Bach and the patterns of invention 9780674013568, 9780674060050, 9780674238299

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~ Bach and the Patterns of Invention -

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,

——— Bach and the Patterns of Invention —

LAURENCE DREYFUS a

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS oe _ Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

Copyright © 1996 by the President and Fellows

of Harvard College

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Third printing, 2004

First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2004 | Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dreyfus, Laurence.

Bach and the patterns of invention / Laurence Dreyfus.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. _) and index. ISBN 0-674-06005-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-674-01356-5 (pbk.) 1. Bach, Johann Sebastian, 1685—1750—Criticism and

[B] 96-32275

interpretation. 2. Composition (Music) I. Title. ML410.B1D63 1996 780’.92—dc20

Designed by Gwen Frankfeldt

Acknowledgments

More than a few people—scholars, musicians, students, and friends (with generous overlaps among these categories)—helped me write this book, a project which has lasted considerably longer than a decade. Some of the chapters revise and overhaul work that has appeared separately in journals and elsewhere, while

others arose from lectures published here for the first time. In all cases the revisions and expansions have been so extensive that it seems reasonable to hope

| that the result amounts to a coherent argument rather than merely a collection —

_ of essays. At least this was my intention. | Some friends and colleagues read and criticized material from this book at various stages; others offered invaluable advice and encouragement, sometimes. in ways they may not even be aware of. To all of them, my sincere thanks. In particular, I'd like to single out Kofi Agawu, David Alcala, Nicholas Anderson, Harry Ballan, Karol Berger, Anna Maria Busse-Berger, the late Howard Mayer

Brown, John Butt, Richard Cohn, Stephen Clark, Tim Crawford, John Daverio, ! Matthew Dirst, Mark Everist, Constantin Fasolt, Margot Fassler, Wim Franken-

berg, Don O. Franklin, Henrietta Freeman-Attwood, Jonathan FreemanAttwood, Michael Friedmann, Phillip Gossett, Thomas Grey, Ketil Haugsand, Porkell Helgason, Stephen Hinton, Barry Ife, Helga Ingélfsdottir, Kristjan Ingolfson, Jeffrey Kallberg, Allan R. Keiler, Wieland Kuijken, Paul Leenhouts, Marie Leonhardt, David Lewin, Eva Linfield, Carolyn Lougee, Michael Marissen, Ed-

ward Mendelson, Gudmundur Oli Olafsson, Bruce Phillips, Curtis Price, Paul | Robinson, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Penny Souster, Margaret Steinitz, David Stern, Jane Stevens, Birgit Stolt, Reinhard Strohm, Jeanne Swack, Christopher Wintle, and Christoph Wolff. I would also like to offer my thanks to Irene Auerbach of

the Music Department at King’s College London, who turned her sharp eye to | a careful proofreading of the manuscript, and to Orhan Memed, whose help in

the final stages both with the prose text and with the music examples saved me |

from infelicities too numerous to mention. |

I am very grateful to several universities and foundations who supported the research for this book with fellowship stipends or by granting me release time from teaching. They include, in chronological order, the American Council of Learned Societies, Yale University, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Stanford

, University. For a substantial subsidy to fund the engraving of the music examples, moreover, I am happy to acknowledge the generous support of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Margaretta Fulton, my editor at Harvard University Press, had the good sense

to steer me toward a book on “Bach and invention” and the patience to wait for the manuscript to appear on her desk. My warmest thanks to her for her encouragement and support. This book is dedicated with great affection to my daughter, Emily.

Contents | rt What Is an Invention? 1 | 2 Composing against the Grain 33 3 The Ideal Ritornello 59

4 The Status of a Genre 103 | 5 Matters of Kind 135

6 Figments of the Organicist Imagination 169 7 On Bach's Style 189 § Bach as Critic of Enlightenment 219 Notes 247

Index of Works by Bach 261 | General Index 263

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‘Bach and the Patterns of Invention _

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What Is an Invention? Oe

Sometime in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach, Capellmeister to his Serene Highness

the Prince of Anhalt-Céthen, inscribed the title page to a small handwritten volume of keyboard pieces which were to be understood as a Straightforward Instruction, in which amateurs of the keyboard, and especially the eager ones, are shown a clear way not only (1) of learning to play cleanly in two voices, but also, after further progress, (2) of dealing correctly and satisfactorily with

three obbligato parts; at the same time not only getting good inventions, but

developing the same satisfactorily, and above all arriving at a cantabile manner in , playing, all the while acquiring a strong foretaste of composition.!

_ The fifteen pieces for two voices that followed (BWV 772-786) were arranged in , ascending order by key and were each labeled an Inventio. The works were not, in fact, newly composed, for they had already been entered in the Clavierbiichlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, a musical notebook for Bach’s eldest son, in which Johann Sebastian and the twelve-year-old Wilhelm Friedemann jointly copied

this set of two-part imitative works sometime between the autumn of 1722 and , the end of winter, 1723.” In the Clavierbiichlein, however, Bach had entitled each , work a Praeambulum—originally an organist’s extemporized introduction to an ensemble work, now commonly referring to a short prelude. For his “Straightforward Instruction,” then, Bach apparently changed the title of these pieces

from Praeambulum to Inventio to stress their pedagogical value: they were

opment. , ,

designed not only to encourage the pupil’s facility on the keyboard, he tells us, but also to serve as models for good “inventions” and their subsequent devel-

_ Bach’s use of the word “invention” may seem confusing unless one realizes | that it did not name a recognized musical genre, but rather was a term borrowed

from rhetoric used colloquially to designate the essential thematic idea under- | lying a musical composition. Bach’s title-page, in other words, understands

1

“invention” as a conventional metaphor for the idea behind a piece, a musical subject whose discovery precedes full-scale composition. It is important to realize

that this sense of invention (inventio in Latin, heuresis in Greek, Erfindung in German), along with a whole range of related meanings, must be recovered from

a time when rhetoric, much like etymology and natural philosophy, was a modeling science par excellence. That is, one must return to a time before the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment, when critical theory abandoned rhetoric in favor of aesthetics, replacing the perfectible art of invention with the godlike realm of creativity. As late as Alexander Gerard’s Essay on Taste (1759), one reads that “the first and leading quality of genius is invention.”* By the time of Kant’s

third Critique (1790), on the other hand, the paradigm has shifted so that “creative imagination is the true source of genius and the basis of originality.” According to the traditional usage, invention denoted not only the subject matter of an oration, but also a mechanism for discovering good ideas. An orator had at his disposal an entire array of such tools—called the “topics of invention”—-and with these topics one devised or “invented” a fruitful subject for a discourse. One basic technique of invention was to study the works of reputable authors both to develop good taste and to spur one’s own ingenuity, what Johann Mattheson called the locus exemplorum.‘ In keeping with this pedagogical belief, Bach’s “Straightforward Instruction” not only provides suitable examples of “good inventions” but also demonstrates how they can be properly developed (“auch selbige wohl durchzufiihren”). This important notion of development or realization, moreover, implies that a successful invention must be more than a static, well-crafted object, but instead like a mechanism that triggers further elaborative thought from which a whole piece of music is shaped. This is why Bach alludes to invention as “a foretaste of composition”: by crafting a workable idea, one unlocks the door to a complete musical work. From a variety of evidence it is clear that Bach, in keeping with many of his German contemporaries, considered “invention” a fundamental concept underlying both the training and the activity of a composer. Johann Nikolaus Forkel— whose information stemmed from correspondence with the composer’s two eldest sons—tells how Bach’s pupils had to master thoroughbass and voice-leading in four-part chorales before trying to write down their own ideas: “He also made his pupils aim at such excellencies in their exercises; and, till they had attained a high degree of perfection in them, he did not think it advisable to let them attempt inventions of their own. Their sense of purity, order, and connection in the parts must first have been sharpened on the inventions of others, and have become in a manner habitual to them, before he thought them capable of giving these qualities to their own inventions.” Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, moreover, reports that his father considered invention a talent that must manifest itself early on in a youth’s training: “As for the invention of ideas, my late father demanded this ability from the very beginning, and whoever had none he advised to stay away from composition altogether.’> This belief in a talent for

2 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

invention, though, did not mean that Bach minimized the role of arduous study

in the pursuit of inventions. A “Straightforward Instruction” in “getting good inventions” is proof that he put stock in a rigorous approach to composition, as

was his reported answer to those who asked him how he mastered the art of | music: “I have had to work hard; anyone who works just as hard will get just as

far” © While there was undeniably some false modesty in this confession, one can |

also read it as a tribute to the exacting demands of craftsmanship, a skill | | requiring certain natural talents, but one demanding nurture and self-improvement as well. Bach’s attitude was probably not far removed from Johann Mat-

theson’s, who writes in the Vollkommener Capellmeister (1739) that “though | invention . .. is not easily taught nor learned . . . still, when necessary, many a person can be helped and be pointed in a direction which will assist his innate

gifts and with which he would be on the right path”’ | As a methodical activity, invention belongs to the so-called “divisions” of rhetoric which hark back to Cicero and which were well known in early eight-

eenth-century Germany—at least in their schematic outline—to anyone with even a modest classical education. According to Cicero’s De Inventione, there are

five stages in creating an oration: (1) invention (inventio); (2) arrangement (dispositio); (3) style (elocutio); (4) memory (memoria); and (5) delivery (pronuntiatio or actio). Cicero explains them as follows in De Oratore: “|An orator]

must first hit upon what to say; then manage and marshal his discoveries [inventa], not merely in orderly fashion, but with a discriminating eye for the exact weight, as it were, of each argument; next go on to array them in the adornments of style; after that keep them guarded in his memory; and in the end deliver them with effect and charm.’ One can easily see in this classic

formulation the obvious affinities between inventing and delivering a speech and | composing and performing a piece of music, although it was not entirely obvious, even to humanists, to what extent the analogy between music and oratory should hold. Seventeenth-century German music theory, for example, , took over the idea of the divisions of oratory but reduced their number from

five to three. Christoph Bernhard, a pupil of Heinrich Schiitz, writes that “there otherwise belong to Composition three things: Inventio (Discovery), Elaboratio ,

(Amplification), and Executio (Realization or Performance), which display a |

rather close relationship with oratory or rhetoric.” | This three-part division hints at a more idiomatic understanding of invention

and rhetoric as grasped by musicians, who—within the realm of composition— , by and large confined themselves to the binary distinction between discovery of musical ideas, on the one hand, and their arrangement or elaboration, on the other. (Cicero underscores this distinction when he defines invention as “the

discovery of valid or seemingly valid arguments to render one’s cause plausible,” , while arrangement is the “distribution of arguments thus discovered in the

proper order.”)!° Johann David Heinichen, for example, writes that “it is not | | ever enough that a composer writes down a naturally occurring, good invention

| What Is an Invention? 3

expressing the words and pleasing the good taste of intelligent listeners. It also requires an artist to work out [these inventions] at the right occasion according to the rules and to prove that he possesses knowledge and good taste.”'! Johann Mattheson also expresses this sentiment when he writes: “Many a person supposes, if he has perhaps a small supply of inventions, then he is well off as a composer. This is by no means correct, and nothing is achieved by invention alone, although it certainly comprises about half the matter.”’? Johann Adolph

Scheibe, too, conceives of invention as a distinctly musical (and hence less formally rhetorical) category when he writes that invention “is a capacity | Figenschaft] of the composer . . . to think musically” and identifies it further with the main theme (Hauptsatz) of a musical work “in which the invention is expressed.”

This main theme, according to Scheibe, from which the subsequent material “necessarily arises,” must be distinguished from the rest of the piece, which is

mostly “elaboration and belongs to the [consideration of the] style [ Schreibart].” 3 Bach therefore places himself squarely in this tradition when his title page to the “Straightforward Instruction” distinguishes between “not only ... getting good inventions, but developing the same satisfactorily.”

Given this historical support for the concept of invention, can one use this idea today as a critical tool with which to understand Bach? Taking this question as my point of departure, I argue that one can. What is at stake here is not so much a return to the terminology of historical rhetoric or musical theory but rather a fresh approach to musical structure and affect that tries to make historical sense of Bach as a composer and thinker. Instead of restricting invention to a purely analytical category—although it will be revealing to see how far this particular usage can be extended—I have in mind the formulation of a critical outlook that will help shed light on Bach’s extraordinary historical and aesthetic achievement, an achievement that differs both in quality and in kind from that of his contemporaries. The problem here is a pervasive one within the study of the arts, no less within historical musicology and musical analysis: the fact that contemporary scholarship, for all its accomplishments and methodological sophistication, so often becomes reticent when it comes to capturing some semblance of a profound musical experience. Both music history and analysis, it is

probably fair to say, are well equipped to provide a kind of refuge from the problem of aesthetic understanding, despite the fact that everyone who contributes to these disciplines does so presumably out of a shared conviction in the aesthetic value of the music studied. Although the brute facts of Bach’s towering greatness within the canon of European art music are easily asserted, it is a far

more complex matter to allow these facts to play a role within a sober and scholarly mode of discourse. The challenge lies therefore in developing a critical language in which this greatness can be transmitted while at the same time trying

to say something other than what is already intuited when performing and listening to this music. In this book, I suggest that developing the idea of

4 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

| challenge.

“invention” and its myriad patterns provides a new way forward to meet this

My aim in this opening chapter is to set the stage for the later methodological discussions and then to offer a kind of sample analysis which demonstrates what

one kind of invention might look like. I begin by suggesting how one might rescue the idea of Bachian invention from the danger of too intellectualized a

reading and then propose that analyzing inventions as structured repetitions reveals aspects of the composer’s thinking that are not otherwise apparent. I , conclude by explaining how this first foray into an analysis of invention interacts | with the kinds of critical reflections developed in the later chapters.

Since invention arose as an operative concept of rhetoric, it is important to | _ clarify to what extent Bach could have understood invention in a strictly rhetorical sense, subscribing, as some writers seem to do, to the arcane Latin topics that animated literary and forensic rhetoric. Since Johann Mattheson, more than

, any other writer of his generation, made a special point of championing the general validity of rhetorical principles in music, and went so far (in his late writings) as to suggest that musical composition was an explicit ars inveniendi, it is useful to detail his views as a kind of benchmark against which to imagine Bach’s own. In the first place, it is important to note that even Christoph Bernhard, an important seventeenth-century codifier of musical-rhetorical figures, had not submitted music to a strict rhetorical method but had merely , observed “a rather close relationship” (eine ziemliche nahe Verwandschafft) between the two realms. Music and rhetoric are analogous, but not synonymous. By the time of the Vollkommener Capellmeister (1739), on the other hand, Mattheson was unable to decide whether music could be better understood via rhetoric, or whether music in fact possessed substantive rhetorical properties. To be sure,

there was no such thing as a unified theory of rhetoric to draw on, so he had

to pick and choose. , Mattheson began by conflating the fivefold Ciceronian model with Christoph

, Bernhard’s threefold division. In this way he could retain categories that corresponded most obviously to musical activities.‘* Consider Figure 1.1. As can be seen, Mattheson has rejected Cicero’s nomenclature of elocution and pronunciation in favor of the more obviously musical categories of decoration (that is,

Cicero , Bernhard Mattheson (1739)

2. dispositio 2. dispositio | 3. elocutio 2. elaboratio 3. elaboratio

, 4. memoria nn 4. decoratio , 5. pronuntiatio 3. executio 5. executio , ,

Figure 1.1 The divisions of rhetoric

What Is an Invention? 5

ornamentation) and execution (that is, performance). Cicero’s “elocution” (“arraying the adornments of style”) is reformulated as “decoration,” referring to musical ornaments which “depend more on the skill and sound judgment of a singer or player than on the actual prescription of the composer.”!> Mattheson has also eliminated memoria, which is naturally irrelevant to a composer who commits his ideas to paper. The third category, elaboratio, stemmed from Bernhard, but its function was already implied in Cicero’s idea of disposition. Appar-

ently, Mattheson thought it worthwhile to distinguish between two distinct aspects of disposition: on the one hand, his new, restricted category of disposition refers to the order of events and overall schematic plan for a composition, “almost,” he says, “the way one contrives and designs a building and makes a plan or design in order to show where a room, a parlor, a chamber, etc., should go. '° Elaboration, on the other hand, “roughly twice as easy,” was a more routine process of “filling in” through typical methods of amplifying the basic ideas. In fact, elaboration “requires little instruction, for one encounters a path which has been prepared, and already knows for certain where one wants to go.” These three stages of composition make very different demands on the musical orator. -

| “Invention,” he says, “requires fire and spirit” while “disposition” calls only for “order and measure” and “elaboration, cold blood and circumspection.”!” Mattheson’s overall scheme of “musical oratory” seems to capture with re-

markable insight the kinds of hierarchies one detects in the music until he begins, though not without some misgivings, to outline concrete procedures attached to the stages of rhetoric, specifying some fifteen topics of invention “which can occasionally provide quite pleasing expedients . . . in melodic composition” as well as six parts of a proper disposition “whose components . . . [one] will come across in a clever sequence . . . [in] good melodies.” (Mattheson also alludes to some thirty “great figures for elaboration.”)!* While some of his analogies between rhetorical and musical processes are mere plays on words or involve assigning Latin names to the most elementary musical patterns, others amount to useless fabrications and make it clear that Mattheson was engaged in an essentially empty scholasticism. Por example, the first of his listings for the loci topici of invention—the tools or sources for coming up with good ideas—is the locus notationis. In rhetoric, this topic suggests that the orator focus on the actual letters of a name or thing

in order to “associate” to new ideas.’? Mattheson “translates” this topic into music by seeking out etymological resemblances. Since “notation” in music refers

to notes (as equivalent to “letters” in written language), he reads the topic as

, suggesting four ways of varying the notes: “through the value of the notes, , through inversion or permutation, through repetition or reiteration or through canonic passages.”*? However one chooses to read this passage, the haphazard manner in which Mattheson derives his motley assortment of musical tech-

niques is certainly striking for its arbitrariness: one can scarcely imagine a musician finding any use for this hodgepodge of discovery procedures. Nor do

6 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

the other topics inspire confidence that Mattheson was engaged in anything more than a pedantic exercise. The locus oppositorum, for example, instructs the ! , musical inventor to consider “different meters, counter-movements, the high and the low, the slow and the fast, the calm and the violent, together with many other opposites” as a source for fresh ideas. While the content of the topics is unobjectionable, Mattheson offers nothing more than musical common sense dressed up in erudite Latin. (Mattheson differed from his German predecessors such as

Herbst, Kuhnau, and Heinichen in seeking to apply an ars inveniendi to the whole of musical composition. They, on the other hand, had understood the links between rhetoric and music solely as an aid to the composition of texted music. Thus the widely disseminated idea that Bach or his contemporaries composed instrumental music on the basis of strictly rhetorical procedures is on weak ground: the only text to attempt this is Mattheson’s Vollkommener

topics. )*! ,

Capellmeister [1739], which continually concedes the questionable status of the

, _ Mattheson’s explanation of the disposition of a musical work, though guarded | in the necessity of its application, also insists on an exact correspondence of

rhetorical procedures to music. A proper musical composition, he tells us, will , conform to the six parts of an oration: namely, the introduction, the narration, the discourse, the corroboration, the confutation, and the conclusion. A sustained analysis of an aria by Marcello then shows these correspondences at work. Yet Mattheson forces his analysis to fit the sixfold division of disposition, such as when he reports that a ritornello, identified as an exordium—that is, an

introduction—can both begin and end a piece of music. In oratory, on the other : , hand, the exordium only makes sense as a beginning point in “which the listeners are .. . stimulated to attention” This admission means, then, that a musical disposition does not follow an oratorical one. Mattheson’s subsequent discussion of topics for the elaboration and decoration, while less detailed, also indicates that these divisions of rhetoric reflect procedures that “we have already used... for so long without knowing what they are called or what they mean.” As a kind of reductio ad absurdum, Mattheson compares a composer’s understanding of _ rhetorical topics with Monsieur Jourdain in Moliére’s Le bourgeois Gentilhomme,

who “did not know that it was a pronoun when he said: I, you, he.”?? But the | analogy between the bourgeois gentleman and the unconsciously rhetorical

composer is unconvincing: whereas Jourdain merely learned to name acategory | he already understood implicitly, the composer is being asked to recognize a new

and random set of terms supplanting a competing group of clearly defined

musical concepts. In order, then, for Mattheson to make any sense at all, he must | feign a kind of amnesia toward autonomous musical theories of composition,

as if they did not really matter at all. | While Mattheson would have liked his rules to reflect procedures used by a composer in the daily practice of his craft, they are better understood as attempts

to confer a quasi-scientific status on musical composition. There could be no |

What Is an Invention? 7

more eloquent witness to the purely academic nature of this theory than Mattheson himself, who, in a remarkable aside, concedes that “authors might sooner

have thought on their death than on such guidelines, especially composers.” This is a startling admission by any account and must be taken seriously if one is not to overestimate the relationship between Mattheson’s ruminations and the

practical world of a German composer. At best, then, Mattheson’s oratorical procedures must be read as translations of musical commonplaces into the metalanguage of rhetoric, an effort that obscured genuine musical insights with both literary pretension and a good deal of wishful thinking. It is perhaps no coincidence that, just at the time when Mattheson’s case for | a rhetorical art of invention enjoyed its greatest prestige, Johann Adolph Scheibe

, attacked Bach for “not taking an especial interest in the sciences actually needed by a learned composer, . . . [namely in] the rules of rhetoric and poetics.”*4 As a result of this charge, one might seem justified in lumping Bach with Mattheson’s simple-minded musicians “who would sooner have thought on their death” than on a rhetorical super-science guiding musical composition. (Scheibe, a disciple of Gottsched, was not so much interested in the topics of invention as

in a rhetorical grasp of the hierarchy of styles.) Yet not everyone would agree. ! Some writers have argued, in fact, that Bach was a musical rhetorician par excellence; that he had a sure knowledge of invention and elaboration that far surpassed a mere colloquial understanding; that he in fact used his works as a showplace to disseminate humanistic scholarship. Perhaps the most sensational attempt to adduce evidence for Bach as rhetorician is Ursula Kirkendale’s study of the Musical Offering, which, we are told, must be read as a page-by-page gloss on Quintilian’s forensic rhetoric.” To support this claim externally, Kirkendale quotes the response to Scheibe by Abraham Birnbaum—a professor of rhetoric at the University of Leipzig and a personal friend of the composer: “[Bach] has

such perfect knowledge of the parts and merits which the working-out of a | musical piece has in common with rhetoric, that one not only listens to him with satiating pleasure when he focuses his conversations on the similarity and | correspondences of both [music and rhetoric]; but one also admires their clever application in his works. His insight into poetry is as good as one can expect

from a great composer.””° But Birnbaum is not entirely credible. His defense was issued in the course of a heated controversy in which he felt compelled to repudiate point by point all the charges Scheibe had leveled at Bach, charges that denied Bach the learned

name of “musicus” and demoted him to the rank of mere “Musikant? Asa | confessed musical amateur, Birnbaum may have overreached his grasp of concrete musical matters in his appreciation of these music-rhetorical correspon-

dences. (Christoph Gottlieb Schréter, for example, heartened by the tone of Birnbaum’s second defense [1739], notes that “the opinion given of the knowl-

edge necessary to a finished composer is a little too sparing,’ but excuses Birnbaum “since music is only his avocation.”)?” No other contemporary, after

8 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

all, ever claimed that Bach was a humanist. On the contrary, his sketchy education shows itself in his woefully awkward prose style, the main reason, surely, why he felt unable to respond to Scheibe personally. Scheibe, a former pupil of Bach’s, was quick to take advantage of this deficiency when, in a satire, he credits Bach with “never having taken the time to learn how to write an extensive letter,” a needless bit of cruelty, to be sure, but hardly a secret to anyone in the Bach circle. Even Lorenz Mizler, a pupil and defender of Bach, admits in his obituary

that “our lately departed Bach did not, it is true, occupy himself with deep theoretical speculations on music, but was all the stronger in the practice of the art.’’8 And commenting on this passage to Forkel, Emanuel Bach reiterates that | “the departed was, like myself or any true musician, no lover of dry mathematical stuff??? One is on uneasy ground, therefore, when suggesting that a tradi-

tional German Capellmeister such as Bach had anything more than passing familiarity with or interest in the nitty-gritty of rhetorical theory. (Bach’s education in rhetoric at the Ltineburg Lateinschule has now been shown to consist, not of the likes of Quintilian, but of a poor boy’s pocket compendium of Latin

terms to be memorized tout court by the pupils for rote recitation.)*° | As one of Germany’s greatest teachers of music in the eighteenth century (with

a host of surviving reports about his teaching methods), Bach seems in fact to have stressed rigorous musical skills to the utter exclusion of any book learning. , Apparently his pupils learned counterpoint without the benefit of textbooks, such as Fux’s famous Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), and instead cut their teeth on a diet consisting mostly of Bach’s own music. Forkel, for example, reports that “as long as his scholars were under his musical direction, he did not allow them to study or become acquainted with any but classical works, in addition to his

own compositions.’*! The statement by Emanuel Bach mentioned earlier about oo a pupil having to come up with his own inventions, moreover, ignores any | learned “topics of invention” and, on the contrary, suggests that if a student lacked invention, Bach “advised [the pupil] to stay away from composition , altogether.” For a composer like Bach, what remained, then, from the actual. musical annexation of rhetorical territory was a far less analogical but far more metaphorical notion of musical invention, a notion, to be sure, with its own

rules and practices. As Emanuel Bach and Agricola put it in Bach’s obituary, a , central quality of his art was the engagement with “the most hidden secrets of harmony . . . No one was able to arrive at so many inventive [erfindungsvolle] , , and unfamiliar thoughts from otherwise seemingly dry artifices as he was.”? It

| was doubtless this notion of invention that held sway with Bach. Between theoretical notions of musical invention and what can be pieced to-

_ gether about Bach’s outlook on musical composition lies a substantial gulf, a , gulf that I now try to bridge. In the demonstration that follows—as well as in the analyses found in later chapters—I treat invention as a fundamental tool of

the early eighteenth-century composer and use it to explore how Bach put

, What Is an Invention? 9

together pieces of music. In so doing, I assert (initially for heuristic purposes) that the process of “pulling pieces apart” by identifying and examining their leading inventions mirrors to some meaningful extent what the composer would recognize as the reverse of the way he has put the pieces together. Analysis, in this rather literal sense, is the inverse of synthesis or composition. Taking my cue from Mattheson’s adaptation of Cicero and Bernhard, I begin by examining a seemingly simple piece of music—the first two-part invention in Bach’s “Straightforward Instruction”’—in order to show how one such analysis might proceed. My interest here is to account first for the concrete workings of

a complete piece of music by identifying the properties of its core inventions and only then showing how they are “disposed” or arranged during the course of the piece, elaborated by connective links, and decorated by suitable ornaments. While Mattheson’s notion of invention is preferable to modern methods premised on large-scale formal processes and structures, it is only a jumping-off point to explore the subtle ways in which Bach conceives of an invention and its elaboration: although Bach maintains a distinction between a basic idea and its development, the surface appearances tend to suggest that both contain a | similar degree of artifice. Within the composition of a thematic idea, moreover, Bach is especially adept at encoding mechanisms that ensure its elaboration, which is the same as saying that complex inversions and harmonic twists are worked out in advance. By the end of the analysis, I hope to have provided an account of the entire piece which explains the hierarchical relations between the various parts and the musical thought that underlies these hierarchies. To embark on this kind of analysis is to imagine the piece of music not so much as a static object but as a residue of human thoughts and actions. The analysis also serves to introduce analytic concepts and procedures that underlie discussions in several later chapters, though it must be stressed that the kind of permutational invention that the analysis reveals is not characteristic of every Bachian genre. Finally, to distinguish this approach from other methods, I focus on the advantages of favoring a “mechanist” over an “organicist” analysis, while admitting that the distinction may have greater value as a heuristic tool than as a clearly defined opposition. In considering the familiar work that opens Bach’s “Straightforward Instruction,” the Inventio in C major (BWV 772), one can pose an obvious question: where is the invention in it? (See Ex. 1.1.) While a composer need not begin a work with only a single musical object in mind, even a brief glance at this well-known piece will identify the first seven notes as a key component in the invention of the work, its subject. When one examines the piece more closely, it is conspicuous that this subject appears in all but three measures of the piece (mm. 6, 14, and 22), if one considers both its basic form, labeled Subject X

10 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

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y| 3 ‘ i i I — ml il J all x Ly ‘ TH | i | 3 4 i H Wit i [|| m7—. || Mt | i Mu Ut Mh IL ekth[3iHy fl Hs. i it ie_,.|f i m i tt u ‘| “ HN Me: At | i il a MT Ah ml i a : yl ! Sh : fis [ | I, Mt 3 it i | Ls | Hs il 7 J il "4 ipa h i | H || fl a FY I Bi | I u ri ca da. \ ES |. H Wl “y mi Ut at i t | i iit i ai\ i“ of N | Hl 1 1 iM it ui i ll 1H han UIT ii LS i ' N | il il il 1 iil ‘| a Ha ‘aa ‘| a vn a itt | it | | rs yt | aL 1| TH 4t ‘| ill . 4 I th bts , . te in i || @ l

iaIN 1 Ht i "Bti +E | Mi it

iiyaM i i i Mt tM | : fe t it ii ‘ i tt um :

aioe: i RR tT il) [L i, re II! (| [i : i7:|‘au .Lfiua iN fh ll " i 3z Hl ria i | _| aid t mr||Mi

i“th N i ie : 4 “4 ! 4 aS Ta ‘tt | | 4 Hid >nels vH aliHe | ,tt rT nl ll(FHHt thAll| ‘tt Oe ia‘|e uf fe

:“i

ul , it KY TNS i ch| Ur =4 — oO - |

Bae ‘o il pa | IiInvent ‘ths Pe) a Hn f rs It| o~ t . Hh Is an

(in m. 1), and its melodically inverted form, labeled X(INV) (in m. 3). The C , major Invention, one might say, is “about” the subject called X. This statement, however, becomes trivial if one considers all occurrences of Subject X “democratically.” While some belong to recognizably larger units that repeat during the composition, others form local patterns that figure far less prominently. One might even say that the recognition of X’s omnipresence in the piece hinders an understanding of what Bach has done with it. So, to avoid confusing structure with ornament, one can seek out units larger than X that play a major role in the composition. As a first step in isolating what can be called a work’s “inventions,” one can extract those functional segments that appear repeatedly during the course of the work—in a complete treble-bass framework, if possible—and, recalling the distinction between inventio and dispositio, analyze their construction independent of the ultimate measure-bymeasure order in which they are used. For example, if a progression is used repeatedly within a piece, one should think of it as a patch of inventive “work.” Its discovery was scarcely arbitrary, considering the use to which it is put, and must have cost the composer some effort. Similarly, if a passage is restated in the opposite mode (as in a passage in major “switched” into minor), a procedure that for harmonic reasons succeeds only erratically, it makes sense to consider both versions as two sides of the same inventive “coin.” The sum of inventions underlying this (kind of) work is therefore composed of all the repeated functional segments and their transformations.

The subsequent activity called disposition lays out these inventions in a reasonable order—taking into account both their function and more general harmonic guidelines—while the elaboration (appealing to Mattheson’s fivefold division) links up inventions and otherwise fills in any remaining gaps. Finally, the decoration takes care of suitable ornaments, so that, in the execution, the player can perform the piece; thus these last two processes are at the greatest distance from the initial “discovery.” While this scheme by no means implies that Bach actually proceeded in this order—human faculties are far too chaotic

to be contained by any such blueprint—the distinction between the compositional faculties underscores the logical importance of some kinds of thought over others within the mind of the composer. To put it another way: even though the sequence of conceived thoughts does not matter to the ultimate order of the piece, the final decisions that “won out” resulted from a hierarchy that rated acts of invention over their arrangement, a hierarchy to which the completed piece is witness. One does not have to adopt Mattheson’s scheme to reach essentially the same analysis. It would have been possible, for example, to call a musical object an invention only in its prime form, seeing operations performed on it as elaborations, and then disposing them in a logical order. The links between segments could then be considered part of the decoration. Apart from the trivial consideration that the rhetorical order is then altered to read “inventio—elaboratio—

12 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

dispositio—decoratio,” it is not clear that eighteenth-century writers confined , an invention to the first occurrence of a theme. Scheibe, for example, writes that

an improvising organist often “has a good deal of time to play something © suitable [so that] he can quite easily show how far his invention extends [emphasis added] and how skilled he is.”>3 A more serious problem in restricting invention

to the prime form of a subject is that it rigidly distinguishes the initial thought

from its elaboration, whereas so often in Bach the elaboration is latent in the invention. For this reason I have preferred Mattheson’s divisions of rhetoric, which allow me to interpret Bach’s inventions as mechanisms ensuring their own transformations. Another advantage of this model is that the relatively ancillary character of Mattheson’s elaboration (that is, following the disposition) captures

the plausible distinction in Bach’s music between primary (mechanist) and , secondary (arbitrary) processes.

A simple point suggests that a hierarchy of logical processes existed. If a

passage was to be transformed several times during the course of a piece, Bach , must have planned at least some of its transformations in advance; if not, how would he know if they would succeed? Thus, while there is no reason to suppose that Bach necessarily composed a piece in the order in which it finally proceeds,

there is every reason to suppose that he composed some of it out of order.

Consider, for example, instances of double counterpoint in which two themes are inverted at the octave: the composer must have contemplated the voice_ exchange—at least in some cursory way—before he arrived at the measure in which the device occurs if he hoped to avoid the forbidden dissonances resulting from the voice-exchange. To believe otherwise would mean that Bach arrived

midway in the composition of a double fugue, inverted the two themes, and then | | congratulated himself on his good fortune that the themes inverted flawlessly. Common sense argues against this scenario, as does the testimony of Emanuel Bach, who writes that “when [J. S. Bach] listened to a rich and many-voiced fugue, he could soon say, after the first entries of the subjects, what contrapuntal devices [contrapuncktische Kiinste] it would be possible to apply, and which of them the composer by rights ought to apply, and on such occasions, when I was standing next to him, and he had voiced his surmises to me, he would joyfully nudge me when his expectations were fulfilled.”*4 In other words, even the bald first occurrence of a theme set in motion an inexorable mental process deter-

mined to work out the latent possibilities. And if Bach summoned forth this | mechanism when listening to other people’s music, how much more pronounced

a role it must have played in works of his own invention. Note also that Emanuel | does not say that his father predicted the order in which the contrapuntal

, maneuvers would occur, but rather only the number of feasible devices that |

would properly exploit a subject. | , | |

Generally, the more important the invention, the more times Bach repeats it, though usually in some varied form. (Important exceptions include declamatory _ works, such as simple recitatives, works such as free preludes and dances in

| What Is an Invention? 13

, which the thoroughbass itself constitutes the invention, and works that elaborate a pre-existing invention, such as the four-part chorale settings.) Passages worthy of the name “invention” will therefore tend to occur more than once during the course of the piece or movement, whereby their membership in the same class

or paradigm is demonstrated. Segments can be said to belong to the same paradigm when they relate to one another through some clearly mechanical (that is, definable) operation such as melodic inversion, voice-exchange, or the reversal

of mode. These relations can be thought of much like the vertically arranged paradigms used to teach Latin or German declensions in which the root of a word is operated upon in specific ways depending on the case (or function) of the word within a sentence.

The Invention oe

Rather than trying to define an invention abstractly—a fruitless effort, since the

type of invention will depend on many different factors such as genre and style—let us look carefully at the C major Praeambulum, which Bach evidently

took as his first example of suitable inventions and how to develop them. Searching for a component somewhat larger than X, one alights on the first two measures as the first repeatable unit. (Despite the clear derivation of m. 2 from

m. 1, Bach does not treat the opening bar as a paradigm on its own.) Hereisa passage that invites further inventive treatment, as in mm. 7—8, and also serves to define a specific key (the tonic). This segment—labeled a,—will therefore be understood as an invention. (See Ex. 1.2.) The second occurrence of a—labeled a,—results initially from an attempt at voice-exchange, a function I call ROTATE

in Ex. 1.2b. (One may ignore the shift in key up a perfect fifth, since transposition | belongs more properly to the disposition than to invention.) It is typical of double counterpoint that the inversion of two musical lines will often result in certain improprieties. As the asterisks show in Ex. 1.2b, an unprepared dissonant fourth occurs at the beginning of the second measure while the progression at the end of the measure, though correct in terms of strict counterpoint, had led to a misleading false accent on a root-position tonic chord which falls mislead-

ingly on a weak beat. (See the voice-leading reductions just below the main staves.) Ex. 1.2c shows how Bach's refurbished version of a—which elegantly

, : resorts to invertible counterpoint at the 12th in the second measure—avoids the musical solecisms and restores a reasonable facsimile of a’s harmonic function. The adjustments in the treble in m. 8 therefore resulted neither from artistic whimsy nor from a desire for variation but from a need to replace the result of a faulty transformation. Necessity, as the proverb has it, is the mother of invention.

The longer passage starting at m. 3 until the beginning of m. 7—labeled (—presents a more complex design of the original subject, in which two

, intermingled types of processes occur. First, Bach has devised a clever pattern of adjacent forms of X(INV) in the soprano. As shown in Exx. 1.3a, 1.3b, 1.3c, and

14 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

a!hee eee OS ==S | be ee ee ae ee —! a) QO)

p Ay ———— ond

Ske gp FC ee er LE

a7 —"#7 eeae |

: ev oe ff voy oy yf

++

b) ROTATE a (TRANSPOSE ? P5) |

———e Sa ae a eer seaeaaae

|!A ; i — = | ee ey 4 yoy ye ae > > >}. $2 8 2 en 7 Le ene ee nn el —_ — i — a y ;

SSS reer | J= 2 |se a er eS C) >

RD” I NOTE MED ES eee” ae

. ; vane U / u ¥ w | /

_—_—_———— eee vw te vw = vw

Example 1.2 Properties of invention in a (BWV 772)

1.3d, the sequence chains together statements of the inverted subject (now taken to embrace eight notes rather than only the original seven),*> and it seems likely

that in composing 6 Bach took pains to exploit this ability of Subject X to form a coherent chain. In fact, the form of X(INV) shown in Ex. 1.3b, which ultimately initiates the sequence, is only one of two melodic inversions of X that preserve the intervalic content of X without leaving C major. The other inversion—which

preserves both interval and mode—begins on E. The parallel tenths that Bach sets in the bass to accompany the melodic chain (see Ex. 1.3e) can then be seen as a simple and convenient counterpoint that will easily adapt to later inversions.

What Is an Invention? 15

a) — X —™ > ae ee eee. oe

= £.. UCU CY ee ee ee ee eeeTCU ee N LY "gg. SFeee | ag

)IX

b) [— epee X(UINV) ~~ 1 . ne —— he > . Ce VE ee ee eee fa ef @& @ pay jf| | gf*| O¢g GF gg - fF \*— 3. —X

C X.......—— eee (cf. B *] : a’ef2f)TdeeeSec ee|eee| ggoo es Ga ae eee |r eee FF | BE gg t= eee @€_ @e \'A 3

—7,

)4

LXy Uy 2S Cl lg TU Cl I OCT.DLULULUCUCUDLUU YCUrelCUOOUDTCC—CCCCCNCNC NY

| d) rT X(INV) 1 -— X(INV) 1! X(INV) —1 > CY eeee eeeee eeeeee ee. Se.eee. eee ee. Oe eeeee eee=e eee Gf... ee ae, Soe eeee2 eeee pees Gla 42.re eeeeee. ee 2ee, ee eeeee. eeeee eeT ee eee eee eee a el | 2 BS) Se ee en ..eeeeeOe

e) XUINV) B, —© xanv) — 7 meen NY) ee ENV)

a| A? ns a a eS a ee 4 — 5 _— A oe a man A yy @:ff ll—=p®e LT CUD TT eee =e PAS TZ ™ CPF“ DTTT ee Oefe le“fT ZO” "es @e™ TT Pg TL UT gg eo ht rf I| X4 3 4 X(INV)

wn bes | tt re—_ FE—_ TTeeere.2 eee @,)'Pe€,eee| |eee [tt ee TeSee LLa a”... Ga. —__

DD ee eee 2. eeeee eee eee ee ee2.=e eee| ee eee ee =e"eee eeeeee eee _ eeeeee ee eee eee eee ae eee eee eee ft?) 2QW 4 eee eee eeeeeeee Seeeeeea 2. eee Ee

10 10 10 10 «610 10 10 10 10 10 6 10 10 10 10 10 6 10

aD COE O_O 2 ee. ) a ee ee eee ee ey =e). ae eee eee |... eee ee eee eee

a SS ll SN OO

6 65 G ma): V I

zl 12 Bes 14 4 15 LE a Vn a ee | PB a a ) ANS es ee ee es ee 2 ee De ee ee ee 2 : 2 ee ee ee| eeS| a

f

LA—eg” eee' aIFee ee eT er ee min: V J A! x _~ : eS Ty i 2@f 8 .,@e; | | Tlie fw, OT TP ol ees eae eeeebdES ee . PY ee ee ee TE A ,fg21 |ost? yf 19., ¢ yg it ff20 oeae TT irTNi @ . Gi . eee ee eee eee 2. ee eee ee eee =~. ee 2. eee ee eee eee ae eee eee es eee

eS SS a SS ye oe a ee a Ae Pee 27S 0 ne ee ee eee Le Ge CN lg pee ee —— — eeeeeSSSSSSSSE

CS ee ee 3 —- x om TR of | eee Lee le “ee Oe I gg JI Gg

X(INV) —

PS AS SNEDUNN cr NL SENE USO ANSRNS SERRE SUC A) YOUU A OSS RSQR UC EOE > EOSance CNGUESS CEESIY* Example 1.3 The derivation of ic) (BWV 772)

16 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

(It makes no sense to view the tenths in mm. 3-4 as a determinative parameter, since this would imply that the obvious links in the melodic chain in the treble — were merely a fortuitous by-product of voice-leading.) By the downbeat of m. 5, even though X and X(INV) are still present (see the outer staves of Ex. 1.3e), the pattern of events seems driven by a new motor. This

pattern no longer plays on the intervalic properties of X but is ruled by a sequence of (primarily) ascending tenths leading to a cadence in G. (See the voice-leading reduction in Ex. 1.3e.) To read the passage this way is to observe that a fundamentally harmonic activity—the pattern of ascending tenths leading

to the cadence—has upstaged the fundamentally melodic operations performed _ on X. As a result, it is no longer the surface occurrences of X that can be said

to pull the strings; it is rather the voice-leading pattern and the cadence in the | second half of 6 that assert control. Indeed, as the outer staves in Ex. 1.3e show,

, X disappears in m. 6 precisely when harmonic necessity prevents Bach from | finding any use for it at all. The design of 6 was therefore influenced by operations performed on X even though the overall goal of the segment—a modulation—was independent of X. This change in function prompts us to consider the voice-leading reduction in two contrasting ways: first as result and only later as cause. At the beginning of the segment, the voice-leading constitutes an ancillary component rather than an active mechanism. Only at the end of the segment where harmonic concerns

take over does the voice-leading assume a clearly commanding role as it moves | |

toward the cadence. Some intriguing manuscript evidence illuminates this shift | in the “balance of power.”*° (See Ex. 1.4.) In the Notebook for Wilhelm Friede-

mann where Bach had composed the piece, the bass line in m. 5 originally proceeded directly to the cadence as shown in the example, for which I have supplied a hypothetical treble part. From this evidence one can infer that Bach

later expanded the original cadence into the final version of mm. 5—6 (with its , ascent to the cadence) when he discovered that he could pack yet another statement of X (in the second half of m. 5) into the prime form of f. As a result , of this shift in hierarchy—from melodic to harmonic invention—it makes sense to see the voice-leading only sometimes as structural and determining while at | other times it is merely epiphenomenal. Transformed statements of 6 appear twice later in the piece, so that this segment will be considered, like a, one of Bach’s underlying inventions for the

3 4 5 6 er Srsitioseeaaa| —}—pP te tel 06 9 0 ere ee

| Wilhelm Friedemann Bach , , Example 1.4 BWV 772, mm. 3-6, ante-correcturam version found in Clavierbiichlein vor

What Is an Invention? 17

ee

a) By | , ee

b) ROTATE | 4 + *

] a oe er

c) Adjustments

ASS 2 nn a! a SA As

S—————————————————————

Se coe ee eee eee d) MODESWITCH | , ml 2’ S/T sh eee eo Eee peepee {| b?

caret — —

— oF ee eo |

e) Byro| |—Or— Example 1.5 From B, to p, BWV 772

piece. What logic underlies its transformations? That is, how did the operations performed on £, result in the ultimate versions in 6, and 6,? Ex. 1.5 depicts a mechanism for the derivation of 8,, and thus details the individual steps intervening between Ex. 1.3e and Ex. 1.3f. In Ex. 1.5b, the two voices of 6, exchange positions—that is, they are inverted contrapuntally at the octave. (This operation is labeled ROTATE in the musical example.) Since much of the passage consists of parallel tenths, the contrapuntal inversion produces entirely usable parallel

sixths, a feature that was surely built into the design of 6, for precisely this purpose. Nonetheless, as the asterisks in Ex. 1.5b show, this voice-exchange causes

the parts to cross at the end of the segment in a way that unacceptably muddles the identities of the lines. To eliminate this problem, the last three notes of the two voices are “rotated” back to their original positions, as Ex. 1.5c shows. In

18 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Ex. 1.5d, the segment in major is played in the minor: I call this operation a | MODESWITCH, that is, when either a melodic line or a harmonic progression is , switched into the opposite mode. (Here and elsewhere in this book I use type in small capitals for procedures of invention that can be formalized as quasimechanical functions.) The maneuver works flawlessly until the asterisks, where the minor version produces an unacceptable progression (among other infelici-

ties, parallel tritones between the upper and implicit middle parts at the aster- | isks). Ex. 1.5e shows the adjustments reflected in the final version of §,. I need ,

to stress that this imagined derivation is not intended to plot the exact sequence of Bach’s thoughts but rather to imagine a plausible reconstruction of the “rules”

that would have guided his compositional choices, even if—given the daily | practice of his art—he conceived of 8, in a momentary flash. By postulating a hierarchy of processes underlying Bach’s compositional actions, the analysis aspires to simulate a kind of “mechanism” that accounts for the preliminary planning within the inventive “work” that ensured the transformations some

the piece as a whole.

degree of success as well as the execution of the connective links that constitute

The composition of 8, boasts the most spectacular “feats” with which Bach manipulated his inventions in this little piece, and its derivation is therefore perhaps the most intriguing. The compositional strategy here began with a sequential chain (now comprised of forms of X) that provided a mirror image

to the one used in £, (see Ex. 1.3e). But not content to perform this one operation , alone, Bach envisaged a more extraordinary tour de force by imagining a melodic inversion of the entire 6-segment, as shown in Ex. 1.3g. (In the version preserved in the Clavierbiichlein for Wilhelm Friedemann, Bach was apparently unaware

of how far he could actually go with 8,, since the bass in m. 20—a - d - e - , f—abandons the melodic inversion right from the start. This means that Bach’s original imagined version of 8, was faulty, a mistake he rectified only some months later while copying the piece for the “Straightforward Instruction.” The mental activity of invention therefore extended even into the process of revision, in which the composer sought even greater discipline in the application of his strictest compositional procedures.) That is, all ascending intervals in both voices

are now made to descend while descending intervals are made to ascend, a kind ; of melodic inversion that preserves the mode rather than the intervalic species of the major or minor seconds. This operation—equivalent to a contrapuntal

mirror found in the most arcane kinds of fugal writing—was riskier than any | other in the piece and, as Ex. 1.3g shows, was far less successful than any other

inventive move. For this reason, Bach had to be satisfied with a more modest _ | success. Interestingly, though, he makes use of the transformed segment until the very moment when it becomes unusable (at the third quarter of m. 20)

| where, unable to persevere with the inversion, Bach sneaks in a misplaced snippet of 6 in its prime form at m. 21 before terminating the transformation altogether. But even this retreat in the face of the contrapuntal odds was not to

What Is an Invention? 19

be seen as ruinous to the overall invention: for this final intervalic progression deriving from £, (6-10-10-10) neatly “compensates” for the failure of the contrapuntal inversion in the corresponding portion of @, (last quarter of m. 13), where Bach had been forced to alter the treble. Where 8, had abandoned the strict letter of the invention as a result of its MODESWITCH, a new passage now

reiterated what could be done without such a constraint. The derivation of §,* (notated with a “defective” asterisk because it had to be discontinued in midstream) and its continuation thus illustrates an economic principle common to all craftsmen: learn from failed experiments and put them to good use. The Disposition With the invention of a and £8 (which embrace all their transformations), Bach -

had largely determined the content of his piece. And because both segments manifested such clear harmonic functions, he had charted much of its course as _ well. By its very nature, a could be used to open the work and tonicize important neighboring keys (this function is called DEFINE) while 6 would prepare and execute cadences in secondary areas that modulated up a fifth. The top portion of Figure 1.2 represents the sum of Bach’s inventions with their associated _ functions. Note also that a is designed to link up with f, so that the invention of the two segments constituted a complete “opening move” for the piece. The invention of segments a and £8, moreover, already implied important aspects of their disposition, that is, how they would figure in the plan of the work as a whole. Nevertheless, it becomes meaningful to talk of disposing the work only when the inventions (and their transformations) are mapped out across the _

imagined terrain of the completed work. (Naturally this kind of distinction between invention and disposition only prevails when the invention is not wholly

synonymous with the harmonic structure in a small-scale movement, as in certain preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier which formally recall the dance

pieces that Friedrich Erhard Niedt generated from a common thoroughbass in his Handleitung zur Variation [1706]. Niedt specifically calls his thoroughbass “the foundation of my Invention” and suggests how his method provided “a very easy method [for obtaining] many thousands of inventions through diligence and hard work.”)*’ A fundamental way to approach the disposition of inventions _ was to follow one of several recognized guidelines for the harmonic plan of a piece. (German writers sometimes discuss this subject under the rubric of species of cadences, or clausulae.) A composer began by positioning the inventions in the tonic and dominant at the beginning of the piece, saving transposed versions

for the middle of the piece. The end of the piece would require either an invention that could end in the main key or some newly composed passage that

closed in the tonic. The number of times inventions could be repeated was | limited by the size of the musical genre: in a preamble such as the C major Inventio, Bach thought of confining the size to about the length of a page. Disposition therefore means gauging gross size as well as thinking sequentially

20 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Invention | |

Oty — DEFINE | O5 ROTATE DEFINE

Operations | Harmonic Function

,]

By — MODULATE *P5 B. ROTATE, MODESWITCH MODULATE *P5

B2* ROTATE, MODESWITCH, INVERT (aborted) |

Oo , By Stemmata y / \ ; By Bs" OL

, Disposition

,vvv I — =V OV >Vvi >]

o;——— B} ——- 0, —__ | ]——— 8, —__| ]—— B3*——_[

Elaboration

mm. | 3 7 9 11 15 19 21 oj | 8, —_—— 8) ——_ 8 3-8

I *V OCUV >Vvi >]

Figure 1.2 Map of C major Invention, BWV 772

in time, imagining events from beginning to end. This is why it is useful to think | of repeatable inventions in vertical paradigms, while their disposition is best , appreciated in a horizontal syntagm, that is, in an ordered string that represents the time (and, if you will, space) spanned by the entire piece. Figure 1.2 displays such a hypothetical arrangement under “Disposition.”

Whereas convention dictated that the second occurrence of a should take : place on the dominant, the ending point for 6, was more flexible: among

desirable minor scale degrees, II or III might also have been feasible, though | - perhaps not in a version with a full authentic cadence. As it turns out, a transposed form of 6, could have ended the piece: Ex. 1.6 shows such a hypothetical ending that begins a fifth lower and thus cadences on C, a procedure used elsewhere, such as in the Inventio 8 in F major. But Bach chose a typically more daring solution by deploying £,, surely relishing the opportunity to show that the melodic chain formed with X(INV) and exploited in 8, also worked

What Is an Invention? | 21

fr a "=" pees RN (ee ee eae pest terrence et ee

a ee ee eS

Example 1.6 Possible ending for BWV 772 using a transposed form of £,

equally well with X itself. As a consequence, though, he had to compose a new ending for the piece. The brackets enclosing empty spaces in Figure 1.2 stand for

the gaps that needed to be filled for the final measures. Of the twenty-two , measures in the final version, fourteen—nearly two-thirds—are already accounted for even in this still rudimentary stage of the disposition. The Elaboration Elaboration, according to Mattheson, “requires little instruction, for one encounters a path which has been prepared and already knows for certain where to go.” While there is some truth in this statement, it surely misses the surprising care

| that Bach lavished on his episodic passages. One might even be tempted to say that in Bach’s works both invention and elaboration are marked by an almost equally intense mental activity. A crucial difference, nonetheless, separates the two activities: whereas invention is work, elaboration is play. While invention requires foresight, planning, consistency, savvy, and seriousness of purpose, elaboration is content with elegance, an associative logic, and an eye for similarities. The bottom section of Figure 1.2 depicts the composition of the three elaborative passages—y, 6, and e—that can be thought of both as connecting links between the inventions and as faint echoes of their surface patterns. On the one hand, each elaborative segment plays a carefully circumscribed role. As Examples 1.7a and 1.7b show, y and 6 had to travel only a short distance from

the terminal point of the preceding invention to the starting point of the succeeding one; each used simple, stepwise sequences to reach its goal. On the other hand, Bach goes out of his way to devise intricate motivic relations between his elaborative passages and inventive segments. Consider the passage connecting m. 9 to m. 11, called y. At first glance, y appears to derive from a by processes of melodic inversion (formalized as the function INVERT) and voice-exchange (formalized as the function ROTATE). But try as one might, y cannot be seen to derive directly from a even though, by preserving the motivic resemblance, Bach takes pains to make them appear similar. A more fundamental difference between the two passages lies in their function. Whereas a announces a beginning by presenting the tonic and dominant in succession, y functions as linear connective tissue linking (by consecutive _

parallel sixths) a, (mm. 7-8) with 6, (mm. 11-14) by alternating forms of , X(INV). Given a gap in the disposition between a, and £,, one can easily imagine Bach’s pen elaborating the stepwise linear ascent with forms of X. But logically

22 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Ii 9 10 ll

Hh 04 7 0 a

a) Derivation of

=p ee eee —=g Dg Pe I

: ee cere rs eee ce Sen ne XY @ a. @&F gag ty 8 [Q ~* Ft 2 ~ #4” gi ¢

06 a6 6a 6a 6

eee Se aaa, ee Ee b)15 Derivation , , 16 17 of 186 19

yr feelers te et ae et ete 2 ort eee ort

0 oe as | Ha a a or per | ee | mn = Y , TI ee |:

ee ssS30$0$™0(0. SS (a eoeeeooODOD™Woo ee CSV eee ee ee esse eee 6 10 10 6 10 10 6

pT ee ell

, c) Derivation of &

wee ee ee eee * wean E 5) (B3*) a e ——— ee EE |

Ae}——__-_4 PEE 2" a et 8

* ——

. Cmaj: V |

_ Example 1.7 Derivation of elaborative segments

this move belongs to a later stage of composition: only after having decided on the precise deployment of a and # (in the dispositio) could Bach have reflected , on a connective link between them. The passage thus performs a primarily local function that knits together an open seam. y might also have resulted from a

rejected moment in Bach’s invention when he considered whether a melodic | inversion could be performed on a. (Voice-exchange, after all, had been used to |

What Is an Invention? 23

derive a,.) But because a hypothetical a(INV) was unusable—even its barebones outline fails to preserve a key-defining function—Bach resurrected a shadow of its idea when he came to seek out an elaborative link between a, and f.. Thus, while there is no doubt that y is a kind of weak substitution for an operation performed upon a that he could not undertake, the fact that y could be temporarily mistaken for a form of a attests to Bach’s fascination with episodic play which comes to resemble inventive work. The elaborative passage called 6 is somewhat more complex than the little connective y, but it too provides a link to the subsequent invention by means of a simple linear sequence. (See Ex. 1.7b.) The ingenuity of the passage can be glimpsed from the insight that paired forms of X(INV) and X with an identical pitch-content produce a downward stepwise sequence which “backtracks” when the pattern resumes at the lower neighbor. That is, both m. 15 and m. 16 took

the same set of notes (e’, f°, g’, a°) to construct the two forms of X which, presented in the order “inversion then prime form,” yielded a patterned sequence that moved twice as slowly as the usual stepwise variety. Considering that

the terminus of 6, and the beginning point of 6, are only a third apart in the treble, Bach was able to demonstrate how to fill a substantial space (four measures) with a directed musical motion that, at the same time, covers very little ground. The circuitous nature of this sequence is of such interest—it occurs nowhere else in the piece—that the surface pattern diverts attention away from the subordinate voice-leading and again, like y, recalls the alternating gestures of a, thereby lending a remarkable unity to the surface of the piece.

As was shown earlier, the need for a final cadential passage in the piece— labeled e—resulted from Bach’s choice to use a defective segment expressing a new element of invention (§,) over a transposed version of a complete segment that said nothing new. Although there is a limit to ingenuity among the highly conventionalized cadence schemes, Bach devises an ingenious ending that hints at yet a new challenge, the contrapuntal combination of X and X(INV). As Ex. 1.7¢ shows, he took the aborted ending of 8,—a statement of X(INV)—and tacked on two notes (d and e) so as to make it look as if X appeared in the bass in augmentation, a special contrapuntal feat. The challenge is only partly suc-

cessful—Bach has to omit the last note of X in the bass and speed up its augmented version—but the maneuver creates a striking flourish at the finish. This elaborative gesture nevertheless falls short of a true invention: had Bach been able to combine X and X(INV) flawlessly, he would surely have displayed this proud achievement earlier in the piece. Although Mattheson may be right in emphasizing only “order and measure” for the disposition of a work, Bach’s own elaborations, with their intricate detail and elegant correspondences, cannot have resulted merely from “cold blood and circumspection.” For the refined qualities of Bach’s elaborative segments are precisely what separate him from his German contemporaries, who tended to treat elaboration as a far more casual matter. In no other composer of the period does one find such fanatical zeal directed so often toward what others considered

24 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

the least interesting parts of a composition. Indeed, it is this hallmark of Bach’s style that led earlier analysts to conclude that his music was an organic mass of motivic connections. While these connections may have looked to some as if composition consisted of pasting one basic motive across the expanse of a piece, an analysis attuned to the difference between inventions and their elaborations

allows for an understanding that is both more varied in scope and more vivid

in its uncovering of human actions. |

The Decoration and Execution | oe The art of decorating or embellishing rarely affects the substance of an invention; rather it is a matter of matching the frequency and kind of ornaments to the style of the piece. (The well-known variant of the C major invention, BWV 772 CL eee Ge ee. eee a...ee. eee 7. Ce eeen en Ss ee ee eeBen ee enee... 2Tjeee ee NN eee |hl2 .. a aaitiis ©i2B w2@ph| * ow tyAe Ti ee tT .tfeee TTeee. TT Aeee ee ee ee

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Example 2.7. Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, Concerto in G major, mvt. 1, mm. 104-147

50 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

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, attracted, after all, not to writing a fugue, a motet, a sonata, or a suite, but rather

to composing a Vivaldian concerto. :

Georg Philipp Telemann relates in his autobiography of 1718 how he was actually antipathetic to the newer Italian concertos which he encountered. He | concedes that he nonetheless began to write concertos:

Composing against the Grain 51

Yet I must admit that they were never quite close to my heart, though I did compose

rather a great number of them about which, however, one may write: “If one is not naturally inspired, indignation shall fuel his poetic resolve” (Juval, Sat, I). At least it is true that [my concertos] mostly smell of France. Whether it is equally probable that nature had somewhat failed me in this area [of composition] because, after all, we cannot excel in everything, then one reason nonetheless might be that in most

of the concertos that appeared before me I encountered, to be sure, many difficulties and crooked jumps but little harmony and even worse melody. I hated the former because they were uncomfortable to my (left)-hand and bow and in view of the lack of the latter qualities (to which my ear had become accustomed through French music) I could neither love them nor want to imitate them.”°

This statement reveals how a leading German composer of the period rationalized his aversion to an influential and popular Italian genre, even one in which he wrote a plentiful number of compositions. The “lack of harmony and the even worse melody,’ moreover, are precisely the qualities that apparently made | it so easy for Prince Johann Ernst to not only feel attracted to the genre itself but even aspire to his own compositions. J. S. Bach, though he in all likelihood agreed with Telemann’ critical impetus, never needed to abjure concerto writing since from early on he decided on a personal appropriation of the genre that he was able to cultivate actively through

the 1730s. Only after this period did he effect a self-imposed return to the historical genres of variation, canon, and fugue and the corresponding dictates of pure counterpoint. For Bach, the Vivaldian concerto lacked interest for the very reasons that probably drew Johann Ernst to cultivate it: the superficial aura of visceral excitement attached to its opening moves, the exotic reminder of the allures of Venice, and its value in an aristocratic luxury trade. Even in purely musical terms, Bach could scarcely have been seduced by the patent regressions in compositional technique—particularly the suppression of counterpoint and the corresponding impoverishment of true polyphony—in which the concerto reveled. Bach’s interest in Vivaldi had another source entirely: instead of copying

a set of crude, superficial formulas, Bach discovered within Vivaldi a kind of harmonic laboratory providing insights into the nature of tonality, a kind of simulacrum of thoroughbass that could produce insights into the secrets of a God-given art. Concertos were therefore not so much a modish fashion to be emulated until tastes changed or reason intervened (as in the case of Telemann) but a set of procedures that enriched Bach’s own approach to invention. An idiosyncratic reception of the Venetian concerto is readily apparent in Bach’s early confrontation with Vivaldi’s works, not so much in the organ arrangements

cited earlier but in his early original works that exploit Vivaldian principles. Although Bach’s reception of Vivaldi’s ritornello procedures will be treated more

formally in Chapter 3, I will introduce this genre by considering the opening Sinfonia for the Weimar church cantata “Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee von

52 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Himmel fallt,’ BWV 18, probably written around 1713, both to contrast it with , the Johann Ernst concerto just discussed as well as to suggest how, even in the earliest phase of his encounter with the Venetian composer’s works, Bach’s own

approach was far more than a simple matter of stylistic emulation. , The cryptic and peculiar ritornello for this piece—whose strange intervalic _ drops surely depict the “rain and snow falling from heaven” which are mentioned in the opening line of text—might be mistaken for an old-fashioned bass ostinato rather than a concerto ritornello, were it not for the four solo violas forming a Vivaldian concertino as well as the structured alternations between

, statements of the ritornello and its absence. (See the opening of BWV 18/1 in Ex. 2.8.) From the first entrance of the violas in m. 5 it is clear that they are not

to signal soloistic bravura but rather the more old-fashioned topic of imitative counterpoint. In addition, the ritornello itself is a rich source of invention, since,

played without the chordal continuo accompaniment (that is, tasto solo), the | unison voice-leading itself seems to display a shockingly brazen sequence of forbidden parallel fifths. The mystery is only clarified with the subsequent. realization of the continuo figures and the upper part-writing in m. 9, when it is realized that the open fifths in the bass are to be heard as a series of suspended 5-6 patterns and where an elegant sequence of overlaid seventh chords rescues the bass from contrapuntal oblivion. As seen in Table 2.1, which enumerates the ritornello formations, the appearance of the ritornello can have three forms— one sounded only in unisono, one with the concerted parts and continuo added,

and a final emphatic version in which the fundamental register drops to the 16-foot range—all of which add a variety to the iterations of the ritornello not | - ordinarily found in ostinato pieces such as passacaglias and ciaconnas. Since the opening bass line is not ubiquitous throughout the movement, but yields to episodes in which there is an absent or freely invented bass line, we are justified in calling the opening statement a ritornello precisely because it “returns.” What

is specifically Vivaldian about this ritornello, however, is not only that it returns ‘periodically (a procedure that one also finds in Torelli, Albinoni, and other Italian instrumental composers) but (1) that the ritornello is tonally closed, that is, it cadences in the tonic; (2) that it is transposed to various scale degrees; and _ , (3) that it can be divided into meaningful segments. The overall sense of the | Sinfonia therefore derives from the presence and absence of the ritornello and the corresponding diversions of the solo episodes, the various uses to which the

ritornello is put, and the alterations that are made to it. | | | Despite the fact that the ritornello seems to form one indivisible musical unit, , it can actually be separated into two parts (which I have called [X] and [Y]), — just as Vivaldi’s own ritornellos so often “segment” into detachable phrases which can then be deployed separately during the course of the movement. R,, - found at mm. 28-30 (see Ex. 2.8), does exactly this by presenting the second segment without the first—in fact, concealing it in a 4-foot register so that it

appears as episode rather than as ritornello. The column in Table 2.1 labeled

Composing against the Grain 53

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Example 2.8 BWV 18/1, mm. 1-30 , 54 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

17

CD A es Ee SOE ES - P ™ ne . " ™ —_A

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Tonic Resolution — — + Voi + = presence; — = absence.

the pretenses of the surface. What follows from this fundamental distinction between marked ritornello sections and unmarked solo episodes is that Bach is

able to effect a dazzling display in changing identities. | The first movement of the opening Sinfonia of Cantata 35 for organ and orchestra serves well as an emblematic Bach ritornello movement, in which one can observe these processes at work. Ex. 3.3a gives the opening ritornello (R,) in score, while Ex. 3.3b provides a harmonic reduction representing the syntax of the three segments. Table 3.2 details the ritornello formations throughout the

movement together with their key relations and various segmentations. The opening ritornello is “marked” by the conventional disposition of the three fundamental segments, of which the Vordersatz and the Fortspinnung can be segmented into two smaller units. Each of these units is sufficient on its own to refer to the tonal function of the segment, and, as can be seen from the table, Bach has detached the units from one another on at least one occasion during the course of the movement. (It is important to differentiate this procedure, which I formalize as the function sEGMENT, from the mere fragmenting of the ritornello. Whereas SEGMENTATION maintains the function of a particular ritornello segment, such as tonic definition or closure, fragmentation does not.) Even

though one might consider [V,] and [V,] motivically “unified,” each independently confirms the tonic (D minor). On the other hand, the two segments are not interchangeable: [V,] could not have begun the piece, while [V,] shows itself to be the dominating segment, since it juxtaposes the dominant and tonic in m. 2 and opens melodically on scale-degree 1.

By concluding on the dominant chord (as is typical for many of Bach's Vordersétze), [V.] leads directly into the voice-leading pattern of the Fortspinnung. The first segment of the Fortspinnung, [F,], proceeds in a 5—6—5—6 sequence

leading to the major III chord in m. 6. Here the second [F]-segment takes over, rising in a pattern of suspensions until the end of m. 8, when the next segment is signaled by the diminished seventh chord which substitutes for the subsequent arrival on the V¢ on ct. The Epilog need only punctuate the ritornello with a closing cadence. Like the two [V]-segments, the two [F]-segments enjoy an

equivalent grammatical status but are not identical in meaning. Both avoid confirmation of D minor, but [F,] taken alone leads toward the relative major, while [F,] sets up an implied resolution in the tonic. By grammar or syntax I

66 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

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The Ideal Ritornello 67

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Example 3.3. BWV 35/1, mm. 1-9

mean the essential structure of the segmentation, while semantics indicates the “performance” of surface operations. To say that two forms of a segment are grammatically identical means that a “competent” listener would intuitively hear no functional alteration in meaning if one were substituted for the other. The difference between the two utterances is therefore a matter of surface (or deco-

68 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

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rative) alteration. To say that two segments such as [V,] and [V,] are syntactically equivalent, on the other hand, means that both fulfill the same marked function,

although not in an identical manner. The subdivision of segments, moreover, can be seen as derived from the underlying harmonic structure of the ritornello’s

syntax. However, the rules for transformation of the fundamental functions into , | the individual units that inhabit a particular movement vary from segment to segment. All subdivisions of [V], for example, require a duplication of Tonic Definition, while [F], lacking any significant tonal articulation, is not divided

according to any exact formula. Segments belonging to [E], on the other hand, | are more flexible. Whereas the final segment must include the strong authentic cadence, those preceding either admit a duplication of function or at the very

pointing to the tonic resolution. |

least present a clear index (namely, a strong untonicized dominant chord) Once Bach gives his ritornellos a grammatical structure, he no longer needs

The Ideal Ritornello 69

Table 3.2 Ritornello formations in BWV 35/1

Ritornello Key Mode Measures Segments

Ry | minor 1~9 Vi V> F, F, E Ro I minor | | 12-13 Vi R; II MAJOR 22-23 Vv; Vv" 28-29

Ry V minor 33-36 Vi V> V F, F E 41-47 Rs IV minor 60-66 Vi" V> F,

Re VI MAJOR 80-81 Vv;

Ry I minor 88-92 V,*

Re I minor 98-105 Vi" V> F,

Ro I minor 110-116 V> F, F, E* Rio I minor 122-131 E-

> Vi V> F, F, E

R = Ritornello; V = Vordersatz; F = Fortspinnung; E = Epilog.

to observe the convention that the orchestra must play them. Indeed, the hallmark of a Bach concerto movement is the composer’s evident delight in blurring the old solo-tutti distinction. Bach excludes the Vivaldian distinction not only from the invention of the ritornello but also, significantly, from the disposition of the later ritornello segments. The tutti-solo contrast—as with the entire question of the orchestration—no longer determines the shape of the movement but becomes part of the decoration. Who is playing rarely matters in a Bach

absent.’ ,

concerto; the important issue is whether a ritornello segment is present or In this light consider Rg in Ex. 3.4. From its disposition in Table 3.2, Rs appears as simply one of the four final ritornellos in the tonic. Yet it forces a new view of the ritornello by specifically decorating its surface. First, it expands and varies

[V,] while maintaining its contrapuntal and harmonic syntax. [V,] is varied by diminutions in inessential voices, although its length remains unaltered. The important feature is that the organ plays the ritornello theme as if the solo instrument “controlled” the ritornello itself. The function DECORATE is used to signify changes in meaning which leave the syntactic structure intact. Such DECORATIONS can assume many substantive forms. Consider [F,] (mm. 103—105), which is marked piano and has a bit of solo counterpoint woven into it. Traditionally, these markers should indicate a move from the ritornello into a solo section. But here, the removal of the tutti merely turns the old notion of competing forces into a struggle involving the more abstract principle of presence versus absence. Accordingly, piano indications do not mark solo sections.

70 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Oboe IES—0 AWe oN oeMY Oo eelveterewa wc A RNee A OE Oe pe °AOu eeoeORee eeAY1a leee

em q — ee | _ 7 Cs YW A Te ee eee . . ©). CGS SS Ke See eee eeeeee eee

|: :mn &a oo. se Ty an

. _ | ae

Taille 5 | RTS RO ee eS EE As A Ti! « #[ 2 © bem | | | | Pewee, | hh OT dL ee pe . iin? 7 [ea] eee | | ee eT UCU TLE : Viola CD A Sh ae —— — 0 ON A 6 A A Sel iY Aner[ugl 0)eea Se 0 ?es a| .d DY Da LA» fg rTeee re UL 7. WL ee| a=ffCn ey=«= ee PUY eee eee =e ~_~

Organo obligato

fe orte oo — ae [ene nee see

MATCont. BED G.4 Bee eee eee N Ee ee ee eee ~~ jt a 01 —— -—— Ob. piano peea A —— ee a ee

ae =Wie ee ee ee eeeee "en ee ee en ee 2eeOe |... eee ee 7. eeSe eeaee ee ee ee ee ee eee ee eee. 2... 7 ..Se. ee ae ee ee en 0" ee2 eee ee.eee eeeee se eee 1 eee eee eee eee

nn i a es

NS, A Ee nn ES Ae EE TO EE OS” DS NOE ESE SOUS AOE Vin. I piano

FEE OE=o el SO “=p ee “eg SS

r)fbSeeaan tlCSM ome Sone ———— _nt... | rr—O LCC ee eee FP2 Oe” rg 2el2 Bee ee. 42 eee eeeereeeEF? ee .4Ae eee eee eee 6 eee

| = pian a Yr 2 } De ee —— em | aANSes7 Ehee... ee es ee OS ss= _ ae— ee a ——— a : nm : oa -N an WZ A — aWw ee —e Es —pL 4 aee” —_ Eee Ob. 2 piano emmy — peemememmomes—

Vin. II piano

_ | Taille piano FRO PoP ie? eee EEE nn i |

Ts) ee ee OOO OO EE fTEY edeee gg SA Ane eeeTE ee ee"EY ee ss OEE ee eeEN ee Be ee YeA eeSE, ee eee" eee eee 2 Oe 6 NE, OA YOMee SY AO RT WA I. ee" an2.4." A UY ESSLU

a> Via.

Eo A ee I Ee a EN nA a A yO YT OEE F—EOTCOOOOOED = —E ETEE8 CL EETD NT wc AE NwOT NN ML NEE well A A wn YY SR SGT OSU wa” RELL #

: | owe | TT EEE OD OD UTC DC eS eeOO a Iee es ee >OEE OP I ET. |Rll nA CE A a es a eee ee es ee TO ee ee ee eee eee ES SE I ™ EE NR nA Wk NN NONE OL NNN OSU RS ___ SOUN O

104 ———— piano r) ——— —— le || sa —_Cont. __ Aeee 2’ EE ee Ee eet Cee ee eee eeeeee... ee ie "2.2.4 eeeOASYS ee 2 GES Oeee 2 eee eee eee ASS/.. VEQA Ah AL.A ES EY OU NOee cA ON NS NT RT AUSTEN CED

a[aae sn...|) peea Jcra arr - aacre a2, Bh | | oaee| |a£87

2SAN ee... eee i _S eee Eee 2 ee eee eee Se ee er ee ee eee ee eee" ee...nO eee Ol1) 1h cc el Aeeeeee A tes 0©ee... egWe gf |«A [gg 7... 9 ee Ooo Qe Tr orte

SR” «J A GSeeOO PS)eee nSee nll..9 a Ls AeeI ee eeRS ee ==eYESS Ve eeA”eeOURO eee 2 AU ee ee ae ae a ee

T ——, ae

os +?» LE. EE eee eee eee" eee ee eee a... eee eee eee eee eee

Example 3.4. BWV 35/1, mm. 98-106 |

The Ideal Ritornello , 71

And in a similar vein, forte indications need not guarantee a ritornello: for example, the forte in measure 105 suggests that the ritornello was absent during the previous two measures. In fact, this is a playful deception: the ritornello was present. The semantic richness of the passage stems from that variety of the function DECORATE I call ORCHESTRATE; in a simple reversal of roles the ritor-

nello (or marked material) is indicated by a piano while the solo (or unmarked episode) is forte. The complex “meaning” results from a rather literal “covering

up” of the syntax, reversing its usual semantic associations. Nevertheless, this decoration takes place only if both the “original” and transformed ritornellos are syntactically identical. One can in fact test for this underlying identity by substituting the corresponding segments of R, for Rs. To do this, imagine the analogous passages from R, in place of Rs. The seamlessness of the substitution demonstrates the underlying syntactic identity, while the contextual “performance” of Rg constitutes a subtle semantic shift. A great deal of

the unrecognized drama of Bach’s concerto practice derives from this very opposition between surface features and the deeper harmonic order. Another crucial operation of the ritornello principle consists in what I have called (in Chapter 1) a MODEswITCcH, that is, when a ritornello in a minor mode is transposed to the major mode or vice versa. It has often been noted that the so-called key schemes within concerto movements include conventional moves to related keys in the opposite mode. Yet it has escaped notice that only rarely can all three segments of a ritornello be “translated” into the opposite mode without incurring at least some errors of voice-leading or some other unacceptable semantic shift. It is almost an invariable “law” of Bach’s inventive practice that if some segments have been converted to the opposite mode by a MoDESWITCH, Others were hypothetically “switched” and then rejected for easily explicable reasons. The “invention” of a ritornello thus mirrors the major-minor system at the same time that it isolates and refines its otherwise hidden properties.

Ex. 3.5 attempts such a hypothetical translation of the ritornello in BWV 35/1.

In Ex. 3.5a, [V,] is nearly equivalent and requires no alterations. On the other hand, [V,] does not survive the MODESWITCH intact. First, as Ex. 3.5b shows, a

b} must substitute for a bb in the penultimate chord in order to retain the semblance of equivalence. This is so because the progression in minor, which harmonizes a descending tetrachord from the tonic down to the dominant, functions as a strong “half cadence” and has no exact equivalent in major. Yet another voice-leading error occurs in [V,], shown in the four-part reduction in Example 3.5c, where an improperly prepared diminished fifth appears between | the bass and tenor. In R,, Bach circumvented these syntactic errors in the relative major by reducing the number of inner parts. (In Table 3.2, [V.] is correspondingly marked with an asterisk to show that it has been altered.) However, the incongruity in the transposed Fortspinnung, shown in Ex. 3.5d, presented insurmountable obstacles. Here, the translation of [F,] resulted in a harmonically

72 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

unacceptable shift, since the progression marked at the asterisk loses the direc- | tion previously supplied by the interim movement to the relative major.

As operations inseparable from the “invention” of the ritornello, the modal translations set the idiosyncrasies of the major-minor system into bold relief. Further, the resulting ungrammatical configurations that linguists call “nonoccurrent’—because they do not occur in ordinary speech—actually determine a wide variety of musical processes by the alternatives they inspire. Since the voice-leading generating [F,] and [F,], for example, cannot recur in major even with alteration, neither R, nor Rs—the two ritornellos in major—consequently include any [F]-segments. On the other hand, the absence of the non-occurrent segments gives rise to much of what is traditionally considered “motivic devel- _ opment.” We found this, for example, in the solo episode of the E major Violin

Concerto shown earlier in Ex. 3.2. There, the Vordersatz happens to be non- , occurrent in minor, since a MODESWITCH forces the bass line on the downbeat

of an imaginary m. 3 of the ritornello either to choose between an improper augmented second—moving awkwardly from c to d# in e minor—or an unacceptable cross-relation between c# in the bass and ck’ in the treble. What appears

as episodic play is therefore an example of Bach making the best of his inventive | work that produced unacceptable results. In the Sinfonia to Cantata 35, Rs and |

the subsequent solo episode at mm. 82-88 exemplify the consequences of non- | occurrence in which the ritornello in major breaks off after [V,] and proceeds , into the episode by working out motives derived from, but not harmonically equivalent to, subsequent ritornello material. Usually this would be explained as the composer’s admirable mastery of motivic economy. In fact, Bach writes the

passage this way because he cannot continue with the Fortspinnung. Although | this type of solo episode aspires to the status of a ritornello, it postures instead,

filling in a space left vacant by a rejected translation. |

, _ Thus far, the ritornellos examined have coincided with the opening ritornello

in the movement. In other words, the logical—or what I call the ideal—tritornello | of any particular concerto movement is the same as the ritornello that occurs at

, the beginning of the piece. However, this need not always be the case. Consider

the following ritornello (shown in Ex. 3.6) from Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four _ , Violins in B minor (op. 3, no. 10), which Bach transcribed and arranged for four

harpsichords (BWV 1065). Given any familiarity with the movement, this ritor- , nello seems quite conventional and displays the usual harmonic patterns. However, if one consults Table 3.3, it becomes clear that this ritornello occurs nowhere

in the piece at all. Yet it is a plausible ritornello, as “well-formed” as any other. | | I would therefore like to suggest that, in some way, it already existed before it was concocted as it appears in Ex. 3.6. Or better: Bach saw that beneath its surface appearance lay a grammatical formulation that was to some extent independent

of its realization in the piece. To posit the ideal ritornello depicted in Figure 3.1 , as the starting point of the work is to imagine how Bach construed the development of possibilities in Vivaldi’s model. To put it differently: Bach’s notion of

The Ideal Ritornello 73

i|

, “invention” in such a movement depends on an ideal ritornello which precedes the work but need not be identified with its opening gesture.

It is important to emphasize that this idea of an ideal ritornello was an

invention of Bach’s that built on a structural possibility that Vivaldi himself only rarely made manifest. For if we examine, for instance, the third movement of

the very same concerto by Vivaldi, it becomes clear how, according to the

standards that Bach set for his own inventive procedures, the Venetian composer falls far short of a desirable Bachian rigor, despite the fact that the piece shows

off Vivaldian invention at perhaps its most compelling. (See Table 3.4.) The movement displays a variety of attractive compositional strengths, despite Vivaldi’s indifference to “thinking through” the implications of his ritornello in

, any systematic way. A lengthy ritornello, which is never repeated, opens the movement. The Vordersatz, in un-Bachian fashion, essentially spells out the tonic

triad without referring to its dominant. This is followed by a protracted but exciting set of relatively brief phrases that I have called (for the sake of comparison) Fortspinnung-segments, all of which (except the first) seem to hover around

( et

the dominant chord. The ritornello ends with the memorable frisson of a

a)

MODESWITCH [Vj]

oy ot po U ES 28 A a SaaS 2 5

IV]

c,h VI

b)

7 A A GS | NS _ SSS SE (SSS MODESWITCH [V>] = semantic shift

_—————— 6

MODESWITCH [V>*] = semantically equivalent ,

LS” As A EN NORD SA SN |

IV

bp Pah 9 ANS

A LO ©” SY ME 4

|EEpg. fd CE SE 0 Pe

Example 3.5 MODESWITCH of ritornello segments in BWV 35/1

74 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

lai FT vV | Ngtatt

8S Ss a — a 7 ——— | . c)

d) , [F;] . oe [Val

! MODESWITCH [V9] = syntax error |

2

I*V

Ya? or or or aS ——

NS Yn |

fh} , Fas Ft A ON SO SR |

_ ;MODESWITCH [Fj] = non-occurrent

L__4 ,

T4Qn”BUEC=OYooa oI a eo erotetoereo .:0OwVv7”.’.-_ OO" ETE. nx. = FPO et Po OOo

rl

7 aeee i attaoe a ee Qe _ AA SEeT A a a ee es es o_o ee a Ly --ocesI Example 3.12 BWV 1061/1, mm. 28—43 , ,

The Ideal Ritornello 91

= ee i y, y, et ee == Rt

(6 1 iirAIEEE 8 et oe | trEE ot tg te St) 2.4 38

y,

CR aS Ok CS OOS OE SSee Py l—"=g A = = a =e ee EP | De eee eT eee

—») | ee a a a a a pT eeee ee eee ee" 2 ya

N 7 a iY

9 aa eS SS SSS SS SSS SSS =.

41

Ss TY p LS |

penn el ee _| ee

rT. 0, GEE | ee eee... eee eee eee eee eee se. ee

y 77 Lf’ § | So r/o 9°easirLe!i > —— ——as

Example 3.12 (continued)

in the dominant. This means that two forms of the [F,]-segment—one in the

tonic and one in the dominant—are superimposed over each other at the distance of a half note so as to arrive at the dominant statement of the ritornello without anyone having noticed.'® Bach has therefore taken advantage of the peculiarities of canon to effect a move usually reserved for the more informal episodic function of modulation, a stunning example of invention infringing on the domain of elaboration. Ex. 3.11c attempts to disclose the essential contrapuntal maneuvers of this intriguing feat, which can be experienced, perhaps, as a

richly dense web of harmony, but whose inventive workings are scarcely imaginable, deftly negotiated as they are beneath the musical surface. (Another facet of Bach’s invention is his RESEARCH into felicitous juxtapositions between segments played out of order. By RESEARCH I formalize a function which describes how Bach seeks out possible links in the voice-leading to connect non-adjacent ritornello segments. The unusual move in R,, to scale degree IV is a result of his

92 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Eee 156 L nae ee \ ———

a | nal De. 5 all Kp oT oO ooo EEHOO EEeeeieCeeae at DT TF OOOO eee. —D2OO Oo oO.:_“Kn-”0’-.-.— —rH nnrx----"u”"nn-.-..... 0” __ Oe Er Le LL TF

fp a , adagio I[> ET ee eh

[Poe ooo _ EOTT eed — d eed e—— e | i OO O>OH~”"13>27—0W0Wwn”v7- CCS ETS nS TT LSE DO TCL St ce. cEO28OEB2nn =

f’ Pd aa ee oe ——

OE Ses... 0-0-0 OO eT TTT eeorrr xr TT arnjNnVU--"--. 5 2 OEE oo T._-~-ee EET eee ee _oT ek? TAR SealeDO eTTT—ET——T—ETT— EEOO OD le —— Ww a F°0?*$INnN’-.rIInN..-" 1" S— 3 owO 2 OF oTeT

2. ES A OOOO a TAT De OO Jon aees a a aeee a A OTOL 1A a Aes a_._}4eNNTNjNqNr’rO 2ee A a es 2 eeRe es Seen * SE a oo eee OO

159 . FN ON SP PN A Aa, OD x OR YO aD SS anc A2LP5dlAalH ey aSeOG eyee oOo OOO. E™TE—E—E—E=X~*~—*eE_@C=X_—T_—E&—=~—~—E=Ez—>EKZ_*=—&~C=&—i=iwEsz——_E_ T_T Cc

yO ow TT eo et ~=7FDP/U--""—“>-- ts Ss EW””®-——_ wo. ? 30. 8-2 Po Oe eo OEE eee

nisin oT ~ = lem ated bal-t el | e— Bam — A A ee~—-AUENO a, | OSES aa SS=OS AA” |_ A AA A SSA A I~ r— a” Pe 2 — — ee a ea 7a?AOo Aey Aae ha ee el ©ee PA NOTT ce ann, 2 NY ACO G7 —— — oo re ita oe ee OO ooo SA a A A a a A A Aee Qe OOO OD EDE—E—E=2=EON ee T—TETOTFEC a eo ie CR RS a| AOeSSaTOhEETTE—Ee$ SS SL A SL A NATIO“ AN YO) NE AN OY AO NNN MY RG OS NN A PY7 cman ts OA Se ee —,

ae ee

|eg Msee fF]re7 Oe ee | pee =o Fe eS

De ”.(:vvw9 0— EO OO L_TTT TT eo er OTE ELE LLL PE TTT >»TwNooC_,... TT) wer, ))””-=e LE eELY Ly” L-” EL”TA »”-—oM_ ea-—OWL”COM_OL OL. | al EU Lal

. zy. a OA H_t.Yx.1”+”>->*>*"—=r“Ww0WN0w"w”"X”7".:.-'.”._ HOO OT oD Ooo T=“ 8 8HOoOoO OOOO —C=>EXZ—IOE Te

163 A Coae, p) — bell] Em N Bn Se 2 2 A ee a P+) Pf —1- Th

6666s ee eee fe | ee AaEA NA OOcAETE SE A SOooo CSN OO LA I ee ee eeey FORO DO a Os 80@— H 0O€.4-«-«NF--0O--ONEOT. OSeeEN ele OO OOOOO”,_ —Eea>rn-._ oe —_ Oa: Oo a rt aa OT TTT—TT—T—TT—7—TTT—T——T—T—T EET TET ee OT ——> 222. Qx@"t"00OOOTTE —*uv——__ -—__ ———— _ S707” et

Qh _—————_—TTT——T— ._(A89n"“x-—-—-—-.’--nNr->N>}>$9}#O+XnDmm En ES eenNTTToooo_|€mn—nn--—-™™_™T

PT FE EEF Oe OO Toa SO lT—T—E—T—eee ee —FGrcn.:.-.~NnU--NOoOOWO00OS Ea Tao

, : _Teeen —ow —— hens CoN TTT OT. a ooo 2 OT TTT 2ope RS YG ed Ved ©Beetene || Oa” ELAO Oe Tpn~-...—. OOo A oT 2‘—NnN--79 PSoneo_o OOoea oo Cie7*#te'!’’--.é--NN””~”v’n-’-’-’-’"’"’-’-’-'."0(@ oe ED OOo]

ASS) 2 bY "A Al — — PH | f.\ re —— a ——— a —— Se rt Toe OH OononwNH]“™—2"— eet

|

Example 3.13. BWV 1061/1, mm. 156-166 ,

o-

The Ideal Ritornello 93

discovery that [F,] in the subdominant creates a compelling link with [F,] in the tonic.) The futile search for origins in this movement experiences a compensatory gesture in its arresting final bars (shown in Ex. 3.13) which bring the action to a grinding halt in a grandiloquent and transgressive minor cadence marked “ada-

gio, albeit with a Picardian major third in the final chord. This bold gesture likewise seems to throw into question whether the ritornello can guarantee an authentic conclusion. The question is of course illusory, since the ritornello contained a perfectly adequate Epilog that could easily have provided a satisfying

end to the movement as a whole. At first glance this ending, dramatic as it undoubtedly is, seems calculating and unmotivated, a quest, perhaps, for variety at the expense of invention. On the other hand, given that the beginning of the ritornello posed a tonal problem that the episodes attempted (in vain) to solve, the ending in minor might also be read as a consequence of a failed inventive process. Whereas [V,], [Vp], and [F,] all underwent the MoDESWITCH successfully, the Epilog could not. The reasons are not especially grammatical ones, but

rather that the IV’ chord is unidiomatic in the minor mode and is commonly replaced by a diminished seventh chord built on the raised fourth scale degree. While the ideal Epilog could not have functioned with any diminished seventh chord, the Adagio features one prominently. It can thus be best heard as a pseudo-Epilog that stands in the place of the rejected translation, a loose retooling of the pitch content and thoroughbass of the ideal Epilog. It is useful to contrast this ending with the superfluous Fortspinnung segment (discussed earlier) that Vivaldi added to the end of the third movement of op. 3, no. 10. Whereas Vivaldi’s intervention in the final bars had no bearing on the processes , already displayed by his ritornello formations, Bach’s concluding peroration definitively answers the question of beginnings and endings with which the

, movement was preoccupied. Bach’s ritornello principles also have a remarkable effect on genres with verbal texts, and it is easy to imagine that the kind of internal analysis of their materials in which such inventions engage will be particularly suited to the kind of exegesis of poetry characteristic of concerted arias and choruses. The subject of musical invention tied to poetic texts is a massive one, and I only want to touch on it

briefly to suggest how the ritornello principle acts not so much as a dramatic | device but rather as an ideal interpretive mechanism which delights in circumnavigating a textual idea until it is understood from a variety of musical vantage points. To illustrate this point, I have chosen a text in which time plays an explicit role so as to emphasize how Bach’s approach to musical invention—and hence

to global meaning—both supersedes and overwhelms signs of temporality pointed to by the poetry. The example is from the St. John Passion, the bass aria “Eilt, ihr angefochten Seelen,” which, because of a dialogue with the chorus, can

94 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

_ be thought of as a kind of mini-operatic scene, albeit within the framework of Christian allegory and hermeneutics.

The aria occurs just after Pilate has ordered Jesus’ crucifixion. The Evangelist , reports that Jesus has borne his cross to a “place of skulls” called Golgatha in Hebrew. Thereupon begins the ritornello, followed by the singer’s first run through the opening lines and then a second pass through the same lines of text, this time with the chorus’s desperately interspersed questions interpolated dramatically against the beat. (See Ex. 3.14, mm. 1-23, 59-65.) The speaker exhorts

the penitent sinners as follows: |

Fly! ,

Hasten, hasten, you beleaguered souls, Whither? Whither?

To Golgatha! Quit your dens of torment! , :

Take to the wings of faith! , Whither? Whither?

, To the mount of the cross,

Your welfare doth flourish there! ,

It is well known that concerted Passions written in this style represent far more

than a simple narration of events leading to the Crucifixion. For in addition to the Evangelist’s setting of the biblical verse, there are the crucial attestations of Lutheran belief in the form of the four-part chorales as well as poetic ruminations reflecting on aspects of the Passion story. Implied here are already three

temporal dimensions: the historical past of the Gospels, the historical past of | the early days of the Lutheran interpretations, and the present vantage point which makes the older texts relevant to the contemporary believer—the Latin

| term from the hermeneutic literature for this last interpretive moment is applicatio. The music also falls into this same applicative mode of hermeneutics by casting the texts in three contemporary idioms—Bach’s modern chromatic idiom for the chorale tunes, operatic recitatives for the biblical narratives, and concerted arias with ritornellos for the madrigalian poetry.

The ritornello in “Eilt, ihr angefochten Seelen” anticipates the representation , of certain phrases of the text. Working backward from the later vocal settings, it is clear that the ritornello adumbrates in nuce the opening line conceived as a dialogue (see Ex. 3.14):

Congregation: Where? ,

The Pastor: Hasten, you beleaguered souls! _

The Pastor: To Golgatha!

Bach represents the command “hasten” by the rushing ascent up to the hilltop in rising sixteenth notes, the sinners’ desperate interrogative by the declamatory

The Ideal Ritornello 95

a)OE | Te Qe ee eee ee Oe Ee

aTD ——+—__—|—_-_|_|..___ aA - 4:SANS t —=Ee ep —rFE Violino I ©=enn SO > RN a ee SY A YO A ON ES SP SE SRY NN 7 A SO OL / Violino AAHFD TaA| 2|eCEsDO?>=7 Eo, ATII ©A cA ME» 6D ON»Pe" A 7 Aee SO

oye fe erm Ee =e aiyCYDQ Aseees a .Viola ey 5 Se ae le ee et™g eT gdAmet ee ttSS efA A o_O OO eS OS NY eee

Om —— eeee EE ee eae A © SON LS Sa Continuo ee A © eSye eeeeoPeeAT

Basso solo po

ieee

. a AASE5 ©SS ASONN NNheON UN a OS RS NO NO NE SE TP ES SEnO SS

66 pt Fg ysa0a — Oy Ce 78)a 9 a ne 2 a afm A 2 ee ee eee es EEE a SS eeOe ase Abe ee a7 eae ee ———_| ss=e eee see 5

ee ene ee ly 2 EEE — — oye EL Ee Ee PC —! OO a ene eee a 6 6 6 2 2 3 ,SS~~a _— _ A A A A a A> eeeee ep Tf ee Te eS et ee aTeeS LY =epT Ee =e TE ile ela i le 2 Te ee 6» LAY ——— —— —___ 7 OS SN RS A SAL SS OM SY SO DO HP

ee a SY A YS A SS A Fe cc ST cc Stene eee

iA 5S ST an SO SS SS an aan Se Se nn ae Sana SeenON SSCS SSS (cae SU ann SAS A SS ey Eee PP PH Pope ee=SSee ee EE A as__™—.-..o_-.— +. os ES OE So Nun. 9-2-2Eee 2 E—O—e Zt ST ee 2 OOo e _ o2306€TEVOTS pS O_O. _~C.,.7~2"—" OEE_-~2”2#70=2#"40—”9— eeemeoeooo OO eTTTEOEoTTT CSO to Ooo or SF -8-S _L2 e edgo SIT2omNt"§-°-NTpv’N]}vNuMm---.._ les ES J

aS SO SN ES NN A A ON

OTeIEE EO. q—N-NnWc*cTWW..”Y TEnee! TT OoSones EE ot Ro TET OT ESTE, TT [7

[i EE EE eo ti Hh

7. a mma Oo _ 9 —_ 8H) oo

-* el hl —.".nn2>=>"”=z—20—Q0.E LC = OT ooo oe eee TE OS. Qn

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Example 4.1 BWV 1029/1, mm. 1-19

108 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

ee

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‘s a /.. Cae eee, eee eee eee eee ee. 2 eee eee ABW AGE 2.4 2

17 — — a sO . ty— 7 FE eS" = —— Co DA SEE D.2ee 2 ee eee eee eee ee ee ee 2 ee eee ee eee eee eee eee eee

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SS OEE ES |SS @pe [ee pel FT gg Ce eg

p) ee a es ee SG es eee . NS 5 ES AE EE GE AE EE no wo ES SY «Ee A | DS

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PN OT—eg GT "=. TE GB eg

_A bg OU l—"=gh_—S—(— dC OS Ge "= Ge l"“egh OG

Example 4.1 (continued) ,

play the dominating character of the ritornello: at that moment, the parity between the two upper voices alludes to the sonata rather than to the concerto.

One possibility, in fact, is that an unsuccessful “struggle” between the genres in , BWV 1032 accounts for Bach’s decision to excise some forty-six measures at the | end of the movement and rewrite them in a form that no longer survives.)® Another way of looking at this puzzle is to view the ritornello statements as

if the piece were a concerto movement plain and simple. Table 4.1 shows what | is conventional about the movement qua concerto as well as what is unusual and problematic. Conventional Bachian features include an ideal ritornello that appears nowhere in the movement intact, a particularly involved sEGMENTATION

The Status of a Genre 109

Table 4.1 Ritornello formations in BWV 1029/1

Ritornello Key Mode Measures Segments Comments

3-5 F, . , 3-5 F, 7-9 E;

Rigeal I minor 1-2 V

24-25 ED R, I minor 1-9 V F, F, E) 1 enters R, I minor 9-10 V Soloist R;3 I minor 11-12 V Soloist 2 enters 13-19 F, F, E, Soloist 1 disappears

Ry Rs Vs Vs minorminor 35-36 V 22-25 FE; E> Rg VII = minor 41-43 F,* RESEARCH [F,] — [V] R, IV minor 44—45 V Soloist 2 enters Rg IV = minor 46-47 V Soloist 1 enters Ro VI MAJOR 56-59 F,* EF, Rio VI MAJOR 62-63 F,* RESEARCH [F)] — [V]

Ri VI MAJOR 64-65 V REGISTER SHIFT Rip I= minor 73-74 V two soloists in unison? Ry3 I minor 78-81 Fo* &,* deceptive cadence

Ry I minor 95-96 V UNISON

Ris I minor 103-110 F, F, E, E, DECORATE (a m. 104) R = Ritornello; V = Vordersatz; F = Fortspinnung; E = Epilog.

of the ritornello into nearly every conceivable divisible unit with some fifteen statements of ritornello segments and few repetitions of the identical sEGMENTATIONS, a MODESWITCH of the three segments that can convert into the major, an ARRAY of five distinct tonal stations, two RESEARCHED links between nonadjacent segments (between [F,] in VII and [V] in IV and between [F,] and [V] in VI), and a stunning DECORATION of the voice-leading in the [F,]-segment of the final ritornello, all of which demonstrate how very serious a movement this

is. A close look at Table 4.1 also reveals what is unconventional: namely that R, , is functionally equivalent to R,, and inexplicably—for a concerto—repeats the complete opening ritornello before any episodic material has intervened. R., on

the other hand, might have made sense in the context of a Vivaldian solo concerto where the orchestra then entered with the Fortspinnung, or could perhaps have resembled the third movement of the First Brandenburg Concerto (BWV 1046/3) in which the first solo utterance replicates the harmony (though not the melody) of the ritornello’s Vordersatz. But it certainly makes no sense attached to a complete statement [V] — [F,] — [F.] — [E,] as found in R,, which is tonally superfluous in a manner uncharacteristic of Bach. One hypothetical reason for the link between R, and R, is therefore that it allowed Bach to indicate the fictive entrance of the two soloists. This entrance of the soloists is persuasive

110 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

even though Soloist 1 subsequently vanishes in m. 11 the moment Soloist 2 appears, when the ripieno strings ring in with the ritornello Vordersatz. One is forced into imagining Soloist 1’s disappearing act, for if he himself had played the Vordersatz theme in mm. 1-12, then Bach has failed to indicate in any palpable way the entry of the “orchestra” in m. 13. In fact the composer has had

it both ways—soloist entries in m. 9 and m. 11, as well as a phantom tutti entrance in m. 11 understood as such only retrospectively when one realizes that the entire opening ritornello is being repeated. This extraordinary feat is peculiar to say the least, and is obviously a trick Bach could not have managed in a “real”

concerto, since the two readings at m. 11 mutually contradict each other: the

treble in the harpsichord part is representing either the orchestra or Soloist 1, ! but certainly not both simultaneously.? At mm. 44—47, where the parallel passage occurs, Bach is nearly able to get away with the same trick: since in the ritornello

segment that precedes it (R,) one is unable to determine who is playing which part, the material once again points unmistakably to the two fictive soloists. That Bach continues to play with the question of identities emerges from the later statements of ritornello segments. In m. 95, for example, he restates the Vordersatz in the tonic and presents it in a brazen threefold octave setting, labeled UNISON in Table 4.1. Because this statement of the opening segment coincides

with the return to the tonic, it cannot help signifying the tutti rendition of the concerto ritornello itself. Indeed, it seems to recall a proud enunciation of the thematic material in its pristine state, in which the competing forces proclaim their unanimity to signal a temporary cessation of the concerted struggle. Of course, there was no such unison Vivaldian opening at the beginning of the gamba sonata, where Bach had avoided signifying just such a tutti by setting the ritornello in a sonata texture, and indeed, as Jeanne Swack has pointed out, this unisono statement of a late ritornello became a stock feature of the sonata in the

concerted manner as found in Bach’s contemporaries.'° The aim here, however, tallies with what appears to be Bach’s intention: to , write a Sonate auf Concertenart in which the point of reference was not the usual

solo concerto but a fictive double concerto with two soloists. As Bach well knew, | this task was doomed to fail from the outset. Although he could (and did) indicate points of entry for the imaginary soloists, he could not maintain the ~ illusion of their fictional presence throughout the movement. Even if he had

composed episodic material for the “soloists” that was clearly differentiated from the ritornello (in accordance with Scheibe’s idea of “new and distinct ideas”),

his own notion of invention and elaboration within the concerto went far beyond merely “giv[ing] way to the principal idea in varying keys.” That is, he _ could never have applied his own complex procedures of orchestration in which the tutti play episodes and the soloists participate in the ritornello. The reason for this impasse was simple: given the three-part texture of the trio sonata (the

viola da gamba line and the two lines in the harpsichord part), all the usual Bachian plays on identity would be transparent to the listener. Though he could

The Status of a Genre 111

have written a “doubly concerted sonata” according to Scheibe’s standards, he

could not have done so according to his own. The solution he settled on was | therefore all the more ingenious, since by crafting soloists’ entries in invertible counterpoint to the Vordersatz, he was able to have it both ways: to highlight the soloists and then wish them away with a wave of the hand when their presence in a trio sonata became inconvenient. The fertile resource of Bach’s ritornello principles remained intact (as the table shows) to shape a dynamic invention, as did the conceit of a new hybrid genre that was ingenious in conception but fatally

flawed in practice. ,

The result was also a composition that cast doubt on contemporary notions of genre predicated on a common-sense pecking order by encouraging the momentary belief that a mere sonata could assimilate the entire range of devices proper to the concerto grosso. Whereas Scheibe had proposed that a reduction of the concerto to a sonata was plausible given certain accommodations, Bach’s doubly concerted sonata questions the logic of constraints per se. In so doing, he proposes a formal solution that expands the horizons of both concerto and sonata while endowing the new genre with a special, if inimitable, identity. That is, the work cannot really stand as a model for future prescription and tasteful imitation precisely because its formal scheme is peculiar to its own material. Far from providing a mere synthetic addition, Bach has disposed of the empirical hierarchy which prescribed, according to Scheibe, Mattheson, and other contemporary thinkers, that concertos were more substantial works than sonatas because, as it were, “bigger is better.” Bach was certainly not alone in cultivating the Sonate auf Concertenart, and as Jeanne Swack has shown, a great number of German composers, basing them-

selves most likely on Vivaldi’s chamber concertos or concerte da camera, com- | posed works that are called either Sonata or Concerto and are essentially identifiable as a Sonate auf Concertenart as described by Scheibe. The list includes Telemann, Zelenka, Quantz, Heinichen, Forster, J. G. Graun, and Bodinus.!! It is therefore worth pursuing how Bach’s procedures in the first movement of the G minor gamba sonata compare with those of his contemporaries. A movement from Telemann’s Concerto No. 5 in B minor (from the Six Concerts et Six Suites) will serve well to show how a relatively well-wrought piece by Bach’s friend in Hamburg displays none of the pretensions in which Bach routinely engages, and helps us, in fact, to highlight what is so distinctive in Bach’s own approach.” This stylistic criticism is not meant as a dismissal of Telemann but rather as an attempt to read his work from a Bachian perspective. While this reading is surely unfair as a historical exercise—since Telemann did not set out to write a Bachian composition—it is useful to pinpoint areas of common concern in which radically different solutions are developed. While Telemann’s lively opening ritornello displays the threefold functions, its invention, when compared to Bach’s standards, is relatively impoverished. As

112 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Ex. 4.2 shows, the opening draws on a dance-like and Frenchified theme in an elegant move from I to V, followed by an airy sequence comprising the first Fortspinnung. The second Fortspinnung [F,] is somewhat more daring in its interesting sixteenth-note figurations, under which is heard the descending minor tetrachord. On the other hand, this [F,]-segment moves from I to V like a secondary Vordersatz (compare it with [V.] in BWV 35/1), so its tonal emphasis , seems a bit misplaced. Its link, moreover, to the previous sequential Fortspinnung-segment is not at all compelling. [F,] had ended weakly on the relative major in m. 9, and Telemann fails to supply any motivation for a peremptory

return to the tonic which shares two common tones with the VI chord; indeed, |

the offbeat a’ in the flute part in m. 9 draws attention to the unconvincing | voice-leading in which the move from A to B is continued awkwardly in the bass register. Since the two passages are so arbitrarily patched together, it is difficult to admire their segmentation later in the piece: only ritornellos composed with

seamless links warrant this admiration. | . | The identities of Telemann’s ritornellos and episodes are also too close for

~ comfort, since he composes both with identical melodic and rhythmic contours. |

| While the strength of the [V] in the ritornello is its intriguing opening gesture | of 5-6-7, the episodic theme (embellishing 1-2-3) devolves into banality by its tediously “balanced” twofold repetition that hovers closely to the harmonic confines of 1 (mm. 14-18). This tonal emphasis would be less debilitating, perhaps, if the movement were not designed as a gentle power-play between ritornello and episode, with the solo episode “standing in” for the ritornello following several cadences later in the movement. The ambiguity here is without real musical consequence: either will do equally well, the piece seems to suggest. Next, Telemann gives away the game by furnishing the listener with an easily audible clue: only the flute plays the real Vordersatz. This is why it is difficult to feel that all that much is at stake when the episode substitutes for the Vordersatz:

since the composer does not demand that an uncertainty be resolved, it is difficult to assign any great importance to the alternating claims of ritornello

, and episode. Instead, the piece gets very much the reception it deserves: it is, | after all, a sonata for flute and harpsichord that takes pleasure in gently evoking more imposing works for a greater number of parts and for different instru| ments, but without pretending to equal their intensity and excitement. The main indicator of the “middling” style of the movement—tantamount to

Telemann’s disinclination to invest deeper thought in the movement—is the | absence of harmonic invention in the application of the ritornello principle. Rather, as Table 4.2 shows, the composer seems satisfied to detach each segment once, to exploit the solo episodes referring to Vivaldian virtuosity, and then to call it quits. The ritornello, as can be seen, makes no forays into the major mode, nor for

that matter into any other key apart from a brief sojourn in IV. And after a , | lengthy episode (ending in mm. 78), Telemann invokes some of Vivaldi’s tricks,

| The Status of a Genre 113

Ee le EO OD”

or dr Ce el UA OD ( PONSel| Vivace

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LAD, 5 SE ES 7 I TS OO OY (Sn 13

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6 64 5#

Example 4.2 Telemann, Six Concerts et Six Suites, Concerto No. 5, mvt. 2, mm. 1-25

114 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

17 | So UT, |.(a:ee | a ee , ; dr | a eeeeeeeTeEeEeeeas=$=@O== ET ee

aa

Se ee en ——— ee

56

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————————— a —/, : me e—=e id ee Pd Example 4.2 (continued) ,

Table 4.2 Ritornello formations in Telemann’s B-minor Concert ,

|Rg|IV12-14 E minor 63-66 F, | Ritornello Key Mode Measures Segments

5-9 E, 9-12 EF, -

Reomplete I minor 1—5 V

Ry JJminor | , 1-14 . V F,F,F, E Ro minor 18-21

R; I minor 36—40 V ,

RsI Iminor minor 98-102 F,, E| Re 105-106, 111-112

The Status of a Genre 115

which alter the ritornello for no apparent reason other than the urge for unmotivated variation, a tendency that dominates the end of this movement. So at mm. 102-105, a new progression with a melodic figure sounding very much like [F,| intervenes between [F,| and [E], and the [E]-segment itself is interrupted (rather than segmented) with a diversionary but effective prolongation of 5 until the final cadence picks up the last notes of the Epilog’s concluding gesture. Charming as this piece undoubtedly is, there is no evidence that Telemann made any great demands on its invention. Rather he seems content to have demonstrated how a composer could expediently write such a piece, which avoids taxing

his players and listeners beyond their capabilities. | If Bach saturated the first movement of his gamba sonata with a surplus of contradictory signs, then he seems to have conceived the second movement in a cultural vacuum. (The first half of the second movement is given in Ex. 4.3.) It is true that the strange alternation of seemingly endless sustained notes with

arbitrary embellished lines chained to an especially lethargic bass make an indelibly Bachian impression: indeed, the compositional structure can be adequately described without much difficulty. On the other hand, the genre and style of this movement are unquestionably mysterious. Spitta, who senses that the movement is extraordinary, ignores the formal questions and jumps directly into the rhapsodic mode: “The Adagio . . . satisfies our desire for melody with a devotional and earnest strain, of which the beginning is a clear foreshadowing of Beethoven.”'4 Hans Eppstein also finds the work unparalleled but relies on dispassionate language when he describes the movement’s surface structure—the four-bar ostinato figure in the bass, the overall lack of imitation, the peculiar exchange of upper parts between binary sections,

and the attempt to effect an air of improvisation. In order to explain these peculiarities, Eppstein appeals to an anachronistic notion of “integration,” which he defines as a “principle that not only leads individual elements of a movement

, closer to one another but often has them permeate each other reciprocally.’ What is it, then, in the Adagio movement that encourages one historian to refer to Beethoven, and another to objectify processes inconsistent with any contemporary genre? How, in fact, can a sonata movement of the eighteenth century sustain such a suspension of time and place? One approach to these problems is to take the absence of clear signs of genre or style as a significant omission. In other words, one needs to interpret the act of not clarifying the Schreibart, that German Enlightenment term embracing both style and genre. As Eppstein had noted, Bach avoids imitation to structure the relationship between the two upper parts. Instead, he exchanges the two identities midway through the movement. Neither voice, moreover, can be said to dominate the other. Instead, each melodic and rhythmic profile defines itself with respect to

the opposing voice. Yet the parts, while equal, are not equivalent: far more distinguishes than unites them. A closer look at each upper voice discloses the

116 Bach and the Patterns of Invention ,

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.

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rl es Ce ed

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Le! bh CGC Ttt—“‘#TNCN CO CQ TL TT De Tl LD el CY®D Example 4.3 BWV 1029/2, mm. 1-12

The Status of a Genre 117

hidden invention that underlies the movement, for Bach has done no less than conceal beneath the surface two contrasting genres in divergent styles: the French

Sarabande and the Italian Adagio. In Table 4.3, I attempt to summarize the distinctive features of these Schreibarten as they appear in the two contrasting parts. In the first half of the movement, the harpsichord plays the French voice while the gamba plays the Italian. Notice how the harpsichord line in the first section falls into the neat four-bar phrases of the Sarabande, how it contains mostly the essential ornaments (Quantz’s wesentliche Manieren) such as obligatory trills and

ports de voix of mm. 2, 4, and 5. The Sarabande rhythm in the harpsichord melody typically stresses second beats, prepares the cadence with a hemiola in mm. 10 and 11, and marks feminine endings with a conventional dotted figure

as in mm. 4 and 8. The prevailing melodic motion here is by step with embel- , lished passages idiomatic to the Sarabande double, as for example is found in the | A minor English Suite, BWV 807. Ex. 4.4 suggests the flavor of the underlying Sarabande (and Bach’s daring reception of it) by translating the rarefied franco-

phone essence “back” into a nearly conventional shape evoking the French

composers that Bach knew and respected. |

, In the Italianate gamba line, on the other hand, the ornamental style is that of the arbitrary embellishments (Quantz’s willkiirliche Veriinderungen)—the arTable 4.3 National identities in BWV 1029/2

Feature Signs of French Sarabande Signs of Italian Adagio Surface melodic (a) prevalent stepwise (a) large leaps (e.g., tenth

vocabulary motion in m. 8) (b) runs in style of double (b) arpeggiated and scalar flourishes

(c) die wesentlichen (c) die willkiirlichen Manieren = (essential Manieren = (arbitrary

ornaments, e.g., coulés ornaments) , de tiérce)

Phrase organization marked 4-bar phrases unmarked (clear divisions avoided)

Rhythmic markers (a) stress on second beats (a) long sustained notes tied over bar line

(b) dotted pattern at (b) running notes starting _

phrase ends: off the beat

lad |

(c) hemiolas preceding cadence

Bass functions bass outlines hemiola at bass ostinato often

cadence accompanies Adagio

118 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

Sna ee eeeeen ee [a ee ee ee rr i” er

° tr + . “ow a t

rr re a i se ee ee ee a ee! p | ne ee | ge az a id ° o pF fet | oy | =p ED Oe eea OSaT. ai OS SEU

PR” A | ns Ce SE SE SO A A SSeS Ss WS

a ee eee ee Ze UD LS l“=gn)_ SS

10 (1)

oT NS Te eT Or OI ys gw é p+ 9 tA hei tes ts i

Example 4.4 An attempted “translation” of the “French line” in BWV 1029/2

peggiated and scalar flourishes decorate a simple melody. The phrase organization elides precisely over those four-bar markers in the contrasting part while the voice refers rhythmically to the Adagio by its long sustained notes tied over the bar line to running figures beginning off the beat, just as in, for example, the opening Adagio of Bach’s G minor solo violin sonata, BWV 1001. (See Ex.

4.5.) ,

It is useful to consider Bach’s amalgam in the light of Francois Couperin’s celebrated notion of the “united tastes” or gotits réiinis, which also attempted a reconciliation of the two leading national styles. Written precisely to celebrate the fusion of united tastes, Couperin’s own works in this style, such as his Apotheosis of Lully, lead to a mythic peace of Parnassus in which Lully and Corelli, the two great representatives of their nations, cooperate in a sublime | duet. But what kind of reconciliation is this? One in which the French elements

vanquish the Italian. When one looks closely at this work, it becomes clear that ,

the stylistic blend pays no more than superficial lip service to the idea of unification. For example, Couperin will ironically Frenchify the title to a work, calling it “Sonade en trio.” Or he will write an Italian treble clef for Corelli and a French violin clef for Lully. Or he will wittily distinguish between the two

, The Status of a Genre 119

>|

, -_ | a es ~~) Se -

(ae on et i Oe et oe oe oy ot ea oe en ee ee yg | gs LG EDN SS OO 1H

f.. Wa CURE. 4 Ee. ae ieee eee 2 eee eee ARSE 2A 1A Gee

Adagio r ==

3_— SSS ar —————_— = at TTT PFPA ogy Tyee | a aa 2 9 — —— i i a a Aa. ¥

,ae| eee Oe le | TT f+ —_ #8 ee Le Ze ll"“=e re 4 y 4 — y a Ee

5 ————mome a a — ae Ca a a ee eee ee ee eee ee ee = eee

7ff —— — SS p)——— >i Yr | dL oe ame =~ oP ete rr ee te te oo Ft 0-6 cents | =————-—-— SS Example 4.5 BWV 1001/1, mm. 1-9

methods of notating ornaments. The piece itself, on the other hand, remains in the mode of a French Allemande, with the absence of a clearly marked reprise

the other. |

, (or “B-section”) the only concession to Italy. No matter how sincerely Couperin intended the union of the two “tastes,” we are not intended to mistake one for

The idea of stylistic mixture can also be traced to German-speaking circles, as in Fux’s trio from his Concentus musico-instrumentalis (1701). (See Ex. 4.6.) Here the genres of the Italian giga and the French entrée are brutally superim-

posed over each other, and the interaction is forced and harsh: each voice proceeds as if oblivious to the presence of the other and either voice could be played alone with the bass or together. The piece in fact depends on a clear separation of identities: otherwise the combination, designed as a clever trick, would fail. What is truly synthetic about this stylistic coupling is that the original

genres remain palpably intact.’ |

Returning now to the center movement of the gamba sonata, the contrast between these hybrids and Bach’s own could not be more striking. For the identities of French Sarabande and Italian solo Adagio do not inhabit the surface of the work; on the contrary, they hibernate in a structure guaranteed to cover them up. In one sense, Bach’s reconciliation of French and Italian styles tends to cancel their individual identities. One could even argue that Bach has articulated the signs of style and genre so as to be inaudible. One thing is sure: each

120 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

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Example 4.8 BWV 1029/3, mm. 18-24

of a concerto movement.””! But while it is true that Bach’s concerto movements based on fugal organization do not exhibit the palpable concertato writing found in pieces crafted on the ritornello principle, they usually display one structural

feature that identifies them as concerto movements: initial sections that are tonally closed and marked with cadential caesuras. Unlike fugues in the typical Allegro of a trio sonata, the closing fugal movements in the Fourth and Fifth Brandenburg Concertos present a clear cadential caesura in the tonic at the end

| of the first fugal tutti. (Other fugal concerto movements do likewise. See, for example, BWV 1061/3, BWV 1064/3, and BWV 1041/3.) Last movements organ-

ized as gigues with two reprises, such as that in the Third Brandenburg, are exempt from this immediate tonal closure which is delayed until the double bars

(although a conventional ritornello rather than a fugal device underlies that movement). The tonally closed fugal exposition also structures smaller-scale works that are trying to evoke the notion of concerto. See, for example, the prelude to the English suite in E minor (BWV 810/1) or the lengthy fugue in the solo violin sonata in C major (BWV 1005/1).”7 Only where the tutti-solo play is an entirely negligible feature of the movement, as in the final movement of the

, Second Brandenburg Concerto—with its four timbrally contrasted fugal voices—does Bach permit himself to dispense with internally closed tonal sections, a feature that would surely be required of a sonata movement in concerted style if it is to be distinguished from any ordinary fugal sonata movement.

124 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

There is in fact a certain resemblance between the cantabile theme in the gamba sonata and a theme with the same marking in the last movement of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, which also summons forth the identical reference to Vivaldi. (See Ex. 4.9.)?? But appearances can deceive. In the concerto, the cantabile theme is audibly derived from the fugue subject, even to the extent of

maintaining the pitch and rhythmic content of the subject. It is therefore in- | tended to be heard as a derivative theme within a harmonically unstable “solo | episode.” Formally, this resembles a typical rhetorical process in solo concertos,

in which the soloist decorates a given “invention” by taking it in a new direction. , | The gamba sonata, on the contrary, has not closed a fugal exposition in the tonic , before it introduces the cantabile theme. Not only does this lyrical subject in the relative major contrast sharply with the pitch content of the fugue subject, but its rhythmic profile is distinctly different. On the one hand, the fugal material takes Vivaldian repeated-note figures and superimposes over them the rhythmic values wavering between the sprightly 6/8 of the gigue and the displaced agogics

of the courante, presenting a fractured yet vivid set of referents. The cantabile _ | section also has a unique identity. With its modish ports de voix, the second _ theme manages to allude to a soloistic but more old-fashioned Vivaldian gesture via the style galant at the same time that its placid arpeggiated figures and static

harmonic motion allude to the realm of the pastoral.” .

, Bach plays the courtier, however, only for a short time and can be seen to dissent from this galant sensibility as soon as he begins to merge the very

identities he has named. For, by m. 44, the cantabile subject loses its easy lyricism | when the harmonic motion beneath it accelerates and when more somber forces—in the form of the diminished seventh chord—are unleashed (m. 48). Thereafter, it becomes intriguingly difficult to hear whether material stems from

one complex of themes or the other. Especially in the absence of tonally stable | sections, the rapid succession, juxtaposition, and modulation of once distinct elements poison the elegant contrast on which the piece seemed to be founded.

In other words, the movement denies the galant and pastoral elements of divertissement, according to which the listener leisurely samples a variety of , culinary pleasures. On the contrary, to transform one affect into its opposite

gives us some idea of Bach’s approximate attitude toward the galant, an attitude which prevents the dainty, lyrical, and charming affects from existing apart from darker, more troubling forces with which they must contend. Nowhere is this reversal of identities more pronounced than at mm. 90-95.

(See Ex. 4.10.) Notice how the moment of return to the tonic (in the second half | of m. 93) is delayed and hence does not coincide with the return of the fugal subject. As a result, the urgent move to the cadence (in fact, a vintage concerto Epilog) in mm. 90-93, “sung” by the former galant subject, overlaps the reprise in a manner suggesting, but not constituting, a fugal stretto. But the elision between cadence and fugal beginning crushes any further hope that the movement will duplicate features of the concerto. For the very code at which Vivaldi

, The Status of a Genre 125

: aa a | eerie i_A+4 — ~dN | ST ee P|fe.—Een 148

i? [E] Ry I minor 179-213 v* F, F, F; E LEFTBRANCH [V]| R = Ritornello; V = Vordersatz; F = Fortspinnung; E = Epilog. | This concerted prelude, with its fiery runs and exciting pile-up of fictive voices,

seems to suggest at least one interesting solution to the problem of writing a

, concerted fugal movement for one instrument: that is, to keep to the dynamic harmonic invention provided by the Sonate auf Concertenart and the einstimmiges Concert and indicate the genre of fugue only by the slenderest of signifying

| threads. As can be seen in the example, the Vordersatz pretends to simulate an astounding fugal stretto of some five voices who have entered by the downbeat of m. 7. Thereafter there is no longer any pretense toward “fugue,” with the Fortspinnung segments playing at a more ripieno-like accompanying function for the inner voices (in mm. 8, 10, 12, and so on), and by [F,] the “violins and violas” can be heard furiously scrubbing away above a torrent of brilliance from the continuo group. The pseudo-fugal opening is still in Bach’s mind, however, and by the third statement of the Vordersatz, the ends of the solo episodes engage in a daring Vorimitation or “anticipatory imitation” which because of the regis-

tral jumps makes it appear as if even more players were vying for thematic supremacy. By LEFTBRANCHING his Vordersatz two measures, as can be seen in the fourth statement of the ritornello shown in Ex. 4.13, Bach creates the exciting

illusion of some seven players entering in on each other’s turf in a truly fugal flight. (By LEFTBRANCHING I mean a function applied to a Vordersatz in which

the beginning of the segment is extended incrementally “to the left” while maintaining the tonal function of the segment.) The achievement of pointing to | fugue in a concerted movement without the presence of an orchestra is all the more revealing when one considers that the allusion to polyphonic independence is utterly at the expense of fugue as a genre, which is otherwise nowhere in evidence. This reasoning explains, perhaps, why it was that Bach did

not attempt to compose any fugally concerted movements among the “concerted” works for flute or gamba with obbligato harpsichord and why he settled on the few ingenious reworkings of the ritornello principle in which to illumine his understanding of the Sonate auf Concertenart.

130 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

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Example 4.13 BWV 808/1, mm. 176-188. , ,

__ To say that the G minor gamba sonata resists tasteful imitation means not only that its process is unique to its own material, but also that its genre obscures a sequence of “clear and distinct” ideas. To be sure, the piece discloses a great deal _ about the genre called the Sonate auf Concertenart—or better, Bach’s understanding of it. Yet there is precious little that instructs the avid amateur in a genre of musical composition: the sonata lacks concrete musical events to be copied for edification and profit. It may serve, then, as an example but not as an exemplar. The entire work, it seems, rejects precisely that concept of clarity which came to predominate musical thinking about progress and good taste. Mattheson echoes this sentiment when he writes that “one must have a secure,

clear and pure concept of each main style, according to the cited principles, | maintain good order therein, not improperly mix impression and expression | with one another nor place his troops under a foreign banner.””5 | It is true, of course, that stylistic compounds, with their ostensible disregard | for distinct categories, were found on the very same aesthetic agenda. Here one , could as easily cite Couperin’s gotits réiinis as Heinichen’s gliickliche Mélange—

even the Sonate auf Concertenart itself. But although it may not seem so at first , glance, the contemporary demand for clarity functioned in tandem with an equally strong recommendation favoring the so-called mixed style. This becomes evident when one considers a seeming contradiction in Scheibe’s Compendium

musices (ca. 1730). Scheibe first connects clarity to stylistic purity in a statement , common to most classicizing aesthetics. “With respect to the music itself,” he writes, “one must take care, whether working in French, Italian or German style, |

‘not to mix one with the other, for the clarity of the styles must be observed as |

The Status of a Genre 131

notes: | much as the expression of the object itself?’ Yet only a few pages later, Scheibe

One might ask whether it would not be possible to combine the most beautiful

[qualities] of these three nations and apply them in one single piece? I answer, , following the example of several masters, that this indeed is possible. The Italian sets great store by the agreeableness and sensual elaboration of the melody (and consequently also to “taste”); the Frenchman loves a sprightly and piercing free spirit; the German is particular about good and thorough workmanship and harmony. Thus, whoever unites these three pieces with one another must produce a

perfectly beautiful work.?’ , ,

While Scheibe’s two statements seem difficult to reconcile, they both show a

subservience to a strict notion of clarity. For what Scheibe opposes is the obscurity of a “mixing-up” of styles ( Vermischung) in the first case, while favor-

| ing their selective agreement ( Vereinbarung) in the second. It was of course the fashionable and galant aesthetic that promoted a compositional attitude geared toward naturalness and clarity in all styles. With regard to the national styles, this aesthetic self-consciously sought to choose and combine the best features of each. The union of the tastes was never to be construed as a random pastiche of musical conventions, but as a logical choice of superior items stemming from each national style. Rather than talking in a polyglot, the new music was to enunciate a universal, supra-national diction. Its benchmark was clarity. Moreover, the composers who favored the mixed taste shared the view that styles were not only empirically definable but also unchanging and real. This is why the

writers who conceptualize the mixture, such as Heinichen, Mattheson, and Scheibe, could think as synthetically as did composers such as Fux, Telemann, and Couperin. The matter of combining the styles veered so dangerously toward the obscure that Mattheson himself—who had Horace’s motto of discordia concors engraved on the title page to the Capellmeister—conceded that “I am a little worried, namely, that as time goes by only a few or even perhaps not a single one of these

styles and their genres might remain unadulterated and with distinguishing

, characteristics. For there is already such a mishmash to be found in the styles of many self-instructed composers, as if everything were deteriorating into a formless mass. And I believe one could find a number of them who, when asked in

which style this or the other piece were set, would be embarrassed for an answer.’ 8 Mattheson therefore attaches a great discomfort to pieces that the critic cannot easily categorize. Confounding the stylistic categories until they become unrecognizable threatens the very progress of music itself. This is why Bach’s notions of style and genre—especially those exemplified in the gamba sonata—seem so willfully opposed to the basis on which the new musical

| aesthetic was erected. Among his contemporaries, only Bach seems to have , resisted the efforts of the early German Enlightenment to isolate, catalogue, even

132 Bach and the Patterns of Invention ,

proscribe the various Schreibarten. This is why, moreover, one cannot construe Bach’s compositional method as yet another realization of the “united tastes.” Instead, he seems to have interpreted the given categories of composition without treating them as natural objects possessing certain fixed properties amenable to empirical description and rational ordering, a property we have already seen

as vital to his patterns of invention. For him, this scientific premise may have | constituted not so much progress as pedantry. To what can one attribute Bach’s rejection of the most advanced thought of his day? In this connection, it is useful to consider a central distinction between traditional theology and the German Enlightenment with regard to the notion

of understanding. In the more traditional mode, understanding is directed | toward interpreting Scripture, as when one writes a sermon. Its model is there- ,

fore hermeneutic and stresses the “subtilitas applicandi” (as the Pietist J. J. | _ Rambach put it in 1723)—that is, the talent to apply the text to the present | situation of the interpreter. In the epistemology of the early German Enlighten- — ment, on the other hand, understanding means classifying and describing an object: its model is therefore scientific. The interpreter thus devises a method that separates “intellection” from “explanation” and suspects “application” as prejudicial to truth.”? The gamba sonata seems to suggest a view of genre and style in which one cannot discern Bach’s initial view apart from his interpretation of them. From this perspective, the act of understanding already constitutes an interpretation. Indeed, for Bach, the practice of musical composition seems

much more akin to a sermon, a mode of understanding that results in something ,

new by attempting to explain the old. a Returning, finally, to the two tropes of Bach interpretation, it seems preferable neither to choose between them nor to reject them. Rather, we might best explore the merits of each. The message of “Bach the timeless creator’—as in the first trope—may have outlived its usefulness, but as a method capturing intuition by

an honest use of metaphor, it still has much to commend it: hearing a Bach work as Beethovenian meditation at least inspires thought. On the other hand, as the second trope rightly recognizes, Bach seen as Beethoven masks the prop-

, erly historical question: how and why, in eighteenth-century Leipzig, did Bach compose music this way? To provide a historical answer undoubtedly entails a

thorough examination of sources and origins. However, the search itself can , never amount to a historical judgment. Indeed, as seen in the case of the _ G minor gamba sonata, the search for an antecedent concerto tends to vacate, rather than approach, the work at hand. This is one reason why twentieth-century studies of Bach’s music have not yet replaced Spitta. Instead, it would be better to confront our own figurative language in order to rescue what is valuable

in it as well as to invent new metaphors that will enrich our understanding of ,

Bach's imaginative approach to invention. ,

, The Status of a Genre 133

~ BLANKPAGE

ia Matters of Kind

It has become commonplace to state that, unlike a minuet or a sonata, a fugue

, is not a form. Instead, it is something else: a style, a texture, or perhaps only a

technique. In this chapter, I argue that a fugue is a genre, which means that, to understand a fugue by Bach, one must know what kind of fugue it is. This

formulation may seem confusing, since the word “form” often serves as a synonym for “genre” or “kind.” In fact, “form” is more properly understood as a metaphor for genre. That is, since the time of the Greeks, people have drawn on the more concrete concept of form or shape to characterize the somewhat more abstract distinctions in kind. Thus it seems entirely natural to talk about

the “forms of Baroque dance music” in order to signify genres such as the

music. , a

allemande, the courante, and the gigue. In this usage, “form” implies nothing | about the length or external plan of these kinds of music. It is a harmless

metaphor, though a metaphor with striking implications for the analysis of The relation between “genre” and “form” changed radically during the nine- |

, teenth century. Under the influence of new ideas about large-scale musical structure, especially in the writings of Adolph Bernhard Marx, “form” became

especially identified with the idea of an external plan. And perhaps because the | metaphor of “genre as form” was already so rooted in conventional language,

pedagogues and listeners—even some composers—became easily convinced that | the essence of a musical genre lay in its abstract schematic arrangement, its “form.” What no one seems to have noticed is that this semantic shift turned - traditional genre theory on its head. Instead of considering the schematic layout as one feature of a kind of music, writers on music began to view musical kinds as ancillary manifestations of larger forms. Instead of two distinct genres such

| 135

as allemandes and courantes sharing the feature of two repeated sections, as in the traditional view, both genres now merely illustrated examples of binary form

(or “the two-part Liedform,” as Marx dubbed it). The same shift in meaning

reduced the first movements of sonatas and symphonies to examples of sonata form, notwithstanding the host of differences which the two genres display.

, Ultimately it was those who saw genre as subsidiary to form who had trouble in puzzling out how to classify a fugue—especially fugues by Bach. For although every fugue began with predictable procedures in its initial exposition—alternating statements of the subject and answer (the dux and comes) at the fifth—the subsequent musical events failed to follow a preordained plan in the way that,

say, the exposition in a sonata form is followed by the development and reca- , pitulation. Looking at the seeming chaos of “happenings” within the “form” of a fugue, it made sense to exclude it from the canon of basic musical forms. Hence the demotion of fugue to a style, texture, or technique, a view that is not only anachronistic but misses a range of historically revealing meanings which a more traditional notion of genre would encourage. Only in the academic fugue of the

| nineteenth century and its offshoots has form continued to play an important | role in understanding fugue, since pedagogues have traditionally sought a mechanical model for student composition structured by the order of musical events. Ebenezer Prout (1891) had already characterized as absurd a “distinguished theorist” who considered Bach “not a good model because he allows himself too many exceptions,” or another who asserted that “there is not a single

, correctly written fugue among Bach’s ‘Forty-Eight.”! Under the influence of Prout and others, however, Bach’s fugues ultimately provided the fundamental models for student writing of fugues, and those in the Well-Tempered Clavier

, have received special attention. The aim of this chapter is therefore to suggest ways in which Bach’s fugues can be understood against the background of expectations about the fugal genre. But to do this it is useful first to resurrect a broad concept of musical genre disentangled from the taints of the Formenlehre which have concealed it since A. B. Marx’s day. To put it slightly differently: to reach a historical understanding of the fugue as a genre means suspending—at least temporarily—the conventional metaphor that tells us that “a genre is a

, form.”

In order to demonstrate what has been lost as a result of the nineteenth-

century semantic shift, it is useful to contrast A. B. Marx’s Lehre von der musi-

kalischen Composition, volumes 2 (Leipzig, 1838) and 3 (Leipzig, 1842, 1845) with Heinrich Christoph Koch’s Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, volume 3

(Leipzig, 1793). Both works adhere to the mainstream tradition of musical pedagogy in which a study of simple musical building blocks such as the phrase and period leads to an architectonic consideration of ever larger structures. But whereas Koch works his way toward the “arrangement of short compositions” such as gavottes and bourrées and finally arrives at “larger compositions” such as recitatives, arias, choruses, overtures, symphonies, and sonatas, Marx reaches

| his pedagogical apex with extended discussions of what he called the “artistic forms” (die Kunstformen) such as the Liedform (binary or ternary form), Sonatenform, and so on. Only after establishing the abstract schematic plans for his

136 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

artistic forms does Marx turn to distinct kinds of actual music, which, tellingly, | |

he calls “the applied forms” (die angewandten Formen). (Marx’s ideas were , foreshadowed in important respects by such early nineteenth-century writers as | Jérome-Joseph de Momigny and Anton Reicha. Yet the terminology that these —

theorists devised for their categories of forms—la seconde partie dun grand

morceau or la grande coupe binaire—did not interfere with the terminology of , genre as they did in Marx, whose nomenclature of Liedform, Rondoform, and —

annexing their semantic territory.) | Sonatenform tacitly suppressed the sense of the traditional systems of genres by

Consider music such as the march. Koch writes in his Versuch that “the march, which properly pertains to military music, has the aim of facilitating a complete

equality of steps. This genre has also been taken up in larger works of art, particularly the opera, where it is used for processions; in this case, the march always maintains the character of the sublime and splendid. [It] requires a grave tempo in duple time and a very clear and uninterrupted meter. Reprises are as | - unnecessary in it as are a definite number of measures. Even the rhythmic ratio of sections need not necessarily be even-numbered.” Although Koch spends a good deal of time with the external arrangement of musical pieces elsewhere in his treatise, his description of the march begins by relating the character, affect, and occasion of the genre. He then considers the formal plan of the genre: as long as its meter is continuous and clear, the march, he says, does not have one. Yet Koch accords the same importance to marches, which lack a formal plan, as

he does to gavottes or minuets, which regularly fall into two sections. His concerns are those of genre, within which the formal plan plays an important _ but dispensable role, depending on the kind of musical piece. , Consider next Marx’s discussion of the Liedform—tfrom which he derives the | binary form. For Marx, the Liedform is a category embracing all pieces of music | that have only one main idea, and is not in the least a generalization abstracted

from empirical songs. When Marx later enumerates the musical genres, it is in | order to tell us to which forms they belong: thus we learn that minuets and

, scherzos are mostly in Liedform, a statement that could not have been uttered — |

! before the nineteenth century. Marx, too, discusses the march as a musical piece | essentially determined by its character,’ but because it is a mere applied form, he sees its genre as a kind of superficial outer trapping. This is clear not only

from his belated mention of the genres only after the forms, but from his statements that a form can either be used for “pure artistic purposes” (presum-

ably as an autonomous instrumental work) or for “extraneous purposes” (fremde

Zwecke) as in the case of a march or a dance.* A musical work inhabiting a truly , artistic sphere, it would appear, is therefore one free of the taint of functionality, an assumption that minimizes the palpably “functional” nature of the piano

sonata for the educated German middle classes of the nineteenth century. Even a more interestingly, Marx advises beginners to study symphonies—not sonatas— | in order to begin learning sonata form. In symphonies, he says, “the basic forms

Matters of Kind 137

are simpler and more easily distinguishable.”° Clearly it is form that determines musical type: empirical kinds of music—symphonies and sonatas—are merely variations on the same theme. How different this is from Koch, who sees his primary task as detailing the

distinguishing features between genres. For example, the public nature of a symphony requires “force and energy” (Kraft und Ausdruck), while the more intimate monologue of the sonata “presents the most subtle nuances of feeling. , In short, the feelings must be presented and modified differently in a sonata and symphony.’° It is not that Koch neglects external form: far from it. Instead, he sees form as one important feature of a genre. But he would surely find the collapse of genre into form nonsensical. This is clear from statements like the following: “But as similar to one another as the forms of the sonata and the symphony may be in the number of periods and course of modulations, as different, conversely, is the inner nature of the melody in the two.”’ This is the kind of statement which, since the nineteenth century, musical analysis has commonly repressed.

The reversal of priority between genre and form has had enormous consequences for the history and analysis of music since the nineteenth century. For though we still tacitly perceive a plethora of techniques and values that distin-

guish a Brahms sonata from a Brahms symphony, we spend a great deal of Marx-influenced time tracing processes in both that illustrate a unitary notion of sonata form. Another emblem of the post-Marx era is the history of binary — form, which recounts how a simple organism grew into a sophisticated sonata. The anachronism is that binary form did not exist before the nineteenth century created it. That many eighteenth-century dance genres shared a two-part design and a similar harmonic plan is not in any doubt. But no one who lived in the eighteenth century thought it useful to organize kinds of musical works on the basis of mere external form. This would be as foolish as ignoring the difference between apples and oranges. The idea, then, that the external form of the dances transformed itself into a sonata movement is the kind of naive organic growth that we generally exclude from persuasive historical narratives, that is, from those in which people are the principal actors.’ This is not to say that the harmonic

organization of dances did not help later composers to write symphonies, keyboard sonatas, and string quartets. But to write a history of these receptions

requires that one take account of how people made use of past traditions to produce novel genres and styles.

The reasons for Marx’s own rejection of traditional genre theory are quite understandable. As Brigitte Moyer has shown, Marx sought a pedagogically effective method of teaching music to musically unlettered students at the University of Berlin, a method that worked systematically forward from the simple to the complex.!° This pedagogy was also developed within the context of a widespread attack on prescriptive notions of genre in nineteenth-century high culture—both Richard Wagner and Benedetto Croce come to mind here—

138 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

as well as an aesthetic prejudice in favor of seemingly new and fluid genres and , their hybrids. But the question remains whether the notion of genre died out merely because it came under attack. In other words, people do not stop drawing basic distinctions between musical kinds just because a new method in music theory organizes them according to similar external plans. To argue this point is a little like arguing that once we have met up with a mule, we stop telling the

difference between horses and donkeys. It will not do to cite the traditional rigidity or the faulty logic of the old classification schemes as a reason to ignore the intuitive assumption that people always make genre distinctions.

What is meant by a genre? Without offering a supra-historical definition, genre can best be understood as referring to the categories by which people (at any historical moment) slice up kinds of experiences and think about them as _ discrete objects.'! In practice, people nearly always name musical genres with nouns. They say: this is an aria, a sonata, a fugue, a minuet, a motet, and so on.” Rather than deriving from a purely logical system, this somewhat loose notion of genre is useful because it depends primarily on the people who use it. This

is why, then, in traditional accounts of musical kinds, values and affective sense , were often mentioned first. And if these values are not to be brushed aside, external form must be seen as a feature of genre rather than an empty vessel

| into which genre is poured. Many other things besides form play a crucial if |

often implicit role in our ideas about a particular musical genre: gross size, | appropriate style in which a genre is clothed, typical opening and closing moves,

attitude, occasion, the nature of the ensemble for which a work is composed,

typical representational subjects or their absence, typical melodic characters, harmonic vocabulary, contrapuntal devices, even the task of the listeners and

performers. Another important issue is what the genre is worth vis-a-vis other , genres. These features all amount to what Alastair Fowler has called the generic

repertoire.!? While it would be convenient to the historian to be able to write a , grammar of a particular genre, in practice not every slot in the repertoire needs

to be filled. Indeed, it is advantageous not to impose a set of eternally valid | criteria for a genre, but rather simply to ask whether people treat it as one. Genre is therefore a somewhat intuitive notion at the same time that it makes a great

deal of common sense.

The example of fugue is a telling one because it has suffered historically from those who abused it as a form as well as from those who neglected it as a genre. The abuse is easily seen in the nineteenth-century tradition of a fugal “pastiche,” while the neglect of fugue can be seen in a broad range of musicological writings which caution us to consider fugue as a style or texture rather than as a genre.

_ It will come as no surprise, for example, that A. B. Marx postulated an “ideal basic form of the fugue” in three parts, which, he confesses, “has possibly never quite been completely realized in any one (fugue) thus far composed.’"* As for generic neglect, Roger Bullivant’s New Grove article on fugue, for example, relates that Bach’s fugues in particular are “so diverse in structure as to defy classifica-

Matters of Kind 139

tion.” 5 Somehow “the term fugue does not apply to a form, as does, for instance,

a minuet,” as Alfred Mann puts it.’ “It denotes something structurally less concrete,” he continues, subscribing to the Marxian view that structure is identified primarily with the order of musical events. Or, as Carl Dahlhaus states: “It

is doubtful whether the fugue represents a genre . . . [since] it is exclusively determined . . . by rules of thematic expositions and counterpoint and is connected neither to a formal scheme nor to a medium [Besetzung] or function. As a genre it is therefore ‘“underdetermined.”!” , The problem in all these formulations is the old confusion wrought by A. B. Marx which plays on the old metaphor of “genre as form” and then defines form as a set of predictably repeated events. Surely the problem is solved when one invokes a more inclusive notion of genre. For in the sense I have used to describe

it, fugues (by the time of Bach) and minuets are both genres judging by how people understood them. This is not to claim that fugue had always been a genre:

historically it was an imitative technique (as in the tradition represented by Zarlino) that eventually became identified with a discrete piece of music. But this history is not one of some idealist category called “fugue” but rather a history of how people—composers, critics, theorists, players, and listeners—be-

gan to think of a kind of music called fugue. In Bach’s time, it is fair to say,

everyone treated fugue as a genre, and in fact named it as one of the most valuable musical objects in their storehouse. In so doing, writers alluded to an experience with fugue that transcends by far the narrow dictates of traditional Formenlehre. Other revealing issues, moreover, come to the fore as soon as we think of fugue in terms of genre: the relation between fugue and its neighboring genres, its value to contemporaries, the more restricted subgenres of fugue and the hybrids of each, the conventional styles in which fugues are clothed, the task

of composers and listeners in fugue, and, of course, the formal devices or

, inventions appropriate to various fugal kinds. To call a fugue a genre in Bach’s day means, therefore, to name a piece of

, music of middling length, which is often composed for a solo keyboard, a choir, or an orchestral ensemble, any of which are capable of projecting the imitative “flight” of at least one theme throughout a polyphonic texture. One recognizes _ a fugue chiefly through its opening moves, which project one solo voice stating a subject which is then imitated at the upper fifth (or lower fourth) and so on until all the voices have entered. Although fugues could be either extemporized or properly composed, a relatively stable polyphonic texture is the rule for all of them, and even when the presence of voices thins down from the total number _ of participants, convention dictates that at least two voices remain active at all times. Given the fugue’s preoccupation with imitation and counterpoint, the style of a fugue was generally viewed as rather higher even than a serious dance piece but lower than a canon, in which strict procedures are carried out consistently. Fugues could be discrete pieces of music or joined up with such works as preludes, fantasies, toccatas, and overtures. Even “progressive” writers of the early

140 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

eighteenth century such as Niedt, who railed against learned counterpoint and canons as artificial eye-music which are not “worth the trouble and expense to waste paper and ink on,’!® saw a value in fugue and taught it as appropriate

chiefly to the church style. The manner of teaching (and hence understanding) | fugue, significantly, was never concerned with its overall length or its sectional makeup or even with the articulation of any special harmonic points of repose.

| Rather, a consideration of fugue on any detailed level invariably invited a discussion of the repertoire of specific contrapuntal and combinatorial techniques that could be used to write various kinds of fugues. And as soon as one talks of multiple kinds of a piece of music, one is speaking of subgenres, with which fugues are particularly concerned. Subgenres, as it turns out, play sucha crucial role in fugues—as opposed to, say, dance pieces—that one can describe any eighteenth-century fugue by reference to at least one identifiable subgrouping of the genre whose repertoire contains a restricted set of musical

features. , An overview of the fugues in the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier

(WTC) will help to sketch out the consequences of some of these ideas. From the vantage point of “fugue as genre,” an important avenue of research must be —

the reconstruction of its underlying assumptions and characteristic features. Some of these will not so much take issue with conventional interpretations as they will cast some fresh light on traditional ideas. One passing remark of Johann Mattheson’s in his Vollkommener Capellmeister is especially revealing in this connection: “Many can play a. . . fugue well,” Mattheson says, “and yet hardly

know of what it consists.” Therefore, he says, one must “precisely inspect,

examine and, according to the above introduction, arrive at an analysis [eine | Zergliederung|” of it.!? For Mattheson, a central value in fugue lay in recognizing | its techniques and devices, which differed from, say, the value of dance genres,

treasured for their grace and charm, or of vocal genres, in which the setting of , the text was paramount. Knowing what a fugue consists of therefore implies the |

ability to recognize its varieties or subgenres, that is, the fugal kinds that “add a special, substantive features” (Fowler) to their repertoire of characteristics.”° How would one go about researching the matter of fugal subgenres? Stefan Kunze, in an article on the Well-Tempered Clavier, has argued that the subgenres

, should be determined on the basis of style, suggesting that the kind of fugue | follows from its subject rather than from the constructive methods of composition. Viewed in this way, the WTC collection illustrates examples of the fuga

pathetica, the ricercare fugue, the dance fugues, and other types.*! Since any . musical lexicon of the period discloses a wide variety of style names for various fugues, Kunze is justified in attempting to classify Bach’s fugues on this basis. Nonetheless, this view is fundamentally problematic in that fugue, a genre utterly preoccupied with compositional techniques, is classified merely on the basis of the style indicated by the type of fugal melody that begins a particular piece.

| Matters of Kind 141

Naturally, this marker of style can supply important clues about the nature of compositional invention in the fugue that follows. But in the case of Bach, style is a particularly poor indicator of genre, since, as we shall see, he takes such obvious delight in clothing a wide range of fugal techniques in a variety of

, stylistic garbs: sometimes the links are obvious while at other times they are utterly unexpected, even intentionally misleading. This perspective raises two interesting questions for an understanding of musical genre: (1) how should genres be differentiated within a circumscribed historical corpus? and (2) how does one know within a particular genre whether the style of the subject or the formal devices determine the subgenre? The answer to both questions returns us to the agenda first articulated in Chapter 1: in a musical culture that privileges invention over decoration, musical craft (which requires skill and forethought) always takes precedence over style (which requires taste, propriety, and refine-

, ment).

In the case of the early eighteenth-century fugue, this perspective is borne out by the language of Bach’s contemporaries. For example, even the enlightened Johann Mattheson advises his readers to analyze fugues, to decompose them, as it were, a method that suggests that we not merely look to the style of the subject but examine the devices characterizing the work as a whole. And this is exactly

what his instructions show us how to do. There are, Mattheson tells us, three subgenres of fugue: (1) the simple fugue with one theme and without invertible counterpoint; (2) the double fugue with one or more themes treated invertibly; and (3) the counterfugue with one subject altered by contrary motion, augmentation, or diminution techniques. (Mattheson seems to include augmentation and diminution in his third category as a convenient way of restricting the number of subgenres, although he may have also wanted to point out that all three artifices tend to show up in the same kind of fugue. The recognition of

, additional subgenres in other fugues is of course entirely plausible.)” One reason the subgenres are important is that their distinguishing features— the degree to which various artificial devices are employed—differ from most * other subdivisions that occur in our own musical literature. For example, the

subdivisions of fugues proceed neither from the total number of voices or themes, nor from the style of the subject. The language Mattheson attaches to the distinctions between subgenres is also very telling. “Double counterpoint and the double fugues that derive from it,’ he writes, “are not only appropriate for composers who possess substantial powers of judgment by nature, who are of great, indefatigable intellect and diligence, who also deeply understand the

powers of harmony .. . but are no less appropriate for certain, exceptional listeners, who have a thorough knowledge of the melodic arts, a fine taste for durable work and an otherwise well-disposed mind. There are very few of both.”’23 Mattheson’s division of fugue into simple fugues, double fugues, and counterfugues is far less important than the fact that he divulges what was surely a central value of fugue: that one weighed it according to the complexity of its

142 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

devices. And although one could cite the somewhat different classification a schemes from other writers such as Reinken, Fux, Scheibe, Marpurg, or Kirn- | | berger, it is clear that all of them agree there is a great difference between fugues

_ that involve invertible counterpoint and those that do not. The reason for this | - was plain to contemporaries. Since double counterpoint required greater planning in the initial invention of ideas, it received higher marks on the scale of fugal values.

This approach can be pursued by arranging the works in the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I (WTC I) according to Mattheson’s subgenres, as shown in Table 5.1. Although the defined categories resemble a strict taxonomy, the point is not to reduce the pieces to their subgenres but to highlight the background against which the individual fugues were meant to be heard. The question of generic value plays an important role here, for the greater the technique and artifice, the

higher the work on the genre’s scale of values. For this reason, I have distin- |

guished three subtypes of double fugues according to the number of invertible themes they contain and have also considered hybrid types as mixed fugues in the last column. Notice that a hierarchical ordering would be meaningless in Table 5.1 Subgenres of fugue in the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1

Double Fugue: Double Fugue: = Double Fugue: , :

1 C major a4 | | 2 ¢ minor a 3 / 35 ctDmajor a 3 | major a

, Simple Fugue 1 theme 2 themes 3 themes | Counterfugue § Mixed Fugue

4 , 678BP|_d minor a 3 major a3 eb minor a3

4 6; minor a 5] icf minor a 5] icf minor a 5| , cf minor a 5

9 eEminor majora 2a 3 , , , 10 \] F major a 3 ,

12 f minor a 4 13 Fe major a 3 , 14 f 4 minor a 4

16 g minor a 4 : | 17 AP major a 4 | a 18 af minor a 4 ,

15 [G major a 3] [G major a 3] [G major a 3] — [Gmajora3] G major a 3

19 A major a 3 , Oo 20 minor a 4] [a minor a 4] - aminora4 21[aBP majora4 ~— 22 Ng minor

23 major a 4a 24, ,bBminor

4,

, Matters of Kind 143

evaluating say, minuets, where technical artifice would compromise the values of a genre cherished for its elegance and grace. On the other hand, the notion of subgenres implies that one should not demand more from a fugue than is intended by its restrictive set of particular features. The Oxford professor who once advised his students not to model their examination pieces on the C minor fugue from WTC I because it lacked strettos thus failed to take into account that the work had fulfilled the basic task set by the subgenre:™ that is, to show off the invertible counterpoint of the three themes, in this case presenting five of the six permutations—or evolutions, as they were sometimes called by Bach’s |

contemporaries. (I return to the C minor fugue in Chapter 6.) | Although, for Mattheson, the “exchange of the voices constitutes the essential difference between the simple and double fugue,” the distinction between double fugues with one theme and double fugues with two themes is discussed somewhat more informally. It seems that Mattheson conceives of “theme” in the sense of a well-formed melodic shape, so that if, say, in a fugal exposition one cannot

, demarcate a distinct countersubject (nor, perhaps, identify it as having begun) but repeatedly hears an overlap more characteristic of a stretto, the fugue is said to have only one subject. This notion is reflected, for example, in Mattheson’s advice that, in a double fugue with two subjects, the “composer choose a second theme or countertheme which goes downward, whereas the preceding subject had ascended, or the countertheme contains nothing but notes which are differ-

| ent in value from the preceding.” Thus, the idea of a double fugue with one | subject, while unfamiliar today, has an intuitive appeal in making sense of Bach’s fugues, since it helps one to grasp the workings of a piece such as the E major fugue in WTC I, in which the composer treats the theme as one unit and yet subjects its overlaps to voice-exchanges rooted in double counterpoint. See especially passages like m. 5 in this fugue, where the material in the bass is obviously a continuation of the subject and is not to be construed as a counter-

subject.”° | ,

The basic distinctions between subgenres also reveal the fascinating variety in the hybrid kinds of mixed fugue—the fuga mixta. (In Table 5.1 I have specified the combinations of subgenres by listing the constituents of the mixed fugue in brackets under the relevant basic type.) One reason the fugues in C# minor (115 measures), G major (86 measures), and A minor (87 measures) are so long is that Bach has imposed conventional tasks from more than one subgenre—processes that simply claim a greater length of time. Consider the excerpts from the C# minor fugue in Ex. 5.1. The three broad sections to which the excerpts allude signify a simple fugue at the beginning in ricercare style, a double fugue with three invertible themes in the lengthy middle section, and finally, at the end, a

double fugue combining themes 1 and 3 both invertibly and canonically in a contrapuntal tour de force.

, Bach’s hybrid mixed fugues also raise another issue: that the initial exposition of any fugue, while it obviously denotes the musical kind, yields insufficient

144 — Bach and the Patterns of Invention

a)

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|_@re ee-7, =” AT. J “ @€ | [Ug Ud oe!SE eee eee SS CTF. he SS >gg SE| Oe UE"=e ne Example 5.1 C# minor Fugue, WTC I/4. (a) mm. 1-15; (b) mm. 51-54; (c) mm. 94-100.

, , Matters of Kind 145

information about the subgenre. That is, although the beginning of a fugue identifies the collective genre, it offers an inadequate guide to the particular kind of fugue that will follow. In the C# minor example, the astounding invention in the piece lies in its surprising modulation between subgenres, about which the

exposition is silent. The Bb minor fugue, on the other hand, also begins as a simple fugue in the same stile antico, yet remains throughout within the more modest confines of the fuga simplex. (Compare the last three measures in the Bb minor fugue in which three statements of the comes are aborted with Ex. 5.1c from the C# minor work to highlight the striking contrast in subgenre. Entirely

immodest in the Bb minor fugue, on the other hand, are the free, five-part

, counterpoint and the daring chromatic voice-leading at mm. 57-59 and elsewhere. But these features are not, of course, specific to fugue, although they

| convey the sense of high style in the piece.) The F major and G major fugues can likewise be understood as a contrasting

| pair. Both represent what have been called dance fugues: the subject in the F major work recalls a passepied, while the G major signals a gigue. Yet style, as no more than a feature in the generic repertoire that gives a particular shading

to the piece, fails to dictate the fugal work. In the F major fugue the style confirms the relative informality of the invention in this double fugue with two subjects—depending on how one counts—which presents only the expected ROTATION of voices and an invertible stretto (or better, canonic device) at the distance of a dotted half note, which, to be sure, has been worked out to combine with a good bit of the countersubject when the complex is presented in major. (See Ex. 5.2c, which also shows how the countersubject only works together with the stretto when it is above the other two parts.) In the G major fugue the style misleads us, since this mixed fugue begins as a double fugue with two themes and subsequently reveals itself both as a double counterfugue—both the subject

| | and the countersubject occur in a complete form in intervalic inversion at m. , 20—as well as a simple fugue displaying canonic counterpoint, with a slightly altered subject at m. 51 and m. 60 and with an aborted attempt at canon in inversion at m. 77. (See Ex. 5.3. The first two complexes CS/S and Sin/CSjny are themselves invertible at the octave. Examples of each are found at m. 38 and m. 43, respectively, though Bach avoids the beginning of S/CS, bringing in the CS only at m. 40, perhaps because the voice-leading in two parts is a bit rough in his “evolution.”) The G major fugue therefore tends to approach the C# minor

fugue in degree of artifice, despite the gulf in style that separates two very different sounding pieces. What both share is an extraordinary degree of inven-

tive work. The style of the G major fugue does not sit well with its artifices, a conflict that determines the unique complexion of the piece. This kind of conceivable disjunction between genre and style not only suggests that the style

, of a fugal theme is an inaccurate marker of genre: it also suggests that we are meant to understand the C# minor and G major fugues as remarkable hybrids whose fugal activity relative to their subject matter takes unexpected turns. One

146 Bach and the Patterns of Invention ,

a) S | 20 aw ae | Cos Se ee a pdBO | | >pACS. a Ee——_ ee Be We es

8 tg OT to .

Qa RG ay . oe f) aycs* | ee ee ee Soe eee | | S- 8 (d.) | | | f\ S —————— fe Se ae ne eee

[pea EE D8 aEEa SE te ES

d) , >A oe Se eo os Se oat

p | —S— ==

LAE) _____________________}_[aeefesesteeentasstasst —t— 2 Pe oe

_C ee a ee cen sos ee er 2 oe oe ee.

S+8(.) | “Ies* “|

~S-8(J.) [MODESWITCH] “TFcs* “|

ore ee | Serer , ————— Example 5.2 Fugal devices in F major Fugue, WTC I/11

might therefore consider the G major fugue as a kind of Bachian play on words: | ,

of “gigual” fugue. ,

instead of the usual fugal gigue found in his suites, here he has written a kind

Pugal expositions may not only fail to supply an accurate indication of a

subgenre; they can often prove deceptive. The exposition of the D minor fugue,

_ for example, has a regular countersubject, suggesting that it will function as a

double fugue with two themes. But, as it turns out, the two themes, while invertible, trip somewhat awkwardly over scarcely covered up parallel fifths, even

| Matters of Kind 147

5 CS ee

7, Le eS, a.OTPe 1A ed Ol SENSE 40shhaereee js. a #* gee Trae PrtBT) rr, aPT TTeTr Tey ar aN |AT ATT OE — —_ —Ter —_— ———_____ a Ot OETTTET—T—EOeooST — > ee? es Pz OF ts—FD2xXc"@#«#+«q-—" ff Pet etl net

BF, CS I A A a Sn 2.

aqT a nS GO SG —— —— —— Ss wil lr Ti] || | | —|. |||) |) gl Oe ge laiaili @# a. | IV? i 4 .— oy ya ~ a a 20 «. Sinv

3”...2._ _ cS _.-nrnrnr.--——-nvWw’-’’-’’'.WVW”"—_ =i TF? EE OOO EO eee [PO TT —o—e OT 2oD _—SOST NNW”... |... ____ &_ Qi |oes! 66.2 4s. OOOO [ee OO _—T[{*—_’--v.T-wwn--—--_|_||_|_||)_ a TOE eeTT2. eee eo oO. Example 5.3. Fugal devices in G major Fugue, WTC 1/15

148 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

though the offending notes (last beat in m. 13) are in fact only accented appoggiaturas. Significantly, at this very juncture, the fugue changes direction; one

begins to recognize its subsequent activity as a counterfugue—in which the ,

subject is worked out in contrary motion—only after the exposition has ended. 7 As Table 5.2 shows, the second half of the piece subsequently becomes dense with canonic devices between the subject in both its rectus and inversus forms, demonstrating that, for Bach, a counterfugue is an extremely artificial subgenre which depends on unexpected and arcane combinations and not merely a simple

display of a theme treated in melodic inversion. | |

The basic conventions of a subgenre also help to distinguish between more subtle shades of meaning even among pieces of the same kind. Consider within WTC/I the group of simple fugues, which, upon closer inspection, appear far

from uniform. In fact, they too can be meaningfully ordered according to the , level of fugal difficulty. The A major fugue lies near the normative middle of the © | subgenre, with its even deployment of the subject in the various voices, and in

its aborted attempts at contrary motion and canonic imitation. The D major _ fugue, on the other hand, would get a low mark on the Oxford professor’s exam, since it contains only failed canonic devices that cannot be carried through. The very grand style of the D major fugue—evoking as it does a French overture—

therefore provides an excellent foil to the genuine poverty of complex fugal |

_ Table 5.2 Fugal devices in D minor Fugue, WTC 1/6 ,

Measure Device | 4B S— INV 4 ()*

a

| 17 721S—8 (d) S— INV 5 (4) | 22 S (INV) —7 (2) 25 | S (INV) ~ 5 (¢,)* | | 26 $ (INV) + 2 (d)*

ys28| S| Ss(INV) —$ 5 (4) | | — INV 4 (d)* | 33. S—3 (4) 34 S— INV 5 (d)* |

34 S+3(4)* | 35 S — 6 (none)* - !

S= Subject; INV = Inverted Subject; + n = imitated at the , ,

upper diatonic interval of a distance “n”; — n = imitated at the lower diatonic interval of a distance “n”; (J.) = second voice ,

enters at the time interval of a J.; * = aborted canonic entry. | ,

, Matters of Kind 149

devices, a fact that becomes transparent once the piece is heard devoid of its grand melodic flourishes and regal dotted figures. (See the opening stripped of its “style” in Ex. 5.4.) Naturally this denuding of the piece is not meant to cast

, aspersions on its quality, but rather to assert that the compelling harmonic drive

CC 5a_[ee .

and imposing decorative flair with which Bach invests his invention need to compensate for the inability of the subject to sustain any specifically fugal treatment, aside (perhaps) from presenting the subject in an ARRayY of five

distinct scale degrees. At the same time, the D major fugue illustrates the inflated role Bach assigns to style, so that a simple fugue avoids the realm of the banal. The C major fugue, on the other hand, demonstrates how very strict a simple fugue can be and, for this reason, was probably chosen to open the collection. The rigors of this piece can be seen graphically in Table 5.3, which decomposes

SS ae eS Si, > Fo 7? or? —,

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3 Saige RN] Bods & 174 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

descent extending until m. 20. Thereupon begins the last Urlinie, which in typical

Schenkerian fashion concludes with an accelerated flourish in m. 29, though, disappointingly, without the fourth and third scale degrees located in the uppermost voice. (Whereas someone uninitiated into Schenkerian lore might suppose

it more persuasive to locate the final descent on the second beat of m. 29, | Schenker himself cannot do so, since notes of the Urlinie require independent , bass support. Even though the theory of descents must originally have been culled from some such events clearly delineated in the foreground, Schenker never bothers to explain, or, in true organicist fashion, never needs to state how

he actually discovered this law. In fact, the descent, along with several other vital

Schenkerian concepts, is utterly hermetic to the theory, and has never been | _ observed by any other theorist working in another tradition.) ' One overriding problem that the graph cannot conceal is the relationship

between Schenker’s large-scale reading of the piece and the obvious demands of | foreground invertible counterpoint. The piece is a double fugue with three themes, that is, a subject and two countersubjects, as shown in Ex. 6.2. I have

called each triply invertible group a fugal complex (or FC), and in this piece , Bach presents the three themes together for a total of five times, exploiting five out of the six possible permutations. Anyone who has tried to write invertible counterpoint will know that this takes some work: first, to devise counterpoint which, when inverted, will not cause forbidden parallels or unacceptable disso-

nances, and second, to produce pleasing themes. So in reading Schenker, one | must imagine an empirical Bach not merely as a great local contrapuntist but also as a genial globalist, for amidst his travails in constructing the three themes he was also plotting a course for the tonal will in such a way that either these fugal complexes or the intervening episodes function as diminutions of the

fundamental structure, an amazing undertaking by any account. | Consider now Figure 6.2, which plots out the tonal space occupied by the five

fugal complexes relative to Schenker’s three descents. As the figure makes clear, , each fugal complex plays a vastly different role from the others. FC 1, for | example, emphasizes scale degrees 4 through | in mm. 7-9, while others emphasize only two scale degrees or even one scale degree. And when FC 1 appears

again in the middle of m. 26, its f” and ep are no longer significant but now only | the g’ on the third beat is deemed a structural tone. (It is common in Schenker that parallel passages are treated differently depending on their placement in the

formal design.) Having worked out the three themes so that they would invert | at the octave, could Bach also have given thought to how, in varied tonal contexts | throughout the work, each fugal complex would be deployed within a long-range

structure of voice-leading? What would it have meant, moreover, for him to have | done so? Now non-Schenkerians, when trying to make sense of a voice-leading

graph, will often have simplistic knee-jerk reactions dismissive of the whole | exercise as soon as they compare graph with score. They will say: “Look at this pitch (or chord or event) here. Schenker awards it far too much (or far too little)

Figments of the Organicist Imagination 175

4 4 OF ee | ; po

S 5 Ihe ,ee lide | leet SS ee ee _ — (5 AN

CT TTT R ealahe = — ce Da Ce De ee ee ld .CUmMTCOCOCCN™C“E —=RN LC] Te t—‘“‘“(‘“(‘~A0vNr---2N T—~—~—ETETI Ce teeee oot

a NE SE A ON NH A 1 A

a | NG — ~~a |a—_ ea aie bd 7a Ea AA a oe

ek” AA8 ene ! S _A | AS SS ——— —— —— Sg GN —— —— —— a ' eee

Aa PSoeSOO 2 ed ee Le RQ oe SEF ot 2 oO ee eEE———EEEee TTE—ETTE—E—E Tr aeee io PL] He uh —_ >i ETT aot eo

e532oe Pon Eee et ee Po te160-9 te SS a OT oes sO Le ——— , OTE ET EOE ee Se ee 7,7nS A A Ca + A NN SO a a ea — te LT te ——————— i ETT ET ET FE ETE PE OC ce? Ee TTEoE—T—=—K$T MTT TT TT eo EEETETT—EoE—E—T ee = eT A O_O RN Gen — ——_____ SS SE (OR a A= Ran See

Pe es eae a LS A ce

RD oT SO —T eee Cle Swe eo STee TEOe T—EE SDee BeeTT—ETT—E TZ LL ot aoe = E_ ——L EETweet EES

A— | P JJ |

ef ee Pe te ee E——*—Ke_ te 8 9AEoCN ET oT EEE er 8 Oe TTEoEoTETE—&T ETT re aoe EEE ee A A8 AOF 7"—2. > EeTTTTTTTNNFF?€™78-@-47tTTV0-"-€"84-ow-on—™O00(@00E

ee eee ee ; : oS

Fy E Ss ”YA ee Oe SS SC Feee eea osa Se ee oe ee See a| en eS eo ea ey #6 , ART re TE TTT TT—eEE—EEEoE—o—=—E_0.. a a ToETE—EoTTE EET ee

ee Ft Ee Ne NOPDOO=0—.—~:. 77[]]@9@#9"983>"—@«Example 7.1 BWV 1052/1, mm. 1-7

On Bach’s Style 199 >

62 .

——Ee —_—— |Vin. eeeI eee a eT ee NE crc cements: amen: EE EE cerns emai semseccreemees SE SOL SD MD SS US SE SO ROE SS

0RNS a a9ee es EE ee SESE es esMESON es ee eeRENO ee eeEINE ee en A EE SE ee SS 2 ee ee 2. ee Vin. WP py } =

|Le) @wbe TDTT TTT ES TTT TDF EEiyOO ee TeeOOO... rrr... LA hE TT OO ee TTB

SS = eS BT SE eS Ge Vila. ) B. c.

‘ —_— —_——— —_ —_— a | aWw | ti‘“‘i CN Oe ee—_ OO ULC FC—_— CN". —_—— C___ 2...| —" LC.| eT SANS FE A - lS Sn ee a: a ee ee ee ee. re er ee ee eee eee it % #J/@@ 22°27 @ es’ “DEA APs (SPP sen,, APs’ DPIA@AaeA@a@eni if (sar 2 if if [2 (as

eee ee ___________

| pe |@pwe ~~ES CCC TTTT EEE__.......__ OTT EES EeeeEET ] Le ty CCN EE aeeOE OO OOOO... a es ee eer SeTTT Sees a|a Eewy Re ee|Se TT eeSRen Ee eeEF Wr 65

fay” FF FF ws, i ” Ff “2g | & J JT dLLLhLhmFUU TT TAA Th

STNG O_O OO TT ee TET T_T TOO |eT OE OEE OT... ] PT ET TT OO OO — EEE OOOO... 68 Vin. I , Vin} yl ¢ ) a Via | Vin. UP -

|_@wye ET ET ee TTT Te OOOO... we eT LT e—=e—( rr™r™~—T..L.C..C.CSid‘S eae rrrOt™TOON A |by EeZe |) EEE OOOEE FoOOO TT TT... rT... oO

ee eS OO

| Ld —O_O ——as ed a —_— ——— —_— | aeTaseiaim TT=TT O—O—e—S-——— ee TET SCC

La tfbhl\i@un~@2 £& GF |ftgs “ GCG ™” Se, i. TRB JF hag J @g., yy, lf LTT ifnn [f@Ff [ff i@ “fi [GZ ADV Sae is2av-V Safi |; aa |if@tt | measJtane if iga®@ |

a) ae ed ed + —o+—$ at a ot at tH tt tt tH ae ee ,| “|

— re Cee SD Py Tee eTireFdeeeTT Vin. I

a a, Ce SS ol’eeSS UNS *a ©ED Wr; > «_ - eee — ,| =sSS s DD ee52SY eee oe eee eee eeEY ee ee- eee eee Pore, 0c a .@ a.ae SS OTS} — Fa vs |" EROS GO. CO «= A ee SO nA, 5Ae AE EE AY DO Ane BN yp Vila 7 2 |

a CE (ES flr ——+—rtXO—~S$AFDSFOHOUu’™VTF${H$PD_FTFTFTO Oo

ee eS SON AS AO — coe! NOUROORES GRSSUISDSNNIE

a —_——— oFLe) Oe | i foe 2’f\2S eee ee eS MI) —— Fee eee| ie Ee*Xe ee a ||2 |A

FE RSeaee Ts eeeee ali‘a(‘COCOCOUWdCOUULUUlUlUpl ee ee ee@ii¢ er De ee —eee—en... 4 eee ee LAN" Oe olSe we uaZ eae" J ee ee ee ee __ , eeee ry od | aUMS eGIP LTT OE ‘ae tt FOO eeee CCe

Pn ee ee Te Lm

aes MEOOO | renee ASEJET * ES "GEE . en CT: NDde AER Rs ACSO SE SO — a aS 0REcee Mn =

Example 7.2 BWV 1052/1, mm. 62-79

200 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

;

a r) . .

Yee TE OOO

71 . SS” ATOL Ey Pe2ay BY) Sa Oooo a Ene SeTTSe = fb Oe ?o_—>5"'—>>—0n’vwawsw*?@=:"”"” oToz» aee SO i =) —. rv’ tA... OT OD TT

ae

. I eee ——-2--—-".-—-] oh _eeee_E Semem™E“=*e®*SES. ory5F*FT6wm2rI)” ..””.”. _~ fe Fe OTN -.}NY’-’-’-'’'-'- EEE soN0eNW.€nNnO”1:vNn--™ 2....’-70nvwvcvw0w0NwWwn? I _-Nn...’.0.”"._€="?IY™X”"’”N-’-—__"n—-oannaonOO DyD> Tn _oD . COoO002O0-—2—__—O-V’V—’—--0--—-—__—__

74 . . . SY HD = ee VO ¢ el E030 Deo 77 | |

, eneneinrenee cmmewvernrumanwe: AE ee crmtateermp ~

7Oo |WEL eeaceesC/ASe Sepeee eeOnell 2 i”Se eeAl pr renee SE DS /A= __ sees HOT ete een eae astwraast wt ais.. (@ ween a ta wivta..i@® tiwe#os ww wwe

QS TT —E—=ELT ————— a TF OOO ee ——— —e—e OL

ee _T.Nn”.eeeeeee Pb ooo rr eeSeTEreReeaeerrreee) wwe OOD TT OO... fi RDF a

KX) -€«-eae--o2-. — —----200-_ Te —eDFNxmS ee eoa OOOO Oo )\ LK iovnvr-)-vNnn_ i{ir.'cvnvnvn-ea ae| kaeR :_.*’”-N-W”Y/1 ._ —— 2 2 Ol TT Hn-..n—"-’’Nnn”.”’”’-_— OOO TN]

TTT eeae_ eee

Deo Ia oo eee ees oo NA ee >a”(2’’n-0-nwvv-:1?—"*—_ o>7-CN-.-.”._=_ | =o — 5 —=xaeoOoO05050.0.0.0.0:0.0, oa eee] o_O? _.--2_ OR SOOT TF" KL OEE OO uwun-"”"2@0”2nN™™™T

0 LY ES RN — BA OY NNN Ok 2 EE A OD RR ANN TN RN) NYAS Vin. II

DEO EO SOC""2QUODO2OOOEOE “€“7. «‘’70.”.0222—T 3 &~(.nx~wv.-—0700BW0n.ee Xb. eS". TO eee OE eS eee OED.eGo OoaanO00°909s§q&x4x4a48#€#"*#?#”09”"—-...

AY OD Te OO OOOO _ 8 —F7O022—_*«..mnmnn.."n...”...... I

“ 4 oe aatllae. Poe 4| i ae er, «ae‘ aoT

ee ey i ee Oe et i OO rt ge@gatai i at a a ee es @@2e8 | EE A ES ON SN SE SS ONAN NE NNN MON LN NN AAS SU ONAN CAS ANNU GN GT = Daal RA FS | OY SS a ————— a ———— a ———— ns ———— 0 ——— a ———— ee A

2p eer DIE YTrer

[eee ee aewT,T,rRee--"”_—— aot OTN. TNn_vs?”™oT0OT0OTOO Orn eT e_-.——— DDD tooo ee OOOO] , Example 7.2 (continued)

On Bach’s Style 201 >

forte |

RT we Oe eee EL ee EL Oe ee

17

20

Ab ft N FA N Ae N See NN Neee AEN ee Se FA N PeeN FAN See

FO ee eee eee

23

A eee CCU

26

Ao f N N N N N N N N N

is elise @ Ss £2 27's #@@'f |[(@@'@ £2 7'S@ @@'f@ | «£5 @' 2 » @' » og F' a |

Example 7.3 BWV 1006/1, mm. 17-29

an impetus that guarantees the harmonic interest of the episodic material, which would otherwise (without the chromatic neighbors) become drab and formulaic. Determining the exact form of Bach’s violinistic original is nonetheless problematic, even though Emanuel Bach’s primitive transcription betrays a great deal. In this context, it is revealing to return to Telemann’s B minor concerted sonata for flute and harpsichord from the Six Concerts of 1734 (discussed in Chapter 4), for which the composer also provided an optional violin part. In one of the solo episodes (mvt. 1, mm. 28-31), Telemann’s harpsichord part invokes a Vivaldian bariolage of string crossings which alternate between stopped notes and

those produced on a non-existent “open string.” Revealingly, in the optional violin part that can be substituted for the concerted harpsichord part, Telemann writes a far less violinistic figuration. That is, to have the harpsichord point to the Vivaldian concerto, he makes use of a familiar violinistic device transferred to the keyboard. It is therefore unwise to imagine that the harpsichord versions provide a complete key to the original version for violin, especially when composers made a point of transferring idioms from one instrument to another as musical signs. Ironically, if Telemann’s violin part had been lost and musicologists were trying to reconstruct it, they could never have arrived at the passaggio which Telemann wrote for the violin. But an argument restricted to matters of style will ultimately remain unsatisfactory—regardless of whatever evidence one can marshal—for the simple rea-

son that there is no real way to convince a skeptic who hears un-Bachian thoughts within BWV 1052 that J. S. Bach is the author of them. For this reason, arguments conducted on the level of genre and invention can have a potentially greater force, since one can contrast comparable features of formal construction and design. Here a sufficiently reliable case can be made for Bach’s authorship,

202 Bach and the Patterns of Invention |

until such time that someone can demonstrate that any of Bach’s contemporaries

, pursued the identical ritornello procedures which he cultivated from his Weimar |

this argument. | days through at least the decade of the 1730s and beyond. I shall discuss the first and third movements of BWV 1052 from this vantage point in order to advance

Table 7.1 shows a by now familiar example of Bachian invention in which segments of a ritornello are put through their paces by submitting to a fundamental set of functional operations. The opening unison ritornello, which re_ gembles in some respects the ritornello for BWV 18/1 (examined in Chapter 2),

is segmentable into four units, whose individual points of demarcation (especially between the Fortspinnung segments and the Epilog) are made apparent only | through the sEGMENTATION actually found in the movement. The seven ritor-

nellos therefore display four distinct forms of SEGMENTATION, an invariable | | Bachian procedure in which the piece seems to investigate systematically the makeup of its musical materials and plays on a rhetoric designed to “measure

the distance” between any one form of the ritornello and its ideal shape. Thus | in the passage shown in Ex. 7.4 (mm. 13-22), the ritornello in the tonic is heard to be interrupted in the middle of m. 18 with the critical absence of its Epilog: note as well the rich harmonization of the pitches f# — g — c# — d, which end the

_ [F,]-segment and their DECORATED registral displacement. Following the brief episode in which the thoroughbass mimics a melodic inversion, the following _ ritornello appears ARRAYED in the dominant, which retreats one “step” to the

beginning of [F,] and then provides the “missing” Epilog while effecting a - modulation to a secondary key area. A parallel passage at mm. 104-113, partially shown in Ex. 7.5, likewise plays on an absent Epilog, but here the fermata on the c# can be heard as a thrilling prolongation of the first chord of the Epilog. By

delaying the completion of the Epilog through the solo cadenza, the composer | is able to sustain the suspense until the final arrival of the continuation in mm. Table 7.1 Ritornello formations in BWV 1052/1

Ritornello Key Mode Measures Segments Texture |

Rigeal I minor unisono |: . 3-51-3 F, |Vunisono

5-6 F,Eunisono 6-7 —_unisono , Ry minor13-18 1-7 V unisono ,, , R, Iitminor V F, F, F, FyEconcertato R3 V minor 20-22 , F, E mixed

Ry V minor 56-62 V F, F, E mixed Rs IV minor — 104-109 V Fy PF, concertato , , 109-113 E —_concertato R¢ I minor 172-173 V unisono Ry I minor 185-189 V F, F, E mixed On Bach's Style 203

ee

en ae

«48 - ne. Violins I &— II eeial ee| aos tte| 2. 13

i 7. WL af s!erP@ a @ | ~* o«= {jigTews laos. [|| lPew., @* Me |[Iria =IVig!! PF «@ . LSY CUCL ad ii[er | aa|'@ a SF {Vail Fe {Mii t?P|

Viola e ° =a a ) iT] 4a! id: aa ==

. (5 tTeeee eeee eeb,ee Basso continuo ae 2 a ee ee 4 “ES ns 2 ee eee ee .. Ge | ee ee. ee ri f/f Jj) jf |

a ar ie | omnes a —— Ez. |

a’ 2GO ee es ee ee ns ee 2 eeeeeeeeeeeeeee eSeee? eee eee eeeeee ee 2. se..... enSe 2 "en 2 ee eeeeee eee ee eee a’. 4A___Se eeeeeee ee ee2,2ee ee. 2.4" ee ee eee" eee

GN Ae 2" ee ee eee ee." eee Jt). ee Ee

wembaro concen? a ee ae 4 SE 0 SE 0 = 0 ee ee Wee: 1. |) Are Ameen 5) tHlf t+ jr? ._ SO-| =As — ee ~~ ,- =e © 2s af 2? oe! 51 | | te , Cs

16 a, Va. Vins 1 & I] |W i @€ hk i@i¢ Tee. | i ae ii Ww iae -—_ Ln =.” J

| eT ee er @_@E Eee: ¢ J ae A 2" ee es ee... 3B ee eee ee eee Oe 62a eee eee Ae eee eee Ae TAY... LLLULUDhCCTCGE PF nth Pe aAaaw fF [ao | T Tj gg &»#3 iT i7| Tyg @aeT?.€6©€© F, F, E, E, Ry I minor 16-18 Vib

R3 Vs minor 29-41 V, Vb F, F, E) E> DECORATE

Ry I minor 43-49 V,* ~~ #&F* F,* unusual interpolations

R; Ul MAJOR 53-55 E,

Re I minor 61-73 V2 V5 F, F, E, E, ROTATE [V]

R, I minor 77-84 F, F, E, E, SOLO [F>] Reg IV = minor 118-130 Vv, Wy F, F, E, E, [V,] missing m. 1!

Ro IV minor 165-177 Vi Vb F, F, E, E, — ROTATE [V]

Rio IV = minor 180—185 F, F, E, E> SOLO [F5] Ri VI MAJOR 212-213 E> Rio I minor 224-229 Va Vp

Ry3 I minor 273-286 Va Vp F, F, E, E,

206 Bach and the Patterns of Invention

a ns aD AR

_ a eee |e Allegro

Violino Ifaa? -\ |? .... — |7ee | oe | ee 4 ee aa ee BE .“4sAD Ly— or J Oe Violino IItse Os Eo ee ree 4 ee Oo 8 ET EE Te_ OC Ee Basso continuo SS a a aa pp} —} 1}ae rt a a a aa aa eA a —— a —— [Va] VinsI& II

. Zyo. > OOTTOSSETC~—SNTF........ ___.___ ]____.___...__ = _ o &#. op & |? 4g ar wer,

|++ 9 eo EE —O—XEEE—EO TE*7 Ir O_O 3ot OeTO—— =X TS _o__o_ ee eee ta? | Tt4 OOS —EC4dIr7N04-—-N>—9"9—@—-—-"}-+}"9"-—”"0w-xOT TT EEtr _I——ee AD) St TOOT oNNoO0-0A-AAn@m@mn rrr —E—=—=EE=E=S_ ee

[SS OD—— O_O A eT SS SA OO SE Aee A SS Se EF el SSEET ——_E_E BN ae

| 23-3. OO HO@>oXx#"-""]]$@@q@v-"-I7N7(‘-TI--.”. > 3(@I.-_—_ BI” PB Cn.

[Vp] [F,] ;p