Musical sacrifice
The Musical Offering ( BWV 1079) is a collection of predominantly contrapuntal sentences that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote three years before his death. All sentences are based on a single theme by the Prussian King Friedrich II .
The composition belongs to Bach's late contrapuntal work, along with works such as the Canonical Changes on Vom Himmel Hoch , the Fourteen Canons on the first fundamental notes of the Goldberg Variations and the Art of Fugue . The musical sacrifice contains
- two in the print edition with Ricercar overridden joints ,
- another fugue, the two upper parts of which are in canon,
- a number of short, elaborately crafted canons (except for one without a cast),
- a trio sonata for transverse flute , violin and basso continuo , to the four movements of which a canon is also appended.
Emergence
The work originated from an encounter between Bach and the Prussian king in Potsdam in the first half of May 1747 . Bach had accepted an invitation from Friedrich to his court, where his son Carl Philipp Emanuel worked as a court musician. The Berlinische Nachrichten reported on the meeting with the king from 7/8 May 1747. According to this, Friedrich played the theme on the fortepiano and asked Bach to improvise a fugue over it. Bach improvised a three-part fugue in such a masterly manner that “not only Se. Majest. To show the most gracious pleasure about it, but also all those present were amazed. "
Thereupon the king asked whether Bach could not turn the theme into a six-part fugue. Only then did Bach have to give up, but he promised that he would put the topic on paper "in a neat fugue, and then have it engraved in copper".
Back in Leipzig he worked out the royal theme in a fugue for three and six voices and added a number of canons (without scoring information) and a trio sonata for flute, violin and basso continuo, in which the “royal theme” also appears. He chose the flute as a “royal instrument” because Frederick II was an enthusiastic flutist. On July 7th, he finished the work and dedicated it to the Prussian king under the name Musical sacrifice . It is not known whether Bach received any recognition from the Prussian court for this. The collection was in print at the end of September. Most of the 200 copies were distributed by Bach "to good friends for free", the rest were sold for 1 thaler each.
The "royal theme" (regional theme)
Like countless Baroque minor themes, this theme begins with the tonic triad, adds the sixth and from there falls by a diminished seventh into the lower leading tone. It then receives its own characteristic through the descending chromatic scale before the final cadence. This chromaticism makes any form of narrowing impossible, which clearly limits the contrapuntal usability.
It is unclear who composed the “Royal Theme”. The composer and music theorist Arnold Schönberg suspected that at Friedrich's court only Bach's own son Carl Philipp Emanuel had the necessary knowledge of counterpoint to develop such a complicated musical figure. However, there is no direct source evidence for this thesis.
The keyword Ricercar
The core of the collection are two large-scale contrapuntal pieces for harpsichord which Bach named Ricercar . The work also contains a subheading that interprets this name as a play on words:
Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta
("At the behest of the king, the melody and the rest through canonical art")
The first letters form the word RICERCAR as an acrostic . The musical form of the ricercar is considered to be one of the pre-forms of the fugue; in Bach the name only appears at this point.
The individual parts
Three-part Ricercar
The three-part Ricercar seems quite freely composed, with clearly improvisational features. Although Bach does not include any specific instrument information, this movement is generally accepted as a harpsichord work, as it can be played entirely with two hands. The unmotivated triplet movement is noticeable in two places - especially since it is immediately abandoned. Since this has no parallels in the rest of Bach's work, Albert Schweitzer already suspected that the sentence was a transcription of the original improvisation, which Bach then wrote down from memory. Some passages are later repeated at a different pitch, so that the movement bears more resemblance to some of Bach's choral fugues than to other harpsichord fugues.
Canon perpetuus
The middle part brings the original theme in the manner of a cantus firmus , two other voices form a canon in the double octave. The title ("Eternal Canon") alludes to the fact that Bach noted a repetition but did not mark the end, so that the players themselves have to find a suitable ending point. The short movement cannot be played on a harpsichord with two hands, but it can be played with an additional instrument or with the instruments of the trio sonata.
Canons diversi
The score adds the half-sentence super Thema Regium ( German “about the royal theme” ). There are five canons that combine the original theme with different counter-subjects .
- Canon a 2 : The picture of the score indicates that the unanimously notated line of this canon should also be played backwards ( cancer canon ), starting on the same note. The first half of the line consists of the theme and then a free counterpoint. The movement will be played by the harpsichord or by two identical or similar instruments, such as the flute and violin.
While this canon only adds a second voice, the following four are three-part: Here one voice always plays the theme, and a second adds a free counter-subject, which is then followed by the third voice in the canon. Here, too, the score contains repeat signs, and Bach does not notate the end.
- a 2 violini in unison : Again two parts that were canonically added to the cantus firmus and which, as the score mentions, begin on the same note ( in unison ). In this case, the score also dictates the scoring: two violins, plus a bass part (e.g. a violoncello) with the theme of the king.
- a 2 - Per motum contrarium : The two added voices should run in countermovement , so the second should reverse the intervals of the first. The keys of the score clarify the starting notes and intervals. In addition - as a third voice - there is the topic in the upper part.
- a 2 - Per augmentationem, contrario motu : in magnification, in countermovement . The second voice should therefore play at half the tempo and again reverse the intervals. Of course, the first canon part and the cantus firmus have to be played twice until the second part has finished with its part. In order to make this audible, Bach incorporated many characteristic, written out ornaments, which the listener can then find in the other voice at a slow pace. The original theme is decorated accordingly. Possibly the movement alludes to the introduction of a French overture and would thus be a striking parallel to Contrapunctus 6 of the Art of the Fugue , which also introduces the theme enlargement. - In the copy that he sent to the king, Bach added to this canon by hand: “Notulis crescentibus crescat Fortuna Regis.” (“The king's happiness grows with the growing small notes [value]”).
- a 2 : Bach has chromatically filled in the triad notes of the theme from the third, so that the entire movement is characterized by ascending and descending chromatic scales. This obscures the finesse of the movement: it modulates inconspicuously so that every next repetition has to start a whole tone higher. The title of the print edition does not indicate this; today's editions mostly add “per tonos” (“through the keys”); this probably goes back to Kirnberger. Bach wrote in the dedication score for the king: "Ascendenteque Modulationae ascendat Gloria Regis." ("... and with the ascending modulation the fame of the king rise").
Fuga canonica in Epidiapente
Here the theme is spun further and can even be played in canon: The second part begins - as indicated by the key and title - a fifth higher. Later on, the theme appears again - a fifth lower, so that it appears again in the canon in the basic key of the work. According to the previous short and strict canons, this movement also contains longer interludes and thus introduces a certain playful ease.
Bach added a moving bass voice that only picks up the subject shortly before the end. Bach only uses such initially unthematic bass parts in fugues if the work is an ensemble work, never in fugues for harpsichord or organ; Examples can be found in the Brandenburg Concerts 2, 4 and 5. This could also be an indication that Bach was thinking of performing with instruments here.
Six-part Ricercar
The six-part ricercar initially presents the theme one after the other in all six voices like a fugue exposure, but then always introduces new motifs and only lets the basic theme appear in the background at longer intervals, so to speak as a cantus firmus . The reader at the time associated the term Ricercar with a historical and already venerable form; Bach reinforces this association with a Stile antico in the six-part Ricercar through the notation in ancient large note values and (in the print version) 4/2 time, as is often the case in his later work.
This movement is the only one to have survived in Bach's handwriting - there notated on two staves, and in the print edition as a six-part score. The score notation of music for a keyboard instrument was not uncommon in the eighteenth century and suggests itself for a work with such a strongly theoretical aspect. Nevertheless, the consequent restriction to what is tangible with two hands clearly shows that this is a composition for harpsichord, as Bach had promised the king.
Canon à 2 and à 4
Here are two more canons. “Search and you will find,” the subtitle of the first quotes the Sermon on the Mount . In the previous canons, Bach had supplied both the clefs in which the notes are to be read and marked the places where the next part begins. In both canons, only the keys are marked out, but not the locations - the player (or the person who prepares the sheet music) has to find these himself. The theme again uses a similar chromatic filling as in the last canon immediately before the Fuga canonica .
The only four-part canon in the collection is also a riddle canon. The theme further varies the royal theme by initially filling the triad notes into a diatonic scale and adding a three-note upbeat to the tones of the descending chromatics. Due to its characteristic jump of the diminished seventh it remains recognizable. As the keys show, it should be played in the double octave, but again the player (or arranger) has to find the spots by himself. Incidentally, Bach's student Johann Philipp Kirnberger provided solutions for these canons in his book The Art of Pure Sentence in Music .
Trio sonata
It ends with a trio sonata for flauto traverso, violin and basso continuo, which follows the form of the church sonata - it has four movements in a row slow - fast - slow (in parallel key ) - fast . Bach finally adds an infinite canon again .
- Largo 3/4 in C minor
- Allegro 2/4 in C minor
- Andante in E flat major
- Allegro 6/8 in C minor
- Canone perpetuo in C minor
The style is clearly based on the music that the king valued; it takes over many elements of the musical style that Johann Joachim Quantz and the king himself represented at court. Even today's listener can clearly understand this from the almost endless chains of motifs of sighs in the second half of the third movement. Bach combines this style with the constant dense imitation and expansive chromatics for which he was known and which the king had challenged with his assignment.
The theme is only hinted at lightly in many places (such as in the first movement in the first notes of the bass or in the upper part theme at the beginning of the second movement), but emerges just as often as a kind of chorale in long note values under dense configurations. The theme also becomes clear in the final fifth movement, a reversal canon in which Bach again refrains from marking the end (the title means "eternal canon") - the players will have to find it themselves.
Overall shape
The work is a rather loose collection of, on the one hand, more theoretically oriented sections (the canons), the two solo movements for the harpsichord (the original improvisation and the solution to the task at hand) and chamber music material for the king as a practical musician (the sonata and the fuga canonica ). Bach will probably not have imagined performing the work as a whole. Since the pages of the score are not numbered and the score is not handed down in bound form, but in loose four-page layers, the intended order has often been doubted; however, the above sequence is closest.
If you follow it, the composition is in two parts: Each of these parts begins with a harpsichord solo, is followed by a music theory exercise in the form of a number of canons and ends with chamber music - the first part thus includes the three-part ricercar, most of the canons and ends with the Fuga Canonica ; the second part begins with the six-part ricercar, brings two canons of riddles and ends with the five-movement trio sonata. This structure seems quite logical. It can be seen that the second part continues the demands of the first part in a well-planned way - the harpsichord movement becomes more difficult, Bach no longer provides the solutions for the theoretical part; the trio sonata is a greater playful challenge.
Processing (selection)
Complete works
- 1933: Heinrich Besseler set up the work for the Heidelberg Musicological Institute; Performed by Wolfgang Fortner .
- 1937: Roger Vuataz created several versions for groups of woodwinds, strings and harpsichord (solo or as an orchestra); Hermann Scherchen performed the orchestral arrangements several times.
- 1949/50: Igor Markevitch arranged the work for quartet (violin, flute, violoncello, harpsichord) and three orchestral groups.
- 1964: Hermann Scherchen made a recording of his own version.
Single sentences
- 1935: First performance of Anton Webern's arrangement of the Ricercar a 6 for orchestra , which was made between mid-November 1934 and early February 1935 . In this transcription, Webern breaks down the musical lines into small components, which largely consist of a few tones and sometimes just a single tone, and assigns them to different instruments - a process that is similar to Arnold Schönberg's composition of timbre melodies, but rather a timbre change that is more melodic Represents tone sequences for clarification and interpretation of the sentence structure.
- 1955: The Modern Jazz Quartet used the canon a 2 violini in unison in their recording of Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise as an introduction .
Subject regium
- 1976: Isang Yun wrote an extensive, virtuoso violin solo (royal theme) on the subject regium .
- 1981: Sofia Gubaidulina used the theme regium in her violin concerto Offertorium and changed it until it resembled a Russian Orthodox hymn.
Trivia
- 1979: Douglas Richard Hofstadter used some examples from the musical sacrifice in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach to illustrate self- reference. Hofstadter's book is "a contrapuntal work, composed according to the formal schemes of the 'Musical Sacrifice' and the 'Art of Fugue' by Johann Sebastian Bach."
- 2003: Mein Name ist Bach (film), directed by Dominique de Rivaz , Switzerland 2003. Cast: Vadim Glowna (Johann Sebastian Bach), Jürgen Vogel (Friedrich II.) “Inspired by a real event, the film depicts the tense encounter between one another Musician and a king, a father and a son. ”The film was awarded the Swiss Film Prize in Solothurn in 2004, but cannot always be considered reliable in terms of authenticity.
literature
- Reinhard Böß: The art of the riddle canon in the "Musical Sacrifice". 2 volumes (volume 1: text; volume 2: notes). Noetzel "Ars Musica", Wilhelmshaven 1991, ISBN 3-7959-0530-3 .
- Julio Cortázar : Queremos tanto a Glenda. Alfaguara, Buenos Aires 1996, ISBN 950-511-228-9 , pp. 122–127, Nota sobre el tema de un rey y la venganza de un príncipe : Explicative characters on the story “Clone”.
- James R. Gaines: Evening in the Palace of Reason. Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment. Fourth Estate, New York NY 2005, ISBN 0-00-715658-8 .
Web links
- Musical Sacrifice : Sheet Music and Audio Files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Materials on BWV 1079 at Bach Digital of the Bach Archives Leipzig
- Visualization of the cancer canon
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl Geiringer: Johann Sebastian Bach . 3. Edition. CH Beck, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-406-03204-4 , pp. 105-106
- ↑ Sacrifice. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 13 : N, O, P, Q - (VII). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1889, Sp. 1294 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ). "... a gift offered to the deity or a deity as an expression of adoration, request, thanksgiving, reconciliation, etc."
- ^ Christoph Wolff: Johann Sebastian Bach . Updated new edition, Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 470.
- ↑ Christoph Wolff : The stile antico in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Studies on Bach's late work (= Archive for Musicology . Supplement 6, ISSN 0570-6769 ). Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968 (also: Erlangen-Nürnberg, University, Dissertation, 1966).
- ^ Ingrid Fuchs: Johann Sebastian Bach: Contributions to the history of impact . Austrian Society for Musicology, Vienna 1992
- ↑ Westminster XWN 19089 (mono) and WST 17089 (stereo), according to discography Lawrence Friedmann (PDF) fonoteca.ch
- ^ Regina Bauer: Anton Webern and Johann Sebastian Bach: On the adaptation of the Ricercar from the 'Musical Offering'. In: Marcel Dobbertstein (ed.): Artes liberales: Karlheinz Schlager for his 60th birthday . Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1998, pp. 359-378
- ↑ Simon Haasis: Bach in the guise of the most advanced composing. Reflections on the aesthetics of Anton Webern's Ricercar processing . Retrieved May 4, 2018.
- ↑ Rainer Schmusch: Klangfarbenmelodie . In: hand dictionary of musical terminology , 22nd delivery, 1994, p. 1 u. 7-13; vifamusik.de accessed on May 6, 2018.
- ↑ Thomas von Randow : Thinking in strange loops . In: Die Zeit , No. 17/1985.