Johann Sebastian Bach - The Art of Fugue (Helmut Walcha)

Information

Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach

CD1:

• (01-19) The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080

CD2:

• (01) The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080: Fuga a 3 Soggetti (unfinished)
• (02-03) Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 547
• (04-06) Organ Sonata No. 1 in E-flat major, BWV 525
• (07-09) Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, BWV 564
• (10-12) Organ Sonata No. 6 in G major, BWV 530
• (13-14) Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

Helmut Walcha, organ
Date: 1956
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/cat/4776508

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Review

In 10 years of reviewing for Fanfare , this is only the second time I’ve submitted an entry to the magazine’s Classical Hall of Fame. It isn’t that there aren’t other worthy candidates; it’s just that I believe overuse of this column can lead to diminishment of the special status accorded its nominees.

Helmut Walcha’s remastered-for-CD The Art of Fugue was recorded in stereo in 1956 as part of a complete survey of Bach’s organ works, a project that spanned 15 years from 1956 to 1971. Walcha recorded an earlier Bach cycle in mono between 1947 and 1952, but it did not include The Art of Fugue . The organist also composed his own speculative conclusion to the final, unfinished, triple fugue, but that conclusion is not included in this two-disc set; the music ends abruptly in bar 239, as do many other performances. However, Archiv has incorporated this two-disc subset of the complete cycle into a 12-CD box containing the entire later stereo survey, and disc 6 of that collection includes Walcha’s performance of the final fugue (Contrapunctus 18) with the organist’s projected continuation.

I was motivated to submit this entry by a new recording of the work by Joan Lippincott, reviewed in the main composer section. In listening to that release, along with others for comparison purposes, I kept coming back to Walcha for his august allocution of this monumental edifice that Bach erected to musical art and science.

Bach left us to ponder a number of mysteries in his unfinished testament to canon and fugue. Writing out the pieces in open scoring—each part to its own staff—he inconveniently forgot to tell us what instrument or instruments he had in mind for performing them. Were they then composed as purely theoretical exercises meant to be studied on paper but not played? Or did Bach intend performance by some unspecified ensemble of instruments, perhaps a consort of viols, as has been effectively realized on disc by Fretwork and Phantasm? We shall never know the answer to that question.

If the issue of scoring stirs debate, so too does the question of how the numbers that make up the work should be ordered, a dilemma created as a result of assigning numbers to 14 of the fugues but no numbers to three others or to the four canons.

All versions of the work I’m familiar with at least start in the same place with the four “simple” fugues, Nos. 1–4, and most end up with the unfinished triple fugue into which Bach wove his name. Most also follow the four “simple” fugues with the three stretto fugues: No. 5, which is based on the subject in inversion; No. 6, which is designated in stylo francese ; and No. 7, which presents the subject in augmentation and diminution. It’s at this point, however, that things start to get dicey.

Some players—Lippincott, for example, in her new recording—appear to follow the first Bach Gesellschaft edition, which gives the fugue in three voices as No. 8, while Régis Alard in his Hortus recording seems to follow the Berlin Autograph version, which gives the fugue in three voices as No. 9, and the fugue in four voices alla Duodecima as No. 8. Then there’s Reinhard Goebel who, in his recording with Musica Antiqua Cologne, proposed an entirely different layout in which each of the four groups of fugues—simple, stretto , double/triple, and mirror—are followed by one of the four canons, instead of the canons being played as a group unto themselves, usually after all but the very last of the fugues.

Whether any of this actually matters probably depends on whether Bach envisioned some internal mathematical plan such as exists in the Goldberg Variations . We shall never know the answer to that question either, but on the matter of whether The Art of Fugue is a purely theoretical set of contrapuntal studies that was never meant to be played, I think we can dismiss that notion as nonsense. Bach wrote lots of training and technique-building pieces, but nothing suggests that musical instruction in his day was ever achieved by any means other than actually practicing and playing the exercises he’d written. So it doesn’t strike me as a giant leap of faith to believe that Bach would not have wasted his time and energy writing abstract pieces to be forever frozen in the silence of ink spots on paper.

Blinded at the age of 16, reportedly after being vaccinated for smallpox, Helmut Walcha (1907–91) entered the Leipzig Conservatory and, over a period of several years, learned by rote and committed to memory the complete organ works of Bach.

Already by Bach’s time, the Great Organ in Alkmaar’s St. Laurens Church had undergone several renovations and upgrades and, by period standards, it was a large and impressive instrument. As early as 1722, Caspar Schnitger, son of the famous Dutch organ builder Arp Schnitger, was retained to add an independent pedal for controlling 13 ranks, to increase the compass of the three manuals from low C to d’’’, and to recalibrate the pitch to conform to a tempered tuning system. Further modifications were made during the 19th century, but had Bach sat down at the console of Alkmaar’s Great Schnitger Organ in 1747, around the time he began working on The Art of Fugue , he would have encountered a Goliath of three manuals, plus pedal, controlling 55 stops, and a total compass of 78 notes tuned to equal temperament at a pitch of A= 415 Hz.

Walcha refuses to treat The Art of Fugue as devotional church music or as some sort of mystical, metaphysical meditation. In his hands, Bach’s contrivances in contrapuntal manipulation and intrigue are an extension of the grand organ preludes, toccatas, and fugues, mainly dating back to the composer’s Weimar period (c.1708–17) and earlier. There are far fewer of the big virtuoso showpiece-type works from Cöthen (c.1717–23) or Leipzig (1723–50). During the latter period, especially, Bach’s organ works became more directed toward chorale-based compositions as part of his duties to provide music for religious services at all four of Leipzig’s Lutheran churches.

Walcha pulls out all the stops (no pun intended) on the St. Laurens Schnitger organ, making full use of the instrument’s array of ranks, registrations, and timbres. Instead of approaching The Art of Fugue as some sort of virginal act of piety, he performs much of the work with a healthy German robustness, reminding us that the Cantor of Leipzig had an earthy side. One need only listen to Walcha’s cheeky canon in augmentation and contrary motion, which he takes quite fast and in which he engages some combination of vox humana and other stops to make the thing sound like a couple of honking geese. You can’t listen to it and not laugh.

Contrary as it may seem (again, no pun intended), Walcha’s performance increases rather than diminishes the nobility of The Art of Fugue by exalting and glorifying its humanness. As he signs his name to the work in the final fugue, Bach declares, as Michelangelo did upon completing his Pietà , that I, not God, made this. Michelangelo was punished for his hubris by being nearly blinded by a chip of marble that glanced off his chisel. Bach was punished by not being permitted to finish his majestic monument to the art of counterpoint. No version of this work simultaneously elevates my spirit and humbles me as does Walcha’s, and that’s why I elect it to the Hall of Fame.

-- Jerry Dubins, FANFARE

More reviews:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/bach-the-art-of-fugue-mw0001849213
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Of-Fugue-CD/dp/B000M05VMU

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Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bach enriched established German styles through his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and his adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from Italy and France. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach

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Helmut Walcha (October 27, 1907 in Leipzig – August 11, 1991 in Frankfurt) was a German organist who specialized in the works of the Dutch and German baroque masters. Walcha was blinded at age 19 after vaccination for smallpox. Despite his disability, he is known for his recordings of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he recorded twice, once in mono, and again in stereo. Walcha has also recorded most of Bach's harpsichord works for EMI. He also composed for the organ. Walcha published four volumes of original chorale preludes, as well as arrangements for organ of orchestral works written by others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Walcha

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