Glenn Gould is represented well, mostly off TV appearances, with his humming very clearly audible. (I have not heard the humming on disc, though as I reported, I'm a little hard of hearing.) In addition to most of the goodies, Gould plays the Bach Contrapunctus no. 14 from the Art of Fugue, a very moving performance, the humming notwithstanding.
The Art of Fugue ends with a famously incomplete piece, Contrapunctus 14. For most lovers of the music of J.S.Bach, this is a difficult moment. The surviving fragment of this last fugue (Contrapunctus simply means fugue with some extra connotations that are unimportant) is such a wonderful achievement that the fact of its incompleteness is heartbreaking. The first fugue --a jewel itself-- introduces the main
musical theme of the entire set of fugues which constitute The Art of Fugue, assigned the opus number 1080.
This theme appears inverted and altered in many interesting ways, but then other themes are also introduced, until there are four in all. [It is now believed that the] last fugue was supposed to be a fugue in all four themes, a so-called quadruple fugue, [though for many years it was identified as merely a triple fugue, following the designations of early scholars, notably the sons of J.S.Bach].The fugue is both an intellectual exercise and a musical form. A musical form is simply a holding-structure for a piece of music, to make it easier for the listener to cling to points of familiarity in the musical narrative. Thus form makes music more listenable. A fugue, an essentially minimalist concept, is a piece of music based on a single motif (the subject), whose intermittent arrival in one part (or voice) or another provides the familiarity that makes the piece accessible. But the temptation to make a clever fugue is almost irresistible, so that an amateur could write a fugue that is correct, but which does not make for pleasant listening. (Note: the way in which a fugue subject pervades a fugue must not be taken to be an indication that every one of the subject entries must be emphasized and recognized. The subject provides a texture that is just as satisfying --or more satisfying-- than the satisfaction of recognizing an entry. The presence of the subject is felt rather than actually heard, and the connoisseur of counterpoint will have learned this pleasure.)
Bach's 'last' fugue, on the other hand, is first and foremost a piece of beautiful music. It starts out with great dignity, even solemnity, and becomes a mighty protest against the universe. Then, as it gathers strength to repeat a new and more terrible argument, it collapses into a lonely tenor voice, which suddenly finds itself utterly abandoned by the remaining voices. There are stories that Bach died while working on this piece, but this is contradicted by a fair degree of evidence. It is not the sentimentality of Bach's death and his inability to complete the work that is tragic. Rather it is the fact that a completion simply has not come down to us.
Some writers (notably Christoph Wolff) have argued that The Art of Fugue was a work begun a lot earlier in Bach's life, and that perhaps the last fugue had been completed, but has been lost. It is also possible that Bach did not like his completion, and left the truncated fugue as a challenge. For those interested in the subject, there is a completion by Donald Francis Tovey that is conceded to be learned, but widely regarded as unsatisfactory. There is a completion by Lionel Rogg, which I have not heard, and also one by William Malloch, which I have. This last is rather an irreverent and playful arrangement of the whole Art of Fugue which leaves one both bemused and amused, and is thoroughly worth hearing. (One of these days I may have the courage to upload it to YouTube myself.)
Searching for Art of Fugue, or Die Kunst der Fuge, and Bach, or maybe BWV 1080, you get many hits on YouTube. Some of the best clips are of Musica Antiqua Koln (with Reinhard Goebel). There are two clips of Contrapunctus 1 by recorder ensembles, both Japanese, and an uncredited Organ version that is mechanical enough to be derived from a MIDI file.
A piece that is --at least thematically-- quite unrelated to the Art of Fugue is the Chorale Vor deinem Thron tret ich hiermit. This is a fairly well known tune sung to words less familiar to English congregations. The original tune is an alternative to "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended." This chorale was (as I understand it) written on the lower half of the page on which Bach's unfinished 14th fugue ends, and was presented by Bach's son as the last thing the great composer ever wrote. It is certainly something that Bach may well have wanted to do, but on our deathbeds, few of us have the strength to make the wonderful gestures we would like to make. But the wonderful blend of arrogance and humility that we see in Bach from this distance in time is neither diminished nor increased by whether he wrote the hymn below the fugue on the manuscript.
Archimedes
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