Bach: Die Kunst der Fuga • Halubek & Il Gusto Barocco
Newly released on Berlin Classics is a recording of Bach’s Art of the Fugue BWV 1080, an interesting album, for it opens on solo harpsichord, but is then joined by other instruments to present Bach’s ultimate essay on counterpoint with a lot of color, offered with winds, strings, and organ.
No booklet was provided via Qobuz, which was damning because I had a lot of questions about this performance. Thankfully, the violinist involved in this production, Eva Saladin, took to the web to write about this recording. This is an example I wish was more mainstream, with an artist’s perspective into the album project in addition to the historical notes that often fill CD booklets.
Earlier recordings have taken the approach described—to orchestrate this work—and to my own taste, the results are a mixed bag of pain and delight. Likely the earliest, and one of the best in my opinion, was the recording made by Musica Antiqua Köln on DG Archiv (not to be confused with their second recording on DVD, near the end of the ensemble’s active years). The instrumentarium in that release was focused on harpsichord(s) and strings.
One that I felt was less successful was the recording by Concerto Italiano, which, like this recording, introduced winds into the mix, offering a lot of color. However, the range of the instruments used could not always be observed, and so they wove the playing between instruments, in and out, to accommodate the ranges (or else, to get ultimately creative). I didn’t like this approach, despite strong playing, because it applied these instruments in a way that I don’t think Bach would have written the lines.
Some 16 years later, Accademia Bizantina tried something similar, using multiple instruments to realize their performance. Their solution is more akin to MAK’s, in the use of just strings, however, like this new recording, they entertain using the harpsichord together with the bass as a “basso continuo” solution.
Finally, I should mention the solution exercised by Alte Musik Berlin (Akamus) that mixed brass, a full orchestral ensemble, in addition to a solo or two from the harpsichord. This one I found even less convincing, in terms of the orchestration.
Let’s Look at the Source
All these creative solutions are likely being devised by HIPP groups to make the work more palatable to a modern audience. There’s a question of course as to what the purpose of this work was, in addition, obviously, to understanding how Bach may have envisioned it being performed.
The work is mysterious, to be sure. Bach and his son left us an open-score, which would have been fitting for connoisseurs of contrapuntal music to study how Bach was constructing this work, with more and elaborate fugues and canons. It is my belief that this work was to be Bach’s own treatise on the art of counterpoint, to follow in the footsteps of former musicians, such as Zarlino, Kircher, or Johann Joseph Fux. It’s undeniable that writing contrapuntally was something central to how Bach wrote music. And by the time he died? Writing that way was coming out of stylistic favor. He couldn’t have been ignorant to this. It’s why I think him not telling us for what or which instruments he was writing for isn’t the paramount mystery behind the work. We can look at the work as either a continuation of his big projects such as the suites for cello, the sonatas and partitas for violin, and more recently, the Goldberg Variations. Or, was it, as I somewhat lean, more of an instructional or andragogical work, aimed to preserve the contrapuntal art that Bach had found so essential to his own compositional style?
Insofar as we have an idea that this work was an organ or harpsichord piece (are the two interchangeable, or not?) we can’t even be sure how it would have been programmed for an audience. The story about the Goldberg Variations, as much as it has been challenged, suggests to us that a piece of that length and size would have been performed in small parts, to satisfy the Russian nobleman’s insomnia. It’s already been said that concertizing the entire aria with the thirty variations in one sitting was likely not how an audience would have experienced the work in the 1740s.
Of course, it’s easy to ramble on about what may have been. The counter to my thinking is that all musicians of his time had to be very pragmatic people. Nothing got wasted. It’s why Bach re-used material. Demands existed, and people had to get paid and eat. Is that, then, the reason that it took Bach so long to finish the piece? To the point of either completing it, and having the ending lost? Or was it his pet project, one that mattered to him, but one that did not rise to the pragmatic needs of his daily life?
We don’t know enough to say how it might be performed. So as musicians today, we have to consider a lot of variables, even more so if we’re attempting to provide a performance with an historical context.
Bach’s Instrumentarium
Saladin states in the aforementioned post online that they wanted to use the instruments from Bach’s time: oboes, brass, strings, organ, harpsichord, flute. Let’s assume for a moment that a patron approached Bach, to put on a concert to feature his new set of fugues. “Spare no expense, Herr Bach! Make the affair as entertaining as you might!”
There’s no way you can convince me that this music isn’t for people in Bach’s world. Meaning: musically-literate folk who could appreciate the skill he has put on display in not only each fugue and canon, but across the gamut of the entire work, for how he combines the original theme with permutations of the said theme.
They wouldn’t have needed to be entertained with novel orchestration. The art was in the notes themselves. While his keyboard concertos would have served the need to entertain as background music at the coffee house, and his cantatas in church to help inspire those worshipping to feel the awesomeness of God’s power in our world? What would the function of this work be?
It’s nearly convenient that Bach was able to write the Musical Offering, a collection in the same vein, of different contrapuntal applications, including a modern-sounding trio sonata. Again—a bizarre collection of movements! But of course there was a well-documented reason. The work was made with bespoke care to prove to Frederick that his contrapuntal skill was without peer.
Sounds banal, perhaps, but of course this is Bach. Even if he’s writing examples that could be used in a treatise on counterpoint? He’s no slouch. It’s going to sound good, too.
So—yes, I applaud the musicians here for using historical instruments and trying to use them, orchestrating in the style of the composer. In effect, they’re helping him prepare for the big invitational concert.
But as much as I can provide conjecture? This recording does not reflect a concertized exhibit of Bach’s compositional prowess to the Leipzig public at-large. I’d go so far to say that this piece likely never heard by the public, save for Bach’s closest friends, family, and musical colleagues. This recording presents an interpretive solution that would have never existed.
19 Tracks and 70 Minutes
Later composers would take up writing fugues, inspired no doubt by Bach, in the context of instrumental pieces, with each “voice” assigned to its own instrument. We can look at Mozart’s arrangements of Bach, to Haydn’s string quartets, and to Beethoven’s own string quartets as well. In Track 8, the organ plays the seventh contrapunctus, but then we get trombone to appear. Organ and trombone sound great together. Yet, entrances and exits? They are done in a way to bring emphasis to a line, but I can’t think of Bach doing this in other instrumental works.
The idea of taking the “voices” from vocal music and applying it to different instruments was standard practice. Even when realized upon the same instrument, as Bach’s trio sonatas (BWV 525-530) are, each hand gets its own registration by taking it’s own keyboard, plus the same for the feet with the organ’s pedals. Because Bach wrote this piece in open score (either as a method to more easily help others see how the separate voices work together, or because he found it easier to compose this way, as a type of conceptual master, before he’d set about to arrange the master into performance parts, which could include keyboard, strings, and winds) today’s musicians have taken to doing some wildly different things to perform this music.
The recording in this case opens with a solo harpsichord, which is well played with good style. But in the second track, the piece is played on the organ, doubled with other instruments. Makes one think of the controversy on how to perform Bach’s motets for voices, doubled, or not?
In track 10, winds double the harpsichord, before taking the lines by themselves, with the harpsichord playing along… if we think about how Bach would have written for two oboes, or two flutes, or a flute and violin? It would have been against a bass line to create a trio texture. It’s another example of combining these instruments in a way that I don’t find terribly idiomatic for the composer’s music. Does filling in the harmony on the harpsichord help keep clarity among the lines?
The jaunty dotted rhythm in the third track, contrapunctus 2, might be something akin to a gigue. In Bach’s orchestral suites, the music is led by the strings, and punctuated with color. Typically winds would be used to play their own part, not doubling others. I am finding myself troubled by the solutions made here, in the same way I was with the earlier recording by Concerto Italiano.
In track 4, things are given over to the brass, with horn, trombone, and cornetto. Someone call the Canadian Brass, these folks are copying their earlier effort! This isn’t rocket science, it makes perfect sense to realize the fugue with a brass ensemble. We do this with modern instruments. But the odd part? I can’t recall Bach ever writing independent lines like this for brass. And then to bring in the organ? Without it being used as a continuo instrument?
To be sure, this is Bach’s Kunst der Fuga like you haven’t heard it before. While Bach clearly was the genius behind this music, it presents color and affect with the instruments used that reminds me more of Webern than J.S. Bach.
But the point was to be creative.
I will say, the musicians assembled for this project all play well, with obvious expertise and technical gifts. In some cases, I really liked the emotional weight they brought to the music. But their creativity is the elephant in the room. What do we think of this re-orchestration?
Anton Webern re-orchestrated the six-part ricercar from Bach’s Musical Offering, BWV 1079, and he did so in a way that would have been foreign to Bach, breaking the independent voices apart, and re-assigning the lines to different instruments and combinations, thereof, using the sonic palette of a full orchestra. On repeated listens? The result is something we can admire. But it’s not an historical approach to performing Bach.
What the creative approach here does offer us is a new way to hear this piece, familiar or as unfamiliar as it is to you now. Purists will point out that the harpsichord or organ is the most appropriate solution to this work, in terms of “how do we play it?” And today, we have HIPP groups playing for us his Goldberg Variations by a string trio. Clearly, that’s a creative approach. One, that like this one, may not be universally embraced by all.
Bach’s music, however, has done well, I have always believed, to survive its original sound world. Bach can be profound for us as listeners today, even when it’s on the piano or orchestrated on Moog synthesizers by Wendy Carlos.
And yes, I listen to those recordings too. Sometimes in a complete take, sometimes in bits and pieces. I don’t think listeners will be offended by the creative approach these musicians have applied here. Would Bach? Maybe, but we’ll never know. But if you’re a purist, and only like your contrapunctuses (contrapuncti?) played on historical instruments, this one may not satisfy you. Especially so if you like to close your eyes, and imagine you’re in St. Thomas’ with Bach at the organ, surrounded by friends.
I can only tell you that if Bach was writing a set of pieces to be played by instruments, we have examples of how he approached that task: the Musical Offering used the instrumentarium available at Frederick’s court, and these were all common, contemporary instruments (the cornetto, less so, from this production). The piece is keyboard heavy. It includes a three-part and six-part fugue. He didn’t orchestrate those, did he?
It’s why I found Ensemble Sonnerie’s recording of BWV 1079 so enlightening. They combined different winds with the strings and keyboard and the album is still a favorite of mine. I think it was because it didn’t drift too far away from Bach’s treatment of instruments playing together in a chamber setting.
While this album goes further in exploring different types of solutions with orchestration, I keep telling myself I should keep an open mind. For readers thinking about this recording, or finding this after auditioning it? You may find it eye-opening and revelatory in the same way I found Monica Huggett’s Musical Offering so many years ago. The recorded sound is honest, capturing the pragmatic arranagement of instruments near the organ in the loft in the church where this recoding was made.
And for fans of Bach? I do think you should hear this. At least once. I can’t promise how many times I’ll come back to it? But it’s clear to me that each musician involved in this production wants you to hear Bach’s treatise on counterpoint in an affectual, colorful way.
There’s no denying their creativity. And its color. The question remains: is this the historical solution those in Bach’s circle would have arrived at, given the invitation to bring Die Kunst der Fuga[^1] to life for the entire world? We don’t know, but this is a solution that has at least got me thinking deeply.
[^1]: The title page of the working copy reads Die Kunst der Fuga and not, as later published, Die Kunst der Fugue. It is believed by some that Bach, in playing as he did with numerology, used an Italiante form of fugue to get his numbers to add up. If I recall the reference where I read this, I’ll add it later. Often Bach’s literacy has been questioned with the spelling in his titles, and in potential double meanings, e.g. Sei Solo. I’m attracted to this idea that Bach’s command of different languages was in fact a tongue-in-cheek application to satisfy his interest in numerology rather than ignorance.
