The Art of the Fugue, C. 14, by Johann Sebastian Bach; Phil Grant, piano
Excerpt below from Chapter 30, The Final Fugue II, Cabeza and the Meaning of Wilderness: An Exploration of Nature, and Mind, by Phil Grant. If coming from YouTube, scroll down to the dotted line:
And finally . . . we come to the “unfinished” final fugue. In Wondrous Strange, by Kevin Bazzana, the wondrous and strange indeed Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (Rosen, for one, considers him to have had a technique beyond all other pianists) is quoted as calling it “the most extraordinary piece that a human mind ever conceived.” The author also states that, at age forty-eight and two years before his death, “He had never played it before.”
Oh Glenn, Glenn, Glenn! Arise from thy grave and please say it isn’t so, that you, you who admired Bach above all other composers . . . you who made your very name with your recordings of his works, especially that of the Goldberg Variations, one of the best selling classical CDs of all time . . . you who reveled in the “most intricate and beautiful kind of music,” the fugue . . . can it really be true that you had never played it before???!!! Oh Glenn. . . .
There’s only silence . . . it must be true. . . . Oh Glenn.
He did record the first half of The Art of the Fugue in a very flawed organ recording. Before he died of a stroke, or from the extraordinary mix of prescription drugs he was taking, he claimed to have plans to record the entire work but. . . . Oh Glenn.
He also said of the Final Fugue, “It is the most difficult thing I have ever approached.” Yes. But not technique-wise. When I first approached it fifteen years ago . . . I also gave it up. Too, too, too . . . just too frightening.
The final fugue was composed at the end of 1749, six months before his death and likely the last work in Bach’s own hand. Christoph Wolff calls it an “afterthought.” Wolff and Maynard Solomon, authors, respectively, of biographies of Bach and Beethoven listed in the sources, provide a great wealth of detail regarding the men whose lives they have so thoroughly studied. But sometimes I wonder if they ever actually listen to the music they write and think so much about. The final fugue is as much an afterthought as this chapter, which, while being likewise the last composed part of this book, has been in my mind throughout the last five years. Just as I’m certain the final fugue was for Bach’s entire last decade. If not his whole life.
....................................................................................................................... It was common knowledge Bach had not long to live. Beethoven and Schubert, not having the burdens of families to support, could have the luxury of spending their afternoons or evenings in taverns . . . but the alcohol greatly truncated their time here. Bach, with all his toilsome duties, perhaps all he had time for escape or relief was his meals, copiously lubricated with beer and wine of course. I hate to say it, but really . . . he was fat! He too was human. And like today with more and more, diabetes kicked in. We don’t know all the details but the Town Council advertised and interviewed a prospective successor since “the eventual . . . decease of Mr. Bach” was anticipated. His hands were getting quite stiff making performance difficult and causing changes in his handwriting. Worst of all he was losing his vision, probably due both to cataracts and the diabetes. He knew he had not long . . . to finish things up.
Perhaps here is the spot to mention the Necker cube. It is a drawing of the edges of a three-dimensional cube on two-dimensional paper. There are no dotted lines to indicate which edges are out of view, so the mind really doesn’t know what to make of it. First one surface appears to be in the foreground, but if you keep staring that one suddenly becomes the background, and the other the foreground. In The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins discussed its ambiguity to serve as an analogy to the way we can see evolution: either as acting at the level of the gene or, alternatively, the entire organism. Both views have validity and they’re probably necessary to seeing evolution as a whole, even though the level of the genes is where evolution actually takes place.
The same relates to the relationship between the IT and us. Looked at from one perspective it may seem we, those of a genuinely spiritual bent, are “seeking” to reunite with the IT. But it can also be viewed as the IT seeking to know ITself, through us. Both have truth. But where I wrote “there is only the IT,” I want it to be clear that that IT includes human beings, who perceive themselves as largely separate. Another analogy—and maybe it’s not an analogy—concerns the photon. At the moment a detector measures its position, it appears to be a particle, right “here.” Like we seem to be. But before the measurement is it Something unimaginably profound spread across, and entangled with everything in, the entire Cosmos? (Again, see Greene, Fabric of the Cosmos, p122-123.) And as explained in “And The Stars,” our very awareness is due to . . . photons.
But getting back to the final fugue, the current ne plus ultra of physics, or string theory, is called “M-theory”; it is meant to unify five competing theories into one. But nothing is known of it; physicists just believe that it must exist. Thus the M can alternatively stand for Mother, Magical, Mystical—whatever turns you on. While I’m certain, almost certain, it must be a coincidence—though from everything I know, I wouldn’t put it past him—the first of the four themes of the final fugue of The Art of the Fugue looks, on the page . . . like an “M.” And like an “M,” if you rotate it 180° horizontally . . . it looks the same. It has that form of symmetry. Yes, while the notes on the down-slant of the “M” don’t have the same duration as those on the up-slant—that would be a bit too boring—they are still the same tones. So, if played backwards . . . it sounds the same. Thus it is . . . beyond time.
But next year there may be J-theory, so forget that part. The main point is its timeless aspect. And it is also long, slow, majestic, and solemn; appearing both upright and inverted . . . overlapping . . . and halfway through with a crucial devil’s chord. Then, after reaching a climax of profound intensity, the second theme, of an entirely different character, enters. Flowing and rapid in contrast to the first, it reminds me much of the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth: “unfathomable and illimitable energy galloping across the Cosmos . . . and through our minds,” only here it is more flowing than galloping. But halfway through the first theme re-enters simultaneous with the second, and we see how interconnected the two are. And at the end of this section an intensity near unbearable is reached . . . before the music dies away.
So now we come to the final theme . . . of the final fugue . . . of Bach’s final work: His very own name spelled out in notes. In German B is B-flat and H is B, so it’s B-flat, A, C, B . . . four tones crammed right next to each other on the keyboard. The main theme of The Art of the Fugue is, as mentioned, based on the D minor triad: D, A, F, D, and the tail is also on the D minor scale. The B A C H theme is based on no harmony whatsoever. There is no key, and no scale, that includes these four notes. They are beyond harmony. And with this no-harmony we are conducted into a realm beyond any we could ever have imagined. Beyond notes . . . beyond harmony . . . beyond time itself. Into the Time before time. And as it builds to its climax, which we feel as nothing less than the Revelation of all Revelations, we are drawn, led, and conveyed—as it combines in the final measures with the first two themes—into that farthest, ultimate, unknown Wilderness of Wildernesses. . . .
When I first told Anne about the B A C H theme her initial reaction was, That’s awfully egocentric of him. Well, I suppose one might come to that conclusion but, as I’ve said, it was clear to the human Bach that he must die . . . for the eternal Bach to live. He, as do all great artists, saw that he was only an instrument, a lightning rod . . . for the IT. Again, Schubert’s “I am here only to compose.” Beethoven’s writings show he felt similarly. For Bach, he’d been waiting his whole life to use this theme. The C-sharp minor fugue of Book I of The Well Tempered Clavier, composed almost thirty years earlier, has as its theme four adjacent notes very similar to the B A C H. He could have written it in a different key to spell out B A C H then. He didn’t. He waited. For the final theme . . . of the final fugue . . . of his final work.
Much has been written about why Bach “did not finish” this fugue and I refer the interested reader to the sources. Son Carl said it was because he died (due to the aftereffects of two failed operations attempting to restore his eyesight), but in fact he left off writing six months before he left this world. Carl, who was in charge of getting it printed, also said it was intended to be a four-themed fugue with the first three combining with The Art of the Fugue theme at the point where the music leaves off. It certainly does seem unfinished, as there is no final cadence and chord: all the other fugues end in D major. But the final note Bach wrote is a D. Wolff shows, in the final two lines where all three themes come together, that The Art of the Fugue theme can be superimposed on the score in a musically meaningful way. I have played with this a bit and discovered that if the F halfway through the tail is held and then the final notes played at half speed—the type of device Bach employed all through this work—the last note of the tail, the D, is timed perfectly for the final measure. While there is no final D major chord like the other fugues, Bach, it is clear to me, had his reasons. There is a famous story about the sixth patriarch in Zen, Hui Neng, who was followed for two months through mountains and wilderness by a monk seeking Truth. Finally Hui Neng stopped, allowed the monk to catch up, and told him, “Thinking neither of good nor evil, return to your own Original Home.” Neither good nor evil. The good or evil that only has relevance to our own ideas of what will help our reproductive success. Beyond good or evil. Remember the Schubert essay where I wrote Artur Schnabel said to think of “I don’t know if I’m laughing, I don’t know if I’m crying”? Happy, sad, happy, sad. Beethoven during the first movement of the Ninth—in addition to beginning with an open fifth that has no major or minor tone—does the same thing with one phrase: major, minor, major, minor. Neither one, nor the other . . . beyond . . . both. Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat and the String Quintet end not in a major or minor chord either—just the tonic tone, which is . . . “neither good nor evil.” Just so, Bach gives us neither a minor or major ending. Even the final notes of the middle voice don’t follow a major or a minor scale; rather the scale of what is called the Dorian mode . . . before they end on D.
To repeat the quotes mentioned two chapters back, Tatiana Nikoleyeva related that a concertgoer told her The Art of the Fugue brought him a “closer understanding of life’s tragedies.” Why? Because there is no such thing as tragedy . . . in the realm of the IT. There is only the IT. And, “There is great secrecy in this music,” she concludes. “We shall never know Bach’s innermost thoughts—all we can do is try to discover the meaning.” Yes. The Meaning. Charles Rosen wrote, “Nevertheless if the work does not yield up its emotional secrets easily, it becomes in the end infinitely moving, with a grandeur and a pathos given to no other work.” And of the final page of the final fugue, the lines comprising the B A C H theme and those two following where all the themes combine, he writes: “There is no page in all music more disquieting . . . or more deeply moving.”
No page in music more disquieting . . . to what we think we are.
And no page more deeply moving, more meaningful . . . to what we really are.
But while Bach had done all he could—he had finished—still he knew that it had to appear unfinished, because the Final Fugue, the “Eternal Harmony conversing within ITself” . . . is never, nor can it ever be . . . finished. So maybe, just maybe . . . Bach left it that way . . . intentionally . . .
For us to finish . . .
Within ourselves . . .
With our very own lives . . .
With our very own Being . . .
The best we can.
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