Lawrence Molinaro performed Die Kunst der Fuge (DKDF) on an A.  David
Moore organ (1981) at the The Grace Church Bach Festival in Washington,
D.C.  on Sunday July 14 to a most appreciative audience.  Most of this
review is a rehash of the program notes, primarily written by the organist.
The performance was billed as "a very personal interpretation, based on
subjective decisions about the individual style of each contrapunctus while
attempting to make full advantage of the colors on the Grace Church organ.

Background to DKDF
The last 15 years of Bach's life were spent in a burst of personal
creativity.  His work at the church had become less interesting to him,
due to perennial conflicts with the Rector and authorities, and his work
with the Leipzig Collegium Musicum also was winding down.  So his creative
focus was to consolidate earlier works and document the full range of his
keyboard art.  He made significant revisions to an earlier Mass setting
to create what we now call the B-Minor Mass and composed the Well-Tempered
Clavier Volume II.  He also began to study and imitate an older, more
formal- and less fashionable- compositional practice known today as the
stile antico, a style less concerned with melodic beauty and more grounded
in formal counterpoint.  Into this artistic context we can place DKDF.

The four volumes of the Clavier-Ubung in particular represent an important
initiative on the part of Bach to publish an encylopedia of his keyboard
art.  Volume I (the Partitas, 1731) perfects the decidedly German verson
of the harpsichord suite as first developed by Froberger and later Kuhnau,
Bach's predecessor at St.  Thomas.  Volume II (the Italian Concerto and
the French Overture, 1735) provides wonderful examples of the "foreign",
or international, styles.  Volume III (the "Organ Mass," 1739) is written
after the model of Frescobaldi's Fiori Musicali and de Grigny's Livres
d'Orgue and includes extraordinay complex settings of the chorales
associated with the Lutheran service and catechism.  Volume IV (the
"Goldberg" Variations, 1742) is, perhaps, Bach's response to the
contemporary musical currents and, more specifically, to the 30 Essercizi
of Scarlatti.  Thus, it might make sense to view DKDF as a fifth volume
of the Clavier-Ubung.

If this thesis holds true, what we have in DKDF is Bach's compendium on
counterpont and fugue.  In the same way that he documents the high art
of organ chorale variation in Clavier-Ubung Volume III, he lays out the
contrapuntal devices of which he was a master.  The structure and layout of
the volume attest to this:  ordered n increasing complexity, the work moves
from a group of "simple" fugues- using straightforward imitation- to more
complex workings out of the same idea.  The order of the fugues, as now
established and agreed by most scholars, is as follows:

Simple fugues - containing no stretti, melodic inversions, augmentation or
miminutions.  In the first group of four fugues Bach states and develops
the main subject usng only simple methods of variaion.

Stretto fugues - stratification on the subject, where the secondary voice
(or answer) enters before the subject is completely finished.  In the
second group of three fuges (V-VIII), Bach uses the technique of stretto
to demonstrate how a well-crafted subject can be made to serve as
"counterpoint" to itself, resulting in added intensity and complexity.

Fugues with more than one subject - "double" fugues (IX and X) in which
there are two main subjects, and "triple" fugues (VIII and XI) in which
there are three main themes.

Mirror fugues - a pair of fugues n which each voice (or line) in the second
fugue (inversus) is a mirror mage of the first (rectus).  The two were said
to be playable alio Modo (in either fashion).

A final fugue with four subjects (the "unfinished" fugue)

Four canons of increasing complexity:  four compositions where a single
musical line serves as its own counterpoint by being played against itself
at various intervals (e.g, the octave, tenth or twelth), by being elongated
(augmentation) or quickened (diminution).

Probably started in the early 1740s, the overall structure of DKDF was
mostly complete by 1745.  In fact, on his deathbed, Bach was preparing
the engraving for publication.  Because he died before this was brought to
completion, we were left with an incomplete work that must have puzzled his
sons and peers.  Fortunately, most of the pieces of the puzzle were intact
(and even in place) with the key exeption of the title, the specific order
of the works, and the last 40 or so measures of the final fugue (probably
completed in a now lost autograph but never transcribed into "fair copy"
to guide the engraving of plates).

By virtue of it being the last work that Bach wrote, DKDF became Bach's
musical testament.  It is unfortunate that the last fugue of this set
breaks off just before the final recapitulation (which would weave together
all four themes), leaving us with an incomplete work.  However, where there
is no musical finality, tradition fills the gap.  According to C.P.E.
Bach, knowing that death was near, the blind Bach paused from the writing
of this final fugue to dicate a final chorale prelude (Vor Dinen Thron, or
Before thy throne I stand) to his son-in-law, Johann Altnikol.  Whether or
not his "deathbed chorale" was actually dictated by the dying Bach is
immaterial.  Following in another musical tradition, Bach left us with the
chorale as his memento mori.  As the scholar Christoph Wolff notes, it is
"...the last reflection of a lifelong striving for an ars perfecta."

The Perfomance
The organist started the program with a performance of the Prelude in A
Minor (BWV 543/i).  Mr Molinaro believes Die Kunst der Fuge may be a bit
much to listen to in one fell swoop, so he interspersed some other works
of Bach to illustrate how the composer used the fugal technique in other
compositions (fuges, preludes and chorale variations) to break up DKDF into
two sections.  LM noted he performed Contrapunctus II in a South German
style, Contrapunctus IV in a North German style, and Contrapunctus IV in a
French style.  In the judgement of your reviewer, LM is a most impressive
organist, fully in control of his technique and sensitive to the needs of
this music.  I once claimed on this List, comparing the Delme's recording
of this work with organ recordings I've heard, that using multiple
instruments better helped me retain a sense of the individual voices.  I am
pleased to note that, at least with LM's performance, that concern is
completely a non-issue.

An Anecdote
The performer is a well spoken individual who tried to give the audience
some insight into the work with his verbal comments.  He noted the
following incident from the history of perfomances of this work.  It was
performed some years ago by a well-known organist, Charles SomeBodyOrOther.
LM gave the impression that Charles SBOO was not the type who particularly
enjoyed rubbing elbows with people from all walks of life.  Moreover, he
was performing DKDF in New York City on a cold February night, and started
at 10:00 PM.  At that time, as LM so delicately put it, a church in New
York giving a concert is likely to he inhabited by some people who are
there for the music and ....  some people who are not.  In any case,
Charles, being aware that he was ending around midnight, decided to end
his performance where Bach laid down his pen writing his final work.  After
the performance, a gentleman not dressed in formal evening dress approached
the organist, who likely wanted to shrink away from the encounter, and
announced, "You know, Johann Kernberger (or some such name) completed the
final fugue in 1754!" Well it was quite humerous in the context of the
organist's presentation.

The Performer
Larry Molinaro serves as Parish Oganist for St.  Anne's Episcopal Church
(founded 1642) in Annapolis, MD, and performs regularly as harpsichordist
with the chamber ensemble Con Brio!  and the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra.
His solo performances have been praised for "combining flair with charm"
(Baltimore Sun) and for being "both instructrive and entertaining" (The
Capital).

An enthusiastic advocate of the music of JS Bach, LM has focused his
concerts during the past several years almost exclusively on Bach's
keyboard works.  He holds the Artist's Diploma from the renowned Curtis
Institute of Music in Philadelphia and continued his studies at Yale
University's School of Music where he was Frank Bozyan Scholar for Organ.

A Personal Reaction
I was delighted to hear this work for the first time in a live performance.
I noted that rarely, and not at all in recent years, have I attended a
musical event in which the audience was as rapt as it was during LM's
recent perfomance of DKDF (audience behavior being a pet peeve of your
reviewer).  I was, for a while, puzzled at some people who seemed to be
reading while listening until I realized that they were reading ...
the score.

The writer is most familiar with this work through Simpson's arrangement
for string quartet.  Someone on this List opined that Simpson's
arrangement, which required transposing the key upscale to accomodate a
standard string quartet, deprived the music of some of its majesty, but
I do not notice that.  I did note that LM's performance did not pronounce
the dotted rhythms as audibly in Contrapunctus II and, I think XIII, as did
the Delme quartet in their hyperion recording.  I an not sure whether that
differnce is a function of the instruments being used or artistic choice,
but the Delme Quartet's performance left me with a sense of lightness and
even playfulness in the fugues with the pronounced dotted rhythms that did
not come through as strongly in Sunday's performance.  Moreover, I think by
virtue of the nature of the instruments, a string quartet is able to bring
some nuance to bear on the entrances to musical phrases that I find lacking
in organ performances, including LM's.  I think Mr Molinaro said that he
believed DKDF is best rendered on a keyboard instrument.  He believes that
controversy stemming from the fact that Bach did not specify his choice of
instruments is spurious:  his choice of open scoring was a definite
indication that the work was intended for keyboard.  LM believes there is
ample historical justification for his belief.

Washington area audiences are indeed fortunate to have Bach performed at
a level such as I heard at Sunday's Bach Festival (www.gracedc.org).  The
next performance of this year's Bach Festival will be Wednesday July 17 at
7:30 PM, and the final one on Friday, July 19 at 8:00 PM.

Suggested Resources:

Here are some suggested resources pertaining to this work that were
included in the program notes, including recorded performances that LM
finds noteworthy.

Articles:
"The Compositional History of the Art of Fugue" and "The Deathbed Chorale:
Exposing a Myth", both found in Bach:  Essays on His Life and Music,
Christoph Wolff, Harvard University Press, 1991.

Timothy Smith, a professor of music at Northern Arizona University,
maintains an excellent website with his detailed analyses of allof the
fuges and canons in DKDF:  http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/introaof.html
This reviewer was unable to locate anything beyond Professor Smith's
introductory comments, however.

Recordings:
Harpsichord: Die Kunst der Fuge  BWV 1080, David Moroney, harpsichord,
Harmonia Mundi 901169.70

Piano: Aldwell Plays Bach, Edward Aldwell, Piano (includes the French
Overture and Fugues I-XI only), Biddulph Recordings (London), FLW 002

Organ: L'Art de la Fugue, Andre Isoir, organ, Calliope (Cal 9719)