Bach: Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 - Les InAttendus

Bach’s Art of Fuguing as I like to refer to it, speaking of the word fugue as a verb rather than a noun, is considered by many his last work. There is a legitimate reason for this belief. It was published after his death by his sons and while it was not a smashing success with sales, it did come with some contemporary commentary around its genesis. And so when Bach’s own progeny wrote that he died before being able to finish the final fugue, one is left to believe the story was true. The last page does just trail off.

I have reviewed this work before by different performers. Each new recording can offer us some novelty, given the work’s incompleteness, lack of instrumentation, and the general mystery around the work, in general. Such questions about the work’s practicality seem moot. Bach focused on counterpoint as a central methodology for his compositional art. To write music that could act as a tome on the subject seems perfectly natural. While some may have wanted an academic treatise, that wasn’t Bach’s thing. He performed music. Leaving us a score would be the natural way to communicate his art.

I have written before about what instruments this can be performed upon; obviously, this recording features violin, viola da gamba, and the most baroque of instruments, the accordion. Some time ago a historically informed ensemble recorded this same work with an arrangement they did; they were not the first nor the last. They arranged it for a variety of instruments—all duly baroque in origin—but they arranged it in such a way that would have been quite foreign to those living in the baroque era. You will no doubt read about performance solutions that musicians fully support with little scholarship and a lot of strong feeling. It is a keyboard piece, pure and simple. Some will go into specifics, claiming it’s for harpsichord, others, for organ. What we do know is that of all the solutions musicians follow, there are always gotchas along the way, how it’s nearly impossible to play from start to finish with just two hands; or how the instruments chosen aren’t of the exactly proper range to realize the entire line, and the such. I’ve heard by now so many different combinations that the point of historic authenticity is almost moot when it comes to instrumentation.

For those that care, he didn’t finish the piece. I believe it was written in open score for one or a second reason, that if it was to be treated as a treatise on how to write various complexities in counterpoint then there is no clearly way to do so than by putting each voice on its own line. Given more time, Bach may have prepared performance parts that took all the guesswork away from us. The Musical Offering (BWV 1079) is probably our closest analogue; in that piece he specifies a keyboard, flute, and violin. It’s also written in such a way that some of the canons are written not as performance parts, but for the benefit of admiring the score. Of course we’d love to know how Bach would have realized all those pieces for a performance. But what we can say is that he wanted Frederick to admire the way in which he’d woven his theme into different permutations. For Bach, counterpoint was likely the most intellectual thing he could involve himself in; for the musically literate, those canons were puzzles. Clever things to observe, work out, and admire. I can’t see why the contrapuncti in Art of Fugue are any different, just possibly less personal and the closest we’d likely see Bach get academic.

I will say after my short life on this earth and listening to Bach’s music daily, I really do not believe it’s fair to apply a modern aesthetic around the specificity with instruments to his music. Today I watched a video of a gentleman discussing the particulars of Pierre Boulez’s second piano sonata, the score encrusted with no short supply of dynamic markings. The piece came with instructions before the opening note. Composers today can be expected to get very specific about how their music is to be played and by what instruments. Bach’s personal preferences aside, which for the most part we must infer, there is overwhelming evidence that what instruments got assigned which parts was not of particular interest to Bach, and probably was not of paramount importance to many musicians during his lifetime. The fact that more Bach is not played on fortepiano stumps me; but think of the options he and his family had by 1750, just in keyboards alone.

It is true, some of his keyboard pieces include notation about the use of two keyboards; of course he would explore the dynamic differences with a two-manual harpsichord. It doesn’t prevent us from trying different solutions on different instruments. It is true, he used certain instruments around themes in the cantatas. But he was also practical; we see him swapping some of these specific orchestration choices when it was required; no doubt, if the cor anglais was unavailable, someone might be transposing on a different instrument.

And so finally I want to discuss this album. We have two baroque specialists with a guy who seems out of place. If we’re okay with musicians choosing to perform this work on their own specialty instruments, are we okay with the inclusion of a partner that was never part of Bach’s sound world?

I own two recordings where the performers are members of saxophone quartets. I arranged portions of the work myself, and performed them on trombone. In theory, I don’t like the idea of mixing the old and the new. I can accept Bach performed on modern instruments. But isn’t mixing the historical sound world with our own missing the point of historical performance practice altogether?

Sushi pizza shouldn’t be a thing. But some people really like it. I also really like this recording.

The sound quality of this recording is really good; the fugues have enough differentiation in timbre between the voices to make hearing the independent voices far more clearly than on a single keyboard. And what would you know, the accordion sounds enough like a chamber organ in some parts; in others, both the way Mr. Lhermet plays his instrument and its timbre? They’ve made me think that just maybe the instrument would have been at home during Bach’s time.

I know, it wasn’t. But despite the more modern instrument joining the old, the players are all on the same page in terms of style. To give them credit, they made decisions to make this work given the constraints of their instruments and how they play together. The notes for this album touch upon some of the issues I have brought up.

In the end I characterize this performance as a deeply personal one, shared between three excellent musicians who simply wanted to make music together. Very warmly recommended for the execution of their great taste.