, but to be theology – or more exactly theoartistry, insofar as it may reveal God in a new way through artistry. </p>
<p>From the earliest Gregorian chants through Bach and Mozart to the very different contemporary sacred music of MacMillan and Arvo Pärt, there are so many examples of the great beauty that this can achieve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Corbett is part of the TheoArtistry project. Annunciations: Sacred Music for the 21st Century is launching at the TheoArtistry Festival n St Andrews in March.</span></em></p>Divine inspiration was at the centre of music for thousands of years – until post-war conservatoires got other ideas.George Corbett, Lecturer in Theology, Imagination and the Arts, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/837972017-11-26T19:09:07Z2017-11-26T19:09:07ZDecoding the music masterpieces: Bach’s Six Solo Cello Suites<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196250/original/file-20171124-21853-fpx2mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Solo Cello Suites are some of the most iconic classical music works. They have inspired not only cellists and audiences but other artforms as well, and they have been featured in ballet and theatre productions, even in films.</p>
<p>In Peter Weir’s Master and Commander (2003), Jack Aubrey’s (Russell Crowe) first sighting of the Galapagos Islands is accompanied by the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Ji-KDLG8Y">Prelude from Suite I</a>. </p>
<p>It is intriguing to consider what might have turned Bach’s interest towards an instrument he was not known to have played. After all, in the first three decades of his life (he was born in 1685), his artistic interest focused almost without exception on pieces that he would have either performed from a keyboard or directed, as court organist, concertmaster and trusted <em>cammer musicus</em> (chamber musician).</p>
<h2>New job, new inspirations</h2>
<p>His life and work changed considerably when he gained prestigious employment as <em>Capellmeister</em> (being in charge of music) in the court of Leopold, prince and ruler of Anhalt-Cöthen in what is now Germany. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196251/original/file-20171124-21858-1bcrt7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The castle at Cöthen today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia/Matthias Alfa</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leopold and his principality followed the Calvinist faith, a fact that had a major influence on Johann Sebastian’s life. The Calvinist liturgy allowed little if any instrumental music to be performed in the churches of the town, and for six years, between 1717 and 1723, Bach composed mostly instrumental (but not organ) and secular compositions. Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos, the four Orchestral Suites and inexhaustible supplies of keyboard music, such as the first volume of his famous Well-Tempered Clavier, are all products of these fruitful years. </p>
<p>He also became interested in a genre that was not only new to him but also had little past history that he could rely on, and composed two sets of pieces for solo string instruments: one for violin and the other for cello.</p>
<p>The boldness of this project is hard to appreciate from our 21st-century perspective, but is nonetheless remarkable. By composing for a single string instrument, Bach entered practically uncharted waters. </p>
<p>While there was some existing repertoire written for solo violin, hardly any composer had the temerity to write solo works for a bass instrument, such as the cello. Until the first decades of the 18th century, the cello was seen as an accompanying instrument, providing harmonic foundation and accompaniment to the melody along with a number of other instruments. This was an important and functional role, but without any of the implied glory, virtuosity or elegance of a well-written work for recorder or violin.</p>
<p>A few inquisitive Italian composers experimented with promoting the cello in a soloistic role, but even the best-known of these pieces, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfYNDnfnlr8">Domenico Gabrielli’s solo Ricercari</a>, sounded quirky and innovative, rather than memorably beautiful. </p>
<p>We do not know if Bach was familiar with any of these works. When he decided to compose for solo cello, he chose a different path and turned towards a well-known if by then somewhat old-fashioned genre, the suite. This term refers to a series of dance movements in the same or related keys. </p>
<h2>The structure of the suite</h2>
<p>Each of Bach’s Cello Suites follows a similar structure. They begin – as was common practice – with a prélude, an introductory movement, which served a dual practical purpose of settling both the unstable gut strings of the cello and the all-too-frequently noisy audience. The prélude is usually the longest movement; its character can be whimsical and improvisatory. </p>
<p>Interestingly, there are no tempo markings for any of the movements given by the composer. Therefore, it is up to the performer to choose the suitable pulse for their interpretation. This can lead to significant differences, as demonstrated by the following two outstanding, but very different recordings of the first, G major Suite’s Prélude. </p>
<p>Here first is Anner Bylsma’s refined and stately performance, as a great example of historically informed performance:</p>
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<p></p><p></p>
<p>And here is the same movement, played almost twice as fast by the flamboyant German cellist, Heinrich Schiff:</p>
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<p></p><p></p>
<p>The dance movements, coming after the Prélude, always follow the same sequence, originating from different countries: first comes the Allemande from German lands, then the Courante (French), and then the Sarabande (Spanish). The fourth dance is a pair of so-called Gallantries: Minuets, Bourrées or Gavottes vary between the suites. The final dance is an English Gigue. </p>
<p>Although we have no evidence to suggest the actual order in which the suites were composed, all published versions start with the easiest (Suite I in G major) and move to the hardest.</p>
<p>For Suite V in C minor, following the composer’s instructions, the cellist has to tune the top A string down to G, a process referred to as <em>scordatura</em>. The use of this ingenious technique (common in Baroque times, much less so in our days) changes the cello’s sound considerably. Somewhat confusingly, this means that the performer will play exactly what is in the written music, but will hear different notes from what he or she sees. </p>
<p>The instrument needed for Suite VI in D major is, in fact, a different cello altogether: one with five strings instead of the customary four, again significantly changing the sonority of the instrument. While for the performer the extra string can take some time to get used to, it permits new, otherwise impossible chord combinations to be written and performed. </p>
<p>The Belgian cellist, Roel Dieltiens, maximises this opportunity by deliberately omitting all chords at the beginning of his wonderful performance of the Sarabande of Suite VI, but adding them in their full glory upon the written repetition of the section.</p>
<h2>The mystery of the Bach Cello Suites</h2>
<p>For such a popular set of works, it is amazing how little we know about the genesis of the Cello Suites. Bach’s autograph manuscript of them is lost, with little chance it will ever be found. However, Anna Magdalena Bach, his second wife, copied a large amount of her husband’s works and a copy in her hand of both the Violin and the Cello Solos survives. The two manuscript sets were combined into one volume with the following cover page:</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The title page of Anna Magdalena’s copy of the String Solos.</span>
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<p>The description is rather long-winded, sprinkled liberally with words in four languages, but it gives the essential information about the two sets, the composer and his copyist wife.</p>
<p>Apart from this manuscript, three other handmade copies survive from the 18th century. While it might be hoped that these copies could help nail down the origin of the suites, they do quite the opposite. All of the four surviving copies contain numerous mistakes and, to increase the confusion, they are vastly different from each other. For these reasons, none of them can be nominated as a truly dependable copy of Bach’s autograph.</p>
<p>This curious circumstance is the main reason for the amazingly large number of published editions of the suites. To date, over 100 musicians (mostly cellists and musicologists) have offered their solution to the problems of divergent notes, rhythms, slurs and other markings between the four manuscript sources. All these editions were prepared with honest musicality and the intent to shine light on obscure details, yet, as a result of the scarcity of reliable sources and the numerous methods to interpret them, they can provide a truly misleading mix of scholarship and speculation.</p>
<p>Although the Cello Suites have not been published for over 100 years after their composition, in our times they are an integral part of the cello repertoire. Most well-known cellists regard performing and recording the whole set as a milestone in their career. </p>
<p>The eminent French cellist, Jean-Guihen Queyras, recently performed the whole cycle (without an interval!) in the Great Hall of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, sharing the stage with five ballet dancers, who presented Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s choreography for Bach’s music.</p>
<p>One of the most moving performance comes from the French cellist, Pierre Fournier. His interpretation of the Suites even inspired Ingmar Bergman. The brilliant Swedish film director created a mesmerising wordless scene in his masterpiece Cries and Whispers (1972), in which the terminally ill, exhausted and suffering protagonist, Agnes, feeling abandoned by her sisters, finds solace at the bosom of her maid in a Madonna-like image, accompanied by Fournier’s performance of the Sarabande of Suite V.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoltan Szabo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Johann Sebastian Bach was 30 when he became head of music in Anhalt-Cöthen, in what is now Germany. Here he started an uncharted experiment in classical music: solo works for string instruments.Zoltan Szabo, Cellist and musicologist, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/852372017-10-25T09:51:21Z2017-10-25T09:51:21ZGermany commemorates the birth of the Reformation in art, song and Playmobil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190903/original/file-20171018-32378-1l8yftz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C6%2C1943%2C1315&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pelegrino/33421022256/in/photolist-SVitxE-QDjEvm-LF1XxJ-MMCrF1">Nick Thompson/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Germany will shortly enjoy a national holiday to celebrate a moment that tore Europe apart. In Wittenberg, <a href="https://lutherstadt-wittenberg.de/en/">a small town in Saxony-Anhalt</a>, politicians and church leaders will gather to take part in a commemorative service at the Castle Church. There, 500 years ago, Martin Luther supposedly nailed up his 95 theses against indulgences, challenging the pope’s authority to grant remission from punishment for sin.</p>
<p>Whether or not Luther actually nailed anything to the church door remains <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/martin-luther-and-the-95-theses">a matter of debate</a>. But his list of objections to the practices of the Roman Church, alongside his subsequent writings, without doubt set in train a series of events that led to the splintering of western Christendom.</p>
<p>Luther’s Reformation has always played a prominent part in German commemorative culture. Already in 1617, the anniversary of the 95 theses was marked with great solemnity in Lutheran areas of the Holy Roman Empire, against a backdrop of religious and political tensions that led, less than a year later, to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Thirty-Years-War">the outbreak of the Thirty Years War</a>. Each subsequent centenary has been given a particular flavour by its immediate historical context. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A commemorative medal from 1617.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.museum-digital.de/bawue/singleimage.php?objektnum=2916&imagenr=13243">Landesmuseum Württemberg</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Through the centuries</h2>
<p>In 1817, Luther provided a focal point for the aspirations of a German nation in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1917, during World War I, numerous festivities and a flood of images and texts celebrated Luther as the embodiment of the German spirit. He was paired with Bismarck, and held up as an inspiration for every German during the nation’s ongoing <a href="https://www.luther2017.de/en/wiki/anniversary/from-the-reformation-until-today-politics-on-luthers-back/">struggle for honour and power</a>.</p>
<p>Commemorations of Luther’s birthday augmented these Reformation centenaries. In 1983, for example, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) celebrated Luther as a socialist champion, a progressive force who contributed, in the words of the East German leader, Erich Honecker: “To progress, to the development of world culture.”</p>
<p>In 2017, October 31 will mark the culmination of a whole decade of <a href="https://www.luther2017.de/en/2017/luther-decade/">quincentenary festivities</a>. There have been around 10,000 individual events, ranging from <a href="https://www.3xhammer.de/de/">three major national exhibitions</a> in Berlin, Wittenberg and Eisenach to numerous smaller commemorations organised by individual states, towns and local communities. </p>
<p>These have provided an opportunity to attract tourists, in particular to Luther sites such as Wittenberg and Eisleben (where the reformer was born and died) that languished in obscurity under the GDR. They have also offered an important chance to explain to a broad public not only the Reformation’s historical outlines but also its contemporary relevance. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luther’s statue dominates the main square in Wittenberg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wittenberg-germany-nov-4-main-square-205855486?src=BKAymTSoSQCfmX0Q2r2laQ-1-58">gary yim/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the 2017 anniversary has attracted its fair share of criticism. Sceptics have spoken of <a href="http://www.mdr.de/tv/programm/sendung760202.html">“Luther veneration” and of “Luther hype”</a>. Federal and state subsidies – taxpayers’ euros – have flowed into a commemoration in which the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has played a central role. That has seemed, to some, inappropriate. The co-financing of the EKD’s 2017 ecumenical Kirchentag (Church Assembly) has proved <a href="http://www.mz-web.de/wittenberg/finanzierung-so-teuer-ist-der-evangelische-kirchentag---und-so-wird-er-bezahlt-26975524">particularly controversial</a>.</p>
<p>From a historian’s perspective, much of the anniversary rhetoric has <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21713843-500th-anniversary-95-theses-finds-country-moralistic-ever-how-martin-luther-has?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/nailedithowmartinlutherhasshapedgermanyforhalfamillennium">reanimated outdated narratives</a> about how “one great man transformed the world” and about the Reformation as the birthplace of modernity. In the US, for example, the public broadcaster PBS <a href="http://www.pbs.org/program/martin-luther-idea-changed-world/">anachronistically attributed to Luther’s Reformation</a> a drive towards freedom of religion and women’s rights. </p>
<p>In 2017, the “dark side” of the Reformation, in particular Luther’s anti-Semitism, has been discussed more thoroughly than ever before, but still, a primary focus on Luther as the harbinger of individual freedom has left relatively little space for public discussion of his social conservatism.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Berlin: a cardboard sculpture of a naked Martin Luther challenged his anti-semitism in May 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/FELIPE TRUEBA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Immortalised in plastic</h2>
<p>What, then, will remain from the 2017 centenary? The best answer is probably the rejuvenation of Wittenberg, and the costly but necessary renovation and restoration of Reformation sites throughout eastern Germany. </p>
<p>The EKD’s extensive programme of outreach, its determination to facilitate reflection and discussion though workshops, exhibitions and less formal events, will certainly have touched many individuals, both Christian and non-Christian.</p>
<p>For public consumption, Luther’s relatively uncontroversial role as a translator of scripture has been highlighted: the first thing to greet the visitor to Wittenberg is a <a href="https://r2017.org/neuigkeiten/beitrag/einzeleintritt-fuer-buchturm/">27-meter tower in the form of a bible</a>. Luther <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/18/the-reformation-classical-musics-punk-moment?CMP=share_btn_tw">was himself a gifted musician</a>, and the hymns that he wrote played an important part in spreading the evangelical message. The musical heritage of the Reformation, with Johann Sebastian Bach as its apogee, <a href="http://www.wittenberg.de/magazin/artikel.php?artikel=1079&menuid=1">has proved to have particular appeal</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Getting their hands on the best selling Playmobil figure of all time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lwf_eleventh_assembly/27512614673/in/photolist-HVckPp">The Lutheran World Federation/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Reformation historians, the catalogues from the three national exhibitions alone comprise 1,500 pages of excellent images and analysis. There are numerous new Luther biographies, the best of which neither idolise nor vilify the reformer, but give a rounded picture of him as a thinker and as an individual: an exceptional figure, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/gh/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/gerhis/ghx045">but also a product of his time</a>. </p>
<p>With a little distance, we will have another Reformation anniversary to analyse, another milestone of German commemorative culture to mine for what it tells us about Protestant identity. And perhaps best of all, thanks to Playmobil, many of us who study the period now have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/feb/18/martin-luther-playmobil-figure-sold-34000-in-72-hours">at least one little plastic Luther</a>, complete with quill pen and Bible, on our desks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bridget Heal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Martin Luther has always given the country a chance to examine itself. Half a millennium on, the picture is more complex than ever.Bridget Heal, Director of the Reformation Studies Institute, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/735222017-03-24T03:08:23Z2017-03-24T03:08:23ZDecoding the music masterpieces: Bach’s The Art of Fugue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162102/original/image-20170322-25768-16lyhas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Carl Seffner's 1908 statue of J.S. Bach in front of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">pixy/shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the last decade of his life, from 1740 to 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach abandoned the furious pace of composition he had maintained for over 30 years and concentrated his creative energies largely on the composition of just six works.</p>
<p>They were the second volume of The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel Hoch, The Musical Offering, the B Minor Mass and finally, The Art of Fugue.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162283/original/image-20170323-4974-1ow2hoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 61) in a portrait by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, 1746.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In these six works he not only encapsulated all the discoveries and achievements of the previous 40 years, but extended to the outermost reaches of what was possible, the musical language bequeathed to him – which he had already done so much to develop.</p>
<p>The Australian composer Felix Werder once drily remarked that we cannot fully understand a work of art unless we know who paid for it. Remarkably, however, Bach was not paid for any of the above works, and indeed barely made any profit by personally financing the publication of four of them. </p>
<p>Thus about 30 copies of the Art of Fugue were bought, and later the copper plates used in the printing process were sold by his sons as scrap, in the hope of recouping some of the costs. So clearly Bach was driven by fierce personal inner necessity to compose these late works.</p>
<p>He seems to have begun working on The Art of the Fugue in 1742 and, with many interruptions, continued working on it until 1749. It was published posthumously in 1751, and in that first edition, the editors added Bach’s final composition, his short Chorale Prelude Before The Throne I Stand as compensation for the missing ending of the final fugue.</p>
<p>It is easy to forget that the purpose of Bach’s keyboard output was primarily pedagogical. Similarly, his three Passions (one now lost) and around 200 church cantatas were also intended pedagogically, but naturally in a profoundly more meaningful way. With this work, his primary purpose was to demonstrate all the myriad possibilities of fugal composition.</p>
<h2>What is a fugue?</h2>
<p>The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a fugue is: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a polyphonic composition in which a short melodic theme, the subject, is introduced by one part or voice, and successively taken up by the others and developed by their interweaving. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bach brought the fugue to the peak of its development in the hundreds that he composed, and this work represents the apotheosis of the form.</p>
<p>The entire work is based on a theme which consists of the two building blocks of Western tonal music: the three notes of a D minor chord and a scale. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="12" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 1 - Contrapunctus 1" data-size="296821" data-source="J.S. Bach" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/659/contrapunctus-1.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 1 - Contrapunctus 1.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">J.S. Bach</span><span class="download"><span>290 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/659/contrapunctus-1.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [J.S.Bach: The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (Fretwork) I. Contrapunctus 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZusfVyit3s) </span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Nothing could be simpler, and it strains credulity that Bach could erect such a monumental edifice with seemingly unpromising material. </p>
<p>But this simple theme undergoes many permutations throughout the 14 fugues and four canons (in baroque terminology, fugues also) which constitute this work. Thus in the third fugue he turns it upside down, that is, where the original melody descends it now ascends and vice versa.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="11" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 2 - Contrapunctus 3" data-size="269838" data-source="J.S. Bach" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uH0CZ77Y7w" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/668/contrapunctus-3.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 2 - Contrapunctus 3.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uH0CZ77Y7w">J.S. Bach</a><span class="download"><span>264 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/668/contrapunctus-3.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [J.S.Bach: The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (Fretwork) II. Contrapunctus 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uH0CZ77Y7w) </span></figcaption></figure>
<p>In the fifth fugue, we hear it with some intervals filled in with rather jazzy, dotted rhythms.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="10" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 3 - Contrapunctus 5" data-size="236034" data-source="J.S. Bach" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Oheu8Gruc" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/669/contrapunctus-5.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
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<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 3 - Contrapunctus 5.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Oheu8Gruc">J.S. Bach</a><span class="download"><span>231 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/669/contrapunctus-5.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [J.S.Bach: The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (Fretwork) VI. Contrapunctus 5](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Oheu8Gruc) </span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Later still, we hear it syncopated and in triple time. Starting with the eighth fugue, new themes are introduced, but they are all in fact derived from this original theme.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="9" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 4 - Contrapunctus 11" data-size="226644" data-source="J.S. Bach" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/662/contrapunctus-11.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
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Excerpt 4 - Contrapunctus 11.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">J.S. Bach</span><span class="download"><span>221 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/662/contrapunctus-11.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [J.S.Bach: The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (Fretwork) XIV. Contrapunctus 11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyiAdK0dD-w) </span></figcaption></figure>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="10" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 5 - Contrapunctus 12" data-size="251684" data-source="J.S. Bach" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEYZJNkYhxM" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/670/contrapunctus-12.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
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<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 5 - Contrapunctus 12.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEYZJNkYhxM">J.S. Bach</a><span class="download"><span>246 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/670/contrapunctus-12.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [J.S.Bach: The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (Fretwork) XVI. Contrapunctus 12, Inversus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEYZJNkYhxM) </span></figcaption></figure>
<p>The final fugue was the last he was ever to write, and also his longest. Although he had often hidden the BACH motif in his music (in German nomenclature it consists of the notes B flat, A, C and B) here – for the first and only time – he overtly introduces it as the third main theme of this massive fugue. It is this fugue which has come down to us incomplete, and the reasons for this are disputed.</p>
<p>We can now be certain that it was not due to Bach’s final illness, which was probably late stage diabetes, although we cannot be certain. </p>
<p>So the question remains open whether after his death, a final page went missing, or whether he had indeed composed it but not yet written it down, or even deliberately left it incomplete. </p>
<p>What we do know is that there are almost certainly 47 bars missing and that here Bach would have combined the main theme of the entire work with the other three themes of this mighty fugue.</p>
<h2>A quandary for performers</h2>
<p>Its incomplete state creates a musical, aesthetic, philosophical and even moral quandary for the performer. Most allow the work to trail off at the point where Bach’s manuscript ceases Others conclude with the chorale prelude mentioned above (a chorale prelude being a short contrapuntal elaboration of a traditional hymn tune). This means that after almost 80 minutes of D minor, the work ends with a four-minute chorale prelude in G major. </p>
<p>As one critic remarked, this makes no musical sense whatsoever, but it does make enormous non-musical sense. To the extent that music ultimately deals with existential questions of human existence, to conclude thus is perfectly valid. This writer, however, prefers to play one of the many attempted completions, in this case that by the renowned British harpsichordist <a href="http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Moroney-Davitt.htm">Davitt Moroney</a>.</p>
<p>A further contentious issue is for what instruments Bach composed this work. It is written in open score, that is, one stave for each polyphonic voice and, unlike almost every other work by Bach, no instrumentation is specified.</p>
<p>Already in 1751 it was advertised as being arranged in such a way as to be playable by two hands on a keyboard instrument, and this has led nearly all scholars to conclude it was conceived for the harpsichord. However, to assert that it is playable on the harpsichord is very different from saying that it was conceived for that instrument. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162111/original/image-20170323-25768-m7zkqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Fugue is playable on the harpsichord but that does not mean it has been conceived for that instrument.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The American pianist and writer Charles Rosen has tellingly pointed out that the question of what instrument the work was composed for would not have occurred to a musician of Bach’s time. For the few fortunate purchasers of the original print, it would have been played on whatever instruments they could play and had available at home.</p>
<p>The fact that the first complete performance of this work did not occur until 1922 has often been the subject of scandalised comment. But Bach would never have envisaged a public rendition of any of these fugues, much less a performance of the complete work, which in any case was unthinkable in the context of the performance practice of the time. </p>
<p>As the Hungarian musicologist Paul Henry Lang has said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>each component of this work was to be painstakingly studied and slowly absorbed at home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To drag it into the glare of the concert hall is akin to displaying mediaeval altar triptychs in modern art museums. In both cases, however, these are among the few avenues we now have to experience these marvels of Western civilisation.</p>
<p>As usual Bach gives us almost no performance indications whatsoever, so it is each performer’s obligation to impart to each component of this work its own distinct character. So although Die Kunst der Fuga is a work of high art of the utmost seriousness, this does not mean that each individual fugue must be played seriously.</p>
<p>Thus after the solemn opening fugue, the second fugue might almost be felt as a parody. The fifth, sixth and seventh fugues, all featuring prominent dotted rhythms, can be felt as, by turns, skittish, pompous and melancholy, while the 12th fugue borders on the tragic. </p>
<p>This is in keeping with the late works of such diverse artists as Shakespeare, Beethoven and Goya, which exemplify how pathos, humour, gravity, exuberance and tragedy are inextricably enmeshed in the deepest recesses of the human psyche.</p>
<p><em>This article is appears in conjunction with upcoming performances by Daniel Herscovitch of The Art of Fugue at Brisbane Conservatorium at 7.30 pm on April 5, Canberra ANU School of Music at 6.30 pm on April 21 and Melbourne at Monash University Clayton Campus Music Auditoriumon at 2 pm on April 28.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73522/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Herscovitch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue is a work of high art. But in keeping with the late works of artists such as Shakespeare, Beethoven and Goya, it contains elements of pathos, humour, gravity, exuberance and tragedy.Daniel Herscovitch, Associate Professor in Piano, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.