Organist Jacobs illuminates Bach’s “Art of Fugue” in living color
For an evening’s entertainment, which would you choose–the movie Oppenheimer or a graduate lecture on nuclear physics? For lovers of Bach’s music—the inspiring cantatas, the lively suites, the dramatic passions–the prospect of a performance of his monumental musical treatise The Art of Fugue might seem intimidating at first.
Organist Paul Jacobs anticipated that reaction in remarks preceding his performance of the work at Saint Peter’s Church Tuesday evening. Noting that his audience probably comprised everything from cognoscenti of counterpoint to people hearing their first classical concert, he advised, “Just listen,” and predicted an experience not merely beautiful but “sublime,” that is, inspiring wonder and awe.
For the next hour or so, Jacobs delivered handsomely on that promise, wielding organ textures from transparent to massive, making music of dense intellectual content leap off the page and into the listener’s ear.
Bach did his part too, sprinkling this monument of abstract thought with the musical fashions of 1750: a snappy fugue labeled “in the French style” here, a very danceable gigue there.
But no question, one was here for the counterpoint—Bach even gave the learned title “Contrapunctus” to each of the 14 fugues. (It’s likely he intended to submit the work as a membership requirement for a composers’ group called the Corresponding Society of the Musical Sciences.) Fortunately, there were lucid and authoritative program notes by Colin McKnight—and enough light in the church to read them—describing Bach’s composing techniques in plain English. One could “just listen” or follow the building of the musical edifice brick by brick.
For those following along, the performance was projected on a screen, the camera angles alternating between the organ’s manuals (keyboards), pedals, and the organist on the bench. The effect was of seeing the piece assembled before one’s eyes.
Some assembly was required, as Bach wrote each musical line on its own staff, as if for an ensemble of several instruments—and in fact, group performances of The Art of Fugue are common. At the same time, he seems deliberately to have composed most of the fugues to be playable by two hands on a keyboard, and the organ with its pedals can play all of them. The quasi-orchestral range of organ timbres offered many opportunities to distinguish the fugue subjects and counter-subjects from each other.
Jacobs used that range sparingly at first, tracing the Contrapunctus No. 1 in a monochromatic flute stop. Its simple yet memorable subject—which would become the motto theme for the entire work—unfolded in a relatively plain yet masterful fugal treatment, accustoming the ear to hear independent lines moving against each other.
That subject’s moderate walking tempo was the default for the entire work, but Jacobs missed no opportunity to disguise and vary it, for example in the skipping French-overture rhythms of the Contrapunctus No. 2, to which he also added piercing reed stops for timbral variety.
The heat turned up in No. 3, with its busy bass line in the pedals and some daring harmonies, and reached a true allegro in No. 4, whose grand scale, contrasting episodes, virtuoso demands and fortissimo finish recalled the organ showpieces of Bach’s younger years.
Having finished the “simple” fugues with a bang, Bach then intrigued the ear with counter-fugues featuring the now-familiar main subject in dialogue with an inverted version of itself. In No. 5, Jacobs made sure listeners got that point with lines in different timbres, making the counterpoint transparent. No. 6, “in Stylo Francese,” again mimicked a stately French overture at first, then became dense with stretto (overlapping entrances of the subject) before the clouds parted and the fugue closed in brilliant sunshine.
Compressed and stretched versions of the subject added to the complications of No. 7, which Jacobs clarified with a triple-decker sonority of busy right hand, steady left, and leisurely pedals.
The next chapter in this book of fugues consisted of the double and triple varieties, i.e., fugues with two or three subjects instead of just one. In fact, Contrapunctus No. 8 kicked off with two lively new themes, rendered articulately by Jacobs; it didn’t introduce the work’s motto theme till near the end, and in a much altered form at that.
No. 9 was fast and twisty, in a soft dynamic but no less virtuosic for that, with another last entrance of the motto theme, in long notes. No. 10 presented two contrasting subjects, one in bitten-off phrases and the other flowing, before the motto theme drove it to a forte finish. No. 11 created drama with still more contrasting subjects and strongly chromatic harmonies; Jacobs’s piquant registration built up in layers to close this chapter with another sonorous fortissimo.
(Four two-voice canons that appear, somewhat incongruously, at this point in Bach’s manuscript were omitted from Tuesday’s performance.)
The virtuoso contrapuntist then wowed musical analysts with two mirror fugues, compositions that made sense with the notation right side up or upside down. In Jacobs’s rendition, No. 12 actually had a hall of mirrors effect, with artful registration that made the melodic lines seem to reflect off each other. No. 13 danced a jig in piping flute tones, a lighthearted prelude to the mighty music to follow.
The Art of Fugue was left incomplete at Bach’s death, the final movement No. 14 left hanging in mid-phrase. The work’s motto theme is missing from this movement, but it has been plausibly suggested the Bach intended to turn this triple fugue into a quadruple fugue by introducing the motto at the end in a last grand demonstration of contrapuntal prowess.
In Jacobs’s performance Tuesday, one certainly felt the buildup of musical skill and meaning from the stately first subject to the sinuous second, through the bold statement of the B-A-C-H theme to a crescendo full of promise…and a sudden silence.
The organist sat motionless on the bench for a long minute, letting the listener contemplate the meaning of that incomplete moment, and the music that might have been. Then he stood up–as did the audience, warmly acknowledging the gift of a musical milestone made real before their eyes and ears.
Paul Jacobs will perform an all-Bach program reenacting Felix Mendelssohn’s historic 1840 recital, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. eventbrite.com
