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The Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus I (2021)
JS Bach’s last set of works, collectively titled The Art of Fugue, was published shortly after his death. It was not a big hit. Dense counterpoint was deeply unfashionable at that time, as We…
Bach published The Art of Fugue in “open score,” meaning that each voice of the counterpoint is on its own line, rather than being grouped together in the usual two-staff notation that we’re used to. In any case, this most basic of fugues is necessarily also one of Bach’s freest and must also be one of his smoothest… The contrapuntal lines, consisting mostly of quarter- and eighth-note patterns, move stepwise or by the smallest leaps, and the expectations of eighteenth-century harmony often go unfulfilled. This entry—it can be heard as a second stab at stretto, after a previous, premature effort in bars 29–30, what is sometimes called a false stretto—moves rather hastily from the dominant around to the subdominant, twisting and turning the subject oddly.
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