Friday, February 11, 2011

Bach's Art of the Fugue

We can't have a series on 'making room for the other' without including J.S. Bach's art of the fugue. Here are a couple of videos of the Emerson String quartet (one of my favorite quartets) playing this monumental work (at least bits and bobs of it). The first video has a short explanation of the work, the second one of the 'Contrapunti'. In essence, this is a series of different fugues (Contrapunti) based upon the same theme (or subject, although the subject varies from variation to variation). The variety of the work spins out into eternity and ends mid-sentence because Bach died before he complete the work. I wonder if he would have just kept composing in endless improvisation on this theme into eternity... It seems as if that is exactly what he did.

Watch and listen for the independence of the different voice intertwined with how they interact. This is play in motion...

[N.B. The Oxford American Dictionary defines 'fugue' in the following manner: "Music a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successfully taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts."]



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