Johann Sebastian Bach: The Art of Fugue BWV 1080

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The Art of Fugue by Nicholas Smith
The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV 1080 is as daunting to write about as it is to play. One thing makes it so: what is it? J. S. Bach did not live to complete it, so there are no instructions and no performance tradition to illuminate our path to understanding the work. Many have speculated and much scholarly research has been done, but there seem to be few solid answers. That this work continues to fascinate musicians and audiences is evidenced by the number and variety of recordings: a few keystrokes on the web will bring up performances on organ, harpsichord, modern piano, period instrument ensemble, even voices.
What is immediately apparent from both score and performance is that this is not a work for the fainthearted. For the performer, intense, long-term study is required, not just of this work but of Bach’s whole output, as well as other music that informs Bach’s style and taste. The literature and history of the times too need to be investigated for the ideas they help to shed on Bach’s creative process. Perhaps there is no other work that makes such demands on the performer to get inside the composer’s head. The same is true for the listener. My personal feeling is that without a knowledge of the mechanics of composition and a reasonable understanding of Bach’s life, works and times, one can get little more than fleeting impressions from even a careful listening. Just as one would not jump into playing the forty-eight preludes and fugues comprised in The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846-893 without careful technical and mental preparation, personally I would not actively recommend listening to this work to a non-music specialist under the age of forty, which is not to say that even music professionals “get” it all at forty. I have engaged with this work regularly over the years (I am fifty-eight at the time of writing) and I cannot say that I have grasped it. This is a work that keeps on giving: It demonstrates extraordinary compositional technique by a creator with very deep things to say. That Bach’s death means the work is incomplete just adds to its power, for me at least. There are no other incomplete works by other composers for which I have spent significant time wondering what might have been.
The format of this work is so famous, and so much has already been written, that I don’t think it necessary for me to repeat it here. Of the many hundreds of things that can be singled out, it is the sheer inventive ability that I want to mention: the manipulation of notes so superbly that it is impossible to take offense. In the wrong hands, a work like this almost could be offensive: a great show-off piece to impress an employer or posterity. Bach is no way rubbing our noses in his extraordinary contrapuntal brilliance. His compositional objective in The Art of Fugue is, as with all his other works, to make music that delights, moves and entertains. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than the inclusion of dance elements – so natural in all Baroque music, and here occasionally presented in a very obvious way (e.g. in Fuga a 3 soggetti [Contrapunctus 14]; compare this, for example, with the way in which Bach “hides” dance music inside the Passions). Certainly, every line, every contrapuntal trick, every “weird” harmony is designed to delight: this is no dry didactic work, but a celebration of life and of intellectual curiosity. It is certainly a celebration of Bach’s own life and unremitting musical curiosity. Bach himself said: “I was obliged to work hard. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed just as well.” With The Art of Fugue, Bach asks just that of us, each as we are able.
INTRODUCTION By Michael Tsalka
J. S. Bach worked on The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV 1080 during the last decade of his life. He probably began its conception around 1742 or 1743, shortly after the publication of the “Goldberg” Variations, BWV 988. Around 1749, Bach, by then blind and very ill, thought the work advanced enough to begin the formal copper engraving with the aid of his second surviving son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. The final version of the work, nevertheless, was left incomplete at the time of the great master’s demise in July 1750. Ten months later, C. P. E. Bach published the first edition, which departs in significant ways from the three extant but incomplete manuscripts, particularly in relationship to the order of presentation of the fugues and canons, notation and in some movements, level of completion.
We will never know if C. P. E. Bach contradicted some of the final oral instructions of his father; if he did so, it was probably an attempt to make the first edition more commercially successful and in this, as it is well known, he failed miserably as only a few copies of the engraving were sold. Despite some glaring errata and the inclusion of two arrangements of fugues for two keyboards, two “new” canons, and the incomplete final Fuga a 3 soggetti [Contrapunctus 14], followed by the organ chorale on “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit” (“Herewith I come before Thy Throne”), BWV 668a, the beautifully engraved 1751 publication is not only a moving tribute of a devoted son to his father and teacher, but also the closest we have to J. S. Bach’s overall conception of the work at the time of his death.
By any musical or intellectual measure, the fourteen contrapunctus or fugues and 4 canons aggregate to a formidable whole, taking more than eighty minutes to perform. Although Bach comes up with an almost miraculous variety of ideas, thematic variations, and fugal procedures, it is hard to forget that the whole oeuvre is firmly grounded on D minor and is derived from a single, sober and serious initial theme, containing all the intervals from the semitone to the perfect fifth, something quite unusual for a musical idea intended for fugal development:

The miracle of Bach’s imagination is that throughout the cycle he transforms through rhythmic and melodic alteration the brief and compact triadic subject no less than one hundred times. To this, one has to add a masterful demonstration of all contrapuntal and canonic techniques inherited and perfected by the composer.
The ordering of The Art of Fugue is now believed by scholars and musicians such as Dominic Florence and Reinhard Goebel to resemble closely that of the “Goldberg” Variations, BWV 988. There, the famous aria was followed by groups of three variations spaced by the appearance of increasingly complex canons (ten in total) with the reappearance of the initial movement at the end of the cycle. Extrapolating these organizational principles to BWV 1080, results in the presentation of four groups of contrapunctus—each unified by an increasingly complex fugal procedure (i.e. Group I: 4 simple fugues, Group II: 3 stretto fugues, Group III: 4 double and triple fugues and Group IV: 2 fugues in their “straight” and “mirror” versions) and separated by the individual presentation of four canons, also organized in increased level of complexity. It is this order that I have chosen for the present CD, although I have respected the 1751 final presentation of the incomplete Fuga a 3 soggetti followed by the moving final prayer in the form of the organ chorale. Over the years, I have had the chance of performing many wonderful completions of Contrapunctus 14; notwithstanding, I have come to the conclusion that there are certain musical statements that can only be completed in the Castle of Heaven.
Neither the first edition of The Art of the Fugue nor any of the eighteenth-century manuscript copies state on what instrument or instruments the work was meant to be performed. The first edition was published in an open score, that is, with separate lines for each of the four voices. Notwithstanding, the score was admired by musicians throughout the nineteenth century. It was considered then an example of abstract, absolute music, not meant for public performance, but for deep and rigorous intellectual consideration and study.
Incredibly, the first public concert performance of the whole work took place only in 1927 in Leipzig, under the direction of Karl Straube, one of Bach’s successors as cantor of the St. Thomas’ Church. From that moment onwards, many different instrumentations have been in use, in both performances and recordings, including string quartets, various chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, jazz ensemble, synthesizers, accordion, piano and a variety of early keyboard instruments.
During the second half of the past century, many scholars and interpreters, such as harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt and organist Helmut Walcha became convinced that J. S. Bach actually meant the work for a keyboard instrument. After all, notation in open score was regularly employed by seventeen-century Italian and German Baroque composers to present keyboard music, for example, by Samuel Scheidt in his Tabulatura Nova (1624). It was certainly not the standard keyboard notation in 1750, but Bach had used it in a publication of his Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her,” BWV 769 three years prior to his death and in many of his early organ chorales.
Because of its firm grounding on D minor and its academic meticulousness and bewildering mastery, the cycle has developed the reputation of being monotonous and even unemotional. Over the years, I have heard many recordings of The Art of Fugue, and while a few capture the real scope of J. S. Bach’s genius, some are much less engaging and emotionally profound. Yes, to some extent, the fugal treatments are didactic, but it is essential to remember that underpinning the music’s intellectual rigor, there is an incredible emotional sweep and variety, and to miss this is to miss the point of performing or listening to Bach’s musical testament.
The key to interpreting The Art of Fugue, I believe, is to take Bach’s lead: For him, the cycle was a deeply personal work. It is no coincidence that the third subject of the final contrapunctus begins with a clear, long statement of the notes B-flat – A – C – B-natural, which in the German key system spell B-A-C-H:

This statement occurs just as the climax of the final unconcluded movement is reached. Echoes of the B-A-C-H motive can also be heard in Contrapunctus 4, 8 and 11, each statement or signature becoming more salient. In other words, the composer coded himself and the sum of his human and artistic experience into this music.
In a similar fashion, my personal belief is that he would have expected the interpreter to gather the breadth of his/her human experience and power as musical orator, to present a convincing and moving rendition of this complex, at times tense polyphonic labyrinth. I wish to dedicate the present recording to writer, translator, intellectual, Prof. Aminadav Dykman (1958-2022), to whom I owe much gratitude for his love, wisdom, and constant artistic support since my childhood.
Nicholas Smith and Michael Tsalka © 2026
Editor: Dr. Angélica Minero Escobar