THIS COLUMBIA STEREO FIDELITY RECORDING IS DESIGNED FOR USE ON 33Vs RPM STEREOPHONIC REPRODUCERS.
Library of Congress catalog card number R62-1070 applies to this album.
STEREO
MS 6338
BACH: THE ART OF THE FUGUE, Vol. I / Fugues Nos. 1-9
Glenn Gould, Organist
Recorded on the Casavant organ at All Saints' Church, Kingsway, Toronto, Canada
Produced by Joseph Scianni
Bach began composing his Art of the Fugue in 1748 or 1749
and continued to work on it in 1750, the last year of his life.
He had finished three-fourths of Fugue No. 15 when a severe
eye disease obliged him to leave off work on his artistic last
will and testament and undergo an operation. A combination
of primitive medical techniques and a blundering doctor
proved fatal; within six months of this operation Bach was
dead. He spent his last days in a darkened room, alone with
the God he had served and glorified all his life. When he felt
death close upon him he sent for his son-in-law, the musician
Altnikol, and dictated to him not the conclusion of the great
B-A-C-H fugue but a chorale fantasia on the melody "When
We Are in Deepest Need," telling Altnikol to entitle it "I Draw
Near Unto Thy Throne." "In the manuscript we can see
all the pauses that the sick man had to permit himself," Albert
Schweitzer narrates; "the drying ink becomes more watery
from day to day; the notes written in the twilight, with the
windows closely curtained, can hardly be deciphered."
This last composition from Bach's pen was included in the
first edition of the Art of the Fugue, not because it belongs
with that work but as an apologetic compensation to the
purchaser for the incompleteness of the work itself. How
incomplete the Art of the Fugue is we do not know. The
mammoth Fugue No. 15 may have been the final one of the
series, or Bach may have planned to follow it with a still more
grandiose quadruple fugue. The latter contention was Sir
Donald Tovey's, and Tovey actually completed the fifteenth
fugue and composed, as the sixteenth, a totally invertible fugue
with four subjects, to prove that such a feat was possible and
that Bach had something of the sort in mind. Most perform¬
ances of the Art of the Fugue, however, are content to break off
where Bach himself broke off, for there is something awesome
about this sudden silence just at the point when Bach intro¬
duced the letters of his own name for the first time into one
of his works.
Bach saw the first eleven fugues through the engraving
process, but the remainder of the editorial work was done by
his two eldest sons and the theorist Marpurg. The edition
came out in 1751; by 1756 thirty copies had been sold and
so C.P.E. Bach sold the plates of his father's last work for the
value of the metal. The editors of this first edition made at
least one palpable mistake by printing a variant of Fugue No.
10 as a separate fugue; Bach undoubtedly intended to discard
this variant. Other questions arise to plague the editor and the
performer. What part were the four long but not very inter¬
esting two-part canons to play in the entire scheme? Did Bach
intend them for this work or for a projected Art of the Canon?
Do the double-keyboard transcriptions of the two parts of
Fugue No. 13 belong to the series, or did Bach intend them as
practical realizations, virtuoso pieces to be performed rather
than studied?
The most vexing problem, of course, is whether or not
Bach intended the Art of the Fugue to be played at all. He
does not once in the entire work indicate a tempo or a dynamic
marking. He does not indicate what instrument or instruments
should play the work. He writes each of the voices on a separate
staff (in so-called "open score"), which is very helpful for the
student but anything but helpful for the keyboard player.
This leaves the field open to the arranger, and arrangers have
eagerly rushed in. There are multiple versions for orchestra,
for string quartet, for two pianos, for organ, for piano solo.
Only the musical pedant can find these various realizations a
source of annoyance; the genuine music lover will make his
own choice or choices and take pleasure in the process. What¬
ever choice he makes, the Art of the Fugue remains massively
and imperturbably itself. For though it is devoid neither of
humanity nor emotion, the human and the emotional are not
its real concern. Like the figures on Keats's urn, it has passed
out of time and accident, and wears the changeless beauty of
pure thought.
Since the Art of the Fugue is the greatest treatise on the
subject of the fugue in existence (a treatise that teaches
through example rather than through precept), a few of the
basic definitions of fugal composition ought to be set down
here in rudimentary fashion, to help the uninitiated listener in
his journey through this splendid edifice. SUBJECT: this is the
theme upon which a fugue is constructed (in the case of the
Art of the Fugue, the first eleven notes); a fugue may be con¬
structed on more than one subject, and therefore be a double,
triple, or quadruple fugue. ANSWER: when the first voice (or
part) has finished stating the subject, a second voice takes it up
("imitates" it) either at a higher or a lower pitch—the "an¬
swer." COUNTERSUBJECT: meanwhile the first voice con¬
tinues with new material which is played against ("counter")
the answer; if this material takes on definite shape and form
(rather than being merely an accompaniment or counterpoint
to the answer) and if it plays some part in the future develop¬
ment of the fugue, it is labeled "countersubject"; a fugue may
have several countersubjects or none at all. EXPOSITION:
when the subject or its answer has appeared at least once in
each voice (three times in a three-voiced fugue, five times in a
five-voiced fugue, etc.) we have arrived at the end of the first
section, or the first exposition. EPISODE: the next section,
or episode, does not present a complete statement of the sub¬
ject, but makes free use of portions of the subject or its
continuation (countersubject); frequently the episodes of a
fugue provide relief from the stricter expositions.
These are the major phenomena of the fugue. It only remains
to mention a few of the common devices with which composers
manipulate their subjects and countersubjects as a fugue pro¬
gresses. DIMINUTION: presenting the subject at twice its
original speed. AUGMENTATION: presenting the subject
at half its original speed, or twice as slowly. INVERSION:
turning the notes of the original subject in the opposite direc¬
tion, thereby giving it an intriguing quality of unfamiliar
familiarity; for instance, the original subject upon which the
entire Art of the Fugue is built looks like this:
but when Bach inverts it, it looks like this:
COLUMBIA
M ASTE RWORKS
MONAURAL—ML 5738
One final important device is STRETTO, or starting the an¬
swer before the subject has had a chance to finish; the closer
the answer dogs the steps of the subject, the greater is the
listener's sense of urgency and excitement (the Italian word
stretto means "tight" or "squeezed together," and often has
the overtone of "just by a hair's breadth").
Now, if you will, enter the rarefied atmosphere of the Art
of the Fugue, this "still and serious world," as Schweitzer
called it, "deserted and rigid, without color, without light,
without motion; it does not gladden, does not distract; yet
we cannot break away from it." Follow it with an open score,
if you can, so that you can see all the miraculous crossings
and interweavings, "Instinct through all proportions low and
high," the living brain of the structure, fantastically compli¬
cated and beautiful as a drop of busy microscopic life seen
through a powerful lens. Finally you will put your score away,
however, and the infinitude of detail will be subsumed by the
massive unity of the thing, the microscopic will give way to
the cosmic, its inevitable obverse. And you may ask your¬
self if the fragmentary state of the fifteenth fugue is merely
the outcome of blind fate—or if it represents the limits placed
upon the artist's fulfillment in the face of an otherwise limitless
craving. Perhaps the rest indeed is silence.
— DAVID JOHNSON
The organ used in this recording was built for All Saints'
Church, Kingsway, in Toronto, by Casavant Freres Limited
of St. Hyacinthe, Quebec. One of the most interesting features
of the organ is the Positiv section, which hangs exposed on
the south wall of the chancel. The instrument, while a three
manual, consists of four manual divisions and pedal, the
Great, Swell, Choir and Positiv—65 stops, 69 ranks, a total of
over 3900 pipes. It has excellent neo-baroque characteristics,
ideal for the performance of Bach's organ works.
"The foremost pianist this continent has produced
in recent decades," wrote critic Alfred Frankenstein in
High Fidelity Magazine. "A pianist of divine guid¬
ance," added Jay Harrison in the New York Herald
Tribune. A distinguished European critic, Heinrich
Neuhaus, noted that he plays Bach "as if he were
one of the pupils of the Thomasschule cantor... The
music seems to speak through his playing." Such is
the praise that has greeted each appearance of Glenn
Gould, the distinguished Canadian pianist, who now
adds new laurels to his crown as an organist. Mr.
Gould began studying the organ as a young boy.
When he was only fourteen he appeared in the
Casavant Series at Eaton Auditorium in Toronto,
which each year brought to that city five of the world's
finest organists. Although the piano is now Glenn
Gould's major medium as a performer, it is brilliantly
evident from this recording of the Art of the Fugue
that he is also a master of Bach's royal instrument.
THE SELECTIONS (PUBLIC DOMAIN) ARE FOLLOWED BY THEIR TIMINGS
SIDE I FUGUES NOS. 1, 2, 3 r 4 & 5.14:17 | SIDE II FUGUES NOS. 6, 7, 8 & 9.17:07
COVER PHOTO: DAVE BARNES, CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
©COLUMBIA RECORDS 1962/ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©"COLUMBIA","MASTERWORKS".[^MARCAS REG. PRINTED IN U.S.A 4
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