The Art of Fugue: EMS 16 February

[doversoul1]

Lucie Skeaping takes expert advice from Simon Heighes to explore the background, purpose and music of JS Bach's last great masterpiece - The Art of Fugue.
[…]
Lucie pulls together various recordings of the work and, in conversation with Bach expert Simon Heighes, unpicks some of the thinking behind this extraordinary composition.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vd58l

ardcarp: thank you for the information about the last week’s playlist.

[LeMartinPecheur]

What's to discuss? It's the Glenn Gould obviously

[Padraig]

Thank you doversoul - I'll be there.
LeMartinPecheur - it's not the Olympics, you know!

[Gordon]

Looking forward to this, they have their work cut out - Amazon has dozens of recordings with varied arrangements including string quartet, saxophone quartet and brass band not to mention Scherchen. Hopefully there will be some analysis of the piece and its performance rather than a BAL! I hope my concentration will not stray to R5L to check that Swansea are putting Everton to Fugue!!

Looking at the shelves I see Gould, Nikolayeva, ASMF with arr by Marriner and Andrew Davis using varied instrumental groupings and a string quartet arr Simpson. My copy of the Gould states that he never recorded the piece as a whole but in parts over a long period between 1962 and 1981!!

There is a recording by George Ritchie on the organ that comes with a DVD and lecture on the piece. I found it by chance a few years ago at Worcester cathedral whilst visiting, well worth getting eg here

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Fugue-2CD-DVD/dp/B003PBLYBK/ref=sr_1_53?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1392548549&sr=1-53&keywords=art+of+fugue+bach

[Bryn]

[Black Swan]

Another really interesting EMS. I only have the Emerson Quartet recording of the the Art of the Fugue and am now thinking I may want a keyboard recording as well.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Thank you doversoul - I'll be there.
LeMartinPecheur - it's not the Olympics, you know!

I do know that! Had hoped the winkeye said enough...

Still, the Gould version is (was) bound to get get the gould medal surely ( again NB)

PS Missed the programme, blast it! Were there any 'summarisable' revelations??

[Gordon]

Fine programme for education about the AoF background etc and some useful sampling of the various ways of performing it. But a slight disappoitment there was very little about the construction of the music itself eg showing the fugue constructions a bit more so we could hear some of the compositional methods and so be able to hear them better in performance eg mirror fugues and inversions. In this technique lies Bach's genius so why not exhibit it? For non musicians - like me - this might have been very helpful and need not have taken much time to illustrate and spread over the examples.

On the whole though a good one.

[french frank]

But a slight disappoitment there was very little about the construction of the music itself eg showing the fugue constructions a bit more so we could hear some of the compositional methods and so be able to hear them better in performance eg mirror fugues and inversions. In this technique lies Bach's genius so why not exhibit it? For non musicians - like me - this might have been very helpful and need not have taken much time to illustrate and spread over the examples.

Or spread over several programmes

[ardcarp]

I thought the level of scholarship was about right. As ff suggests, had we been burdened with inversion, retrograde, augmentation, not to mention the niceties of invertible counterpoint, we would have had very little music played. The format of EMS is to be mainly music interspersed with 'scholarship-lite', and it works very well IMHO.

I liked Simon Heighes' suggestion that the 'The Art of Counterpoint' might have been a better title, though I wasn't so convinced about his reason for JSB abandoning the final contrapunctus in mid-flow. I always think it starts to get more interesting when the B-A-C-H theme begins.

I have to admit to having a slight problem with The Art of Fugue, stemming, I think, from the fact that one of my best mates at university could sight-read the whole lot fluently from open score (including the soprano clef). Very galling. But seriously, I am a huge Bach fan and am always rebutting those who find his music 'mathematical' or 'academic'. There are the tremendous fugues from his organ-works with a huge sense of architecture and wonderful climaxes. And so many of the fugues from the 48 achieve the same sort of thing on a smaller scale. There are the other amazing clavier works, The Goldbergs, the Suites, need I go on? But I have to confess to finding the AoF less attention-grabbing.

On the whole, I prefer them played by instruments, and from today's programme just loved the sound of Phantasm in No. XIV.

[Bryn]

I do know that! Had hoped the winkeye said enough...

Still, the Gould version is (was) bound to get get the gould medal surely ( again NB) ...

You've got some brass coming out with this Gould stuff. So how about some compatriots of his, Canadian Brass. Got their recording of the Art of Fugue spinning away here now.



I got mine "New" via amazon.co.uk two years ago, for 17p less than a tenth of their current asking price.

When I can dig it out, I will also lend an ear to this one from the same label:



It's Rosen who plays The Art of Fugue (modern pianoforte).

[gurnemanz]

It's Rosen who plays The Art of Fugue (modern pianoforte).

The Rosen/Tureck is a one of my favourite great value Twofers.

[Bryn]

Right, found the Rosen, and have also eased About Bach from its shelf, in order to re-read, Gregory G. Butler's "Scribes, Engravers and Notational Styles: The Final Disposition of Bath's Art of Fugue".

[Gordon]

Another book for expert keyboard players is this one:

http://www.soundboard-records.co.uk/item.php?catno=DBRMT

comes with a very good CD of his Goldbergs. He makes harpsichords too. Anyone around Ilminster in Somerset might be interested in his concert on March 9th.

http://www.dillington.com/events/concerts/8/two-harpsichords-in-concert/336/