In three words for regular non classiquophiles of Deblocnot ' ...
Bach , a name synonymous with classical music (1685-1750). The time returns us to the end of the reign of Louis XIV to Louis XV. Bach therefore belongs to the Enlightenment, importantly with regard to the inventiveness of the composer's humanist. Bach is more than a thousand partitions: Cantatas religious, Protestant or Catholic following the job of the moment, oratorios (including 2 passions), and then moult instrumental masterpieces, the Brandenburg concertos, cello suites, Well-Tempered Clavier (for the most known), etc.. and finally, two partitions strange and mysterious, the Art of Fugue and Musical Offering.
The Art of Fugue.
Expression school almost sounds like the title of a chore for conservatory students, class composition, counterpoint option. Yet behind this label abstruse, hides one of the most beautiful music Written in the West. A partition pure, dedicated to any specific instrument or set; one requirement: to play 4 simultaneous melodic phrases, alone or in groups.
A few easy musicology.
Fugue: This is to introduce a topic (subject) and then repeat it (response) following the rules of transposition, while superimposing one or more countersubject in order to meet the harmony. Example ultra famous Pachelbel's Canon. One gets the impression that listening to music to chase and hunt itself. She flees (Fuga, Fugere in Latin). It's hard to write, but oddly pleasant and easy to listen through the repetitive and rhythmic pseudo effect obtained. Counterpoint: A generic term for all types of fugues.
The genius of Cantor (title of position held by Bach in Leipzig) was to write all forms of counterpoint (fugue, canon) from a single original theme as follows:
Nothing you say incredible deal these four easy steps to sing (try it, it's easy) or play on a keyboard or the kid's xylophone. But where Bach is very strong, it is using this theme in 19 runaway, exactly 287 times! Straight, reversed or mirrored. In short, in a word, triturated respecting the codes of counterpoint in all imaginable possibilities (2-4 vote). All runaways were, in fact, a family resemblance but none of them really looks like, especially when musicians make their living by their choice of interpretation. I will not go beyond in music theory, because there are more exciting.
To add to the mysteries of an already esoteric composition, the score remains unfinished, or rather crashes in the middle of a range!
Why? Must investigate ...
lost manuscripts and other occult theories ...
The music is always frustrated at the moment when the cosmic music stops abruptly. (Print mute.) Does here the germ of the legend about the book and the myth of the manuscript is lost, stolen, destroyed? The score posthumously, in a total mess bequeathed to his son, does that 19 fugues. There could be more (24). Curiously the last is incomplete and interrupted in the middle of the line to be abandoned! Scrolls first 18, reviewed by scientists from before 1750, death of Bach, and even 1742. Started very early (1740), Bach would have finished writing his own way. Where does it long and truncated fugue?
• And if the latter, different tone and without the main subject (the 4 steps above), with a third on the notes BACH (Saxon Rating: Bb, A, C, Si) was an "alien music", added as an adjunct in the initial release in 1751?
• Mathematicians have shown that vaguely complex fugue could ever end. Hmm ...
• A reference written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach on this page incomplete claims that his father died in writing this fugue. Would it not rather an epitaph in memory of his late father, a romantic legend before its time?
• Another theory: Bach would have voluntarily left the task to the performer to improvise or write more.
• Finally, a follower of numerology, Bach would have concealed codes related to its mode of composition in which they are completed.
The biggest mystery remains, in my view, the incredible beauty of this cycle and the possibility of infinite adjustment available to all instrumentalists and musicologists. Intellectual prowess, certainly, but even more: a gift of a work that can not endure the test of time because of a baroque orchestra in a jazz band, or a clever synthesizer on transcription, the magic happens. We love this or that option is all. The main theme calling for calm and meditation, one could even talk of New Age since the eighteenth century.
To return to Earth since 1952 and the work of harpsichordist and conductor Gustav Leonhardt it is likely that this music score is completely dedicated to the keyboard, and the fugue is a later addition ultimate off-topic. Yet many musicologists, musicians and conductors have tried to transcribe these fugues and canons for various instrumental ensembles.
Talk disks including the new release which allows to show that the Art of Fugue seems to enjoy eternal youth.
Discography personal
I still very moved listening to metaphysical research of Hermann Scherchen leader transcripts:
• Roger Vuataz in Beromünster for 3 groups of strings and wood (Registration of an organ )
• himself in Vienna or Lugano (Records reissued but rare).
course, the keyboard has been masterfully served by:
• Gustav Leonhardt harpsichord.
• Andre Isoir organ.
• baroque ensembles, including burning her with Reinhard Goebel Musica Antiqua Köln.
• Glenn Gould at the organ is slightly offset from its usual universe at the piano.
But the Art of Fugue, a work magic and sublime, can still surprise with artists Innovative ... At the beginning of the year pleasant surprise:
A nice new recordings:
If considers the list above not limited ative, could we expect a significant success of this new record?
Stefan Mai, violinist Xenia Loffer, oboist and Raphael Allpermann, organist and harpsichordist, we propose a new approach and innovative light.
The idea is based on the game in groups of solo instruments, in turn, accomplices to a larger whole: the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin a twenty musicians who already beautiful prints to his credit. The artists perform on period instruments.
Following the recordings, each choosing a personal interpreter, it would be futile, even boring, to list the options chosen for each counterpoint.
Sometimes when uninspired monotone, this interpretation holds alternating very varied in its course. Organ or harpsichord, violin and oboe, bassoon and strings and even the intervention of a few coppers, ensure this alternation. Thus, in the fugues 12 and 13 and their mirrors, the next game we are offered:
12a Counterpoint: String; 12b: harpsichord, 13a: 2 oboes and bassoon; 13b: violin, viola and cello.
Beyond the music theory, form and notes, there is music. The set of all the players is very fluid, and a little more introverted than Goebel, he won in spirituality, which Bach is never irrelevant. Punctuated by the intervention of the organ and harpsichord, the musical seems like a book you turn the pages where each page shows an unexpected musical illumination. This, again, a work of unearthly beauty.
To alleviate the frustration by the end of the last fugue, Hermann Scherchen rubato playing on the slowing the last notes. The work leading to infinity.
In this recording is a decrease in the instrumental music that allows everything to go out smoothly. Other sensitivity, another technique.
Moreover, Scherchen Vienna where cleverly concluded with a chorale, this version is a little introductory chorale played on the organ by Raphael Allpermann inviting us to the serenity necessary to Listening to the first fugue performed by full orchestra.
Even if it does not question the good discography drafted before and probably expand, we are facing an imaginative re-creation that comes with the complete happiness.
An enchanting disc by its warm colors. It further allows a discovery of the Art of Fugue or for those who do not know the work.
MUG SHOT: an intelligent editor (Naxos, Bee music?) Reissue there one day Hungaroton recording of 1972 Frigyes Sandor at the head of the Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra , an extraordinary spirituality?
For those who have neither xylophone or keyboard or dare not sing, here's a video of Glenn Gould performing the first emphatic gestural counterpoint ... It, too slow, limits narcissistic, necessarily, but a beautiful light to enter the tangled topics among themselves
For those who have neither xylophone or keyboard or dare not sing, here's a video of Glenn Gould performing the first emphatic gestural counterpoint ... It, too slow, limits narcissistic, necessarily, but a beautiful light to enter the tangled topics among themselves
Completely in the context of disk commented on the third counterpoint (bassoon, 2 oboes, trombone and orchestra) by the Akademie für Alte Musik (a counterpoint to the more frenzied):
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