As a follow-up to my previous post on Thomas Daniel and his completion of Bach's last fugue, I would like to offer some thoughts on a doctoral dissertation by Indra Hughes (2006). Hughes, an early-music specialist living in New Zealand, completed his dissertation four years before the publication of Daniel's book, but is not mentioned by Daniel. Both authors share an interest in Bach's use of numbers and gematria. However, the conclusions reached by Hughes differ radically from those of Daniel.
The dissertation seeks to explore the idea that the unfinished state of Contrapunctus 14 is not to be explained as a result of Bach's sudden death. Rather, Bach's intention in the first place was to leave the final fugue of The Art of Fugue unfinished, and to provide a number of hidden hints as to how the performer might complete the fugue. In other words, according to this hypothesis, Contrapunctus 14 should be viewed as a type of exercise in composition! The basis for the hypothesis is the observation that Bach's fragment breaks off after 239 bars. The sum of the digits of this number is 14, a number of great significance to Bach. (If the value of each letter equals its position in the alphabet, the letters BACH can be combined by summation to yield the number 14.) Taking Gregory Butler's 1983 article as a starting point, Hughes argues that the number of missing bars is exactly 47. Markings at the end of the score are used as corroborative evidence for this inference. However, these considerations do not lead up to a full completion of the fugue. Instead, the reader is introduced to a schematic solution that involves a number of "building blocks."
The background material on gematria is well worth reading. However, a general impression is that Hughes's interpretations of the evidence are too speculative to warrant serious consideration. The idea that Bach intentionally refrained from completing the fugue is in fact a recycled version of the notion that, with this fragment, Bach wished to create a deliberate torso. As pointed out by Daniel, such a notion is anachronistic (see Daniel, 2010, p. 9, n. 4). A further weakness is that it is not clear from the dissertation why Bach would wait until the final forty-three bars of this long fugue to introduce the main theme of the cycle. Finally, it is understandable, yet disappointing, that Hughes declines to compose a completion of the fugue, declaring the task to be "outside the scope" of the dissertation.
Hughes's dissertation is available for free public access via the following page:
Bibliography
- Butler, Gregory (1983). "Ordering Problems in J S Bach's 'Art of Fugue' Resolved," in: The Musical Quarterly, 69, pp. 44-61.
- Daniel, Thomas (2010). Bachs unvollendete Quadrupelfuge aus "Die Kunst der Fuge." Studie und Vervollständigung. Cologne: Verlag Dohr.
- Hughes, Indra (2006). "Accident or Design? New Theories on the Unfinished Contrapunctus 14 in J. S. Bach's The Art of Fugue BWV 1080." Doct. diss., University of Auckland.
I have just finished a close reading of this dissertation, which indeed has several speculative aspects. Nonetheless, it makes very interesting reading to clear up a number of false assumptions that continue to be spread all over the Internet as well as misquoted by experts, and forms an excellent overview of the problems involved.
ReplyDeleteTake for example the fact that Contrapunctus 14 was not Bach's last work, and he did not 'pass away' after writing the last note down. A thorough study of the ink and paper has proven that is was likely written 1 to 1.5 years before he died. (It is in fact remarkable that no-on has commented on the fact that a nearly blind and dying composer could write such straight lines and perfect notes down as he takes his last breath). In fact he even took on a new student more than a year before he died, and would have had ample opportunity to finish this fugue.
When you think about these facts alone, the entire Contrapunctus 14 discussion falls under a different light, and then we see how the facts have become a little buried under 'studious research'.
The 'fragment X' discussion is also well documented in his dissertation and he brings good reasons for putting the theory aside on the basis of the actual sources.
A pity about the reconstruction of a piece that Bach himself did not finish?
Why not just leave it alone?
There is no-one alive even a vague equal of Bach's and any attempt to finish it is doomed to be second rate at worst and misleading at best. That being said, it is fun to exercise one's mind and play with it as a private recreation. I for one, adhere to the view that No. 14 is not really part of the K d F at all.
In closing, it is important to realize that one version of the K d F was finished: the first, early version is an autograph MS. Bach, the eternal perfectionist, took it up years later and added, changed and extended various parts of it.
It would be invaluable if more people played and recorded that first version, as offered in the (fairly recent) Peters Edition. This would give us more insights and appreciation of how this work evolved.
Theodore
Thanks for sharing these insights, and thanks for mentioning Christoph Wolff's edition of the first version (Edition Peters 8586a). Speaking of Wolff, there is a nice documentary film featuring both Wolff and George Ritchie, an American organist, whose interpretation has recently been praised as "the finest recording of Bach's Art of Fugue irrespective of media or instrument" (Gramophone Magazine, July 2010):
Deletehttp://www.georgeritchie.com/
Regarding the uncompleted fugue, it is indeed an act of arrogance to put oneself in Bach's shoes and pretend to be his equal. Daniel's study is nevertheless an impressive achievement. In the preface, he writes, "It is hardly my objective to compete with Bach... The completion is, as I regard it, a result of 'applied music theory' and an application of insights into Bach's contrapuntal and compositional procedures, the detailed analysis of which is still an open research field..." ("Meine Absicht kann kaum darin bestehen, mich mit Bach messen zu wollen [...] Die Vervollständigung betrachte ich als 'angewandten Tonsatz', als Anwendung von Erkenntnissen vor allem zum Kontrapunkt bzw. zur Satztechnik Bachs, mit denen eine detaillierte Auseinandersetzung bislang kaum stattgefunden hat [...]"). A real eye-opener in Daniel's book is the section about Hugo Riemann, the great music theorist (pp. 16-18). As shown by Daniel, Riemann's attempt at completing Bach's fugue can only be described as laughable.
It is certainly tempting to agree that the uncompleted fugue is not part of the cycle. Many years ago, Gustav Leonhardt made the point that both the WTC 2 and the Art of Fugue (without the uncompleted fugue, but with repetitions in both works) contain 2,135 bars. This is hardly a coincidence.