Written in the 1740s (the final decade of his life) Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue is a striking example of ‘late style’. In it, Bach distilled the expertise of forty years of contrapuntal practice in an extraordinary sequence of fugues and canons based on a single thematic idea. The cycle remained unfinished, and the final fugue breaks off, mysteriously, shortly after the composer introduced his own name, B A C H (in English notation B flat A C B natural) as a fugue subject. It was almost as if he was signing off his life’s work.
Contrapunctus II is the second Fugue in the cycle and elaborates the fugue subject with dotted rhythms. His approach here is no doubt influenced by ’French Style’ performance practice of the period in which pairs of 'notes inégales’ are played in a manner that might today be described as ’swung’. The dotted notation implies that the ratio of swing is more severe than 2:1 but possibly less severe than 3:1. Coupled with the use of tied notes, the syncopations enliven Bach’s magnificent contrapuntal fabric in a strikingly groovy way.
A fugue always has a main theme (called the subject) which is presented in several voices at the start, each entering in succession. The subject counterpoints with a secondary theme called a countersubject: in this fugue, the subject is in rather solemn half notes and the countersubject is in more dance-like dotted rhythm with some syncopation. Throughout the fugue, Bach brings in the subject, from time to time, in all the main related keys. These entries of the subject alternate with freer episodes, so the structure of the fugue has a kind of ebb and flow. At the end of the fugue, there is a final climactic presentation of the subject in the home key so that the fugue comes to a fully resolved and satisfying conclusion.
MUSICAL EXCERPTS USED IN THIS VIDEO
Contrapunctus II from The Musical Offering by J.S. Bach.
Realisation by Matthew King
Joanna MacGregor’s magnificent recording of Bach’s The Art of Fugue can be heard here (Contrapunctus II is at 4:00): [ Ссылка ]
Boogie Woogie Bed by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. [ Ссылка ]
Artist: [ Ссылка ]
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Edited by Ian Coulter ( [ Ссылка ] )
Produced and directed by Ian Coulter & Matthew King
