David Dalle
Thursday December 21st, 2023 with David Dalle
Winter Solstice: A journey from darkness to light. Bach's final word and Busoni's answer.

Today we have my annual Winter Solstice program, which is a musical progression from darkness to light, echoing primaeval traditions which have passed on down through millennia. Humanity has always railed against the dying of the light with festivities, celebrating with food and music! This year, unusually, Bach will begin the journey from darkness with his final fugue from The Art of the Fugue. In his later years, Bach became interested in composing works which would be a culmination of his musical art. For choral music, it was his Mass in b minor; for organ music, it was his Clavier-Übung III; and for Bach, music science at its most abstract and theoretical, the Art of the Fugue, which had no particular instrumentation specified. The Art of the Fugue was the apotheosis of the central part of Bach's music: counterpoint and fugue. It was composed as 14 fugues and 4 cannons in d minor all using the same principal theme, exploring Bach's range of contrapuntal and fugal techniques in increasingly complex pieces, culminating in the final fugue. This final fugue is a quadruple fugue, meaning it has four themes which are used in separate, but linked, fugues. The first is the principal theme of the art of the fugue, appearing here in a slow, aching, searching fugue, which leads into the second fugue, a much quicker, insistent theme with dotted rhythms. This second fugue builds in intensity, rising until the third theme is announced, Bach's famous namesake motif, B-A-C-H, which, in German notation is B-flat, A, C, B natural, a wonderfully twisty chromatic theme. Bach used his motif many times, but most famously here, in his grand final fugue, it is presented most insistently, again building in dramatic momentum, towards what will be the fourth fugue, which combines the first three themes in the apotheosis of the fugue, by history's greatest master: the B-A-C-H theme plays as countersubject in the bass to the second theme in the treble, rising... ...and there's the rub. Bach's greatest fugue stops in mid-phrase, unfinished. Even though I know it is coming, this abrupt ending still almost makes me gasp, it is nearly painful. This is why this work by Bach begins this year's journey from darkness. We don't know why it was left unfinished. In the manuscript, his son C.P.E. Bach writes that, as his father was working on this fugue, he died. However this claim is considered fanciful by modern scholars as the manuscript is in Bach's hand, and it is known that Bach's health and eyesight was failing in his final year, so it is extremely unlikely he was composing the Art of the Fugue on his deathbed. It has also been claimed that Bach purposely left the final fugue unfinished, as a challenge to future generations to complete it, but that strikes me as a completely anachronistic modern idea. It is most likely the simplest reason, Bach put the work aside, declined in health and never had the opportunity to return to it. There have been numerous completions of Bach's final fugue, but today we will hear the most extravagant and exceptional, Ferruccio Busoni's "Fantasia Contrappuntistica" from 1910. Busoni took Bach's final fugue and enveloped it in a massive fantasy, starting with a "Preludio corale" on the chorale "Allein Gott in der Hoh sel Ehr", Bach's final fugue only starts almost 10 minutes into the music. Busoni did not present Bach unaltered. He expands on the harmony in ways that did not exist in Bach's time, and adds new fugal entries so the number of voices changes from the consistent four of Bach's original. Busoni completed the third unfinished fugue of Bach's quadruple fugue, but instead of going right into the fourth fugue, he adds an intermezzo which he gives the dynamic marking "mystically". This is followed by three variations, then a cadenza, before leading into the fourth and final fugue of the quadruple fugue, followed by a hectic coda which brings the whole enormous edifice to an end. This has always been one of my favourite works, as it is for the wonderful pianist Igor Levit as well. It is the centrepiece of his new recording "Fantasia". He writes "For me this recording of the Fantasia Contrappuntistica represents the final destination of the journey that I have been undertaking in terms of my repertory in recent years... This piece is the utopian embodiment of Busoni's Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music--to that extent the idea of the freedom implied by improvisation remains tangible throughout the whole piece...These are works that can address questions of life and death because they use the piano as a medium, not just as a piano." Igor Levit's stunning recording matches his ambition, perhaps equaling John Ogdon's magnificent one. For Bach's original we will also hear Grigory Sokolov's peerless recording on the piano, an expansive and intense performance.