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Copyright © 2000 Electra Yourke
This edition © 2012 Schirmer Trade Books
(A Division of Music Sales Limited, 14–15 Berners Street, London W1T 3LJ)

EISBN: 978–0–85712–767–9

The Author hereby asserts his / her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with Sections 77 to 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages.

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Chaconne in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, from Partita No. 2, BWV 1004 (1720)

Rjcercare à Six, from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747), orchestration by Anton Webern

String Quartet No. 8 in E Minor, Op. 59 (“Razumovsky” Quartets), No. 2 (1805–6)

The Ring of the Nibelung—The Valkyries: Act I; Act III, Ride of the Valkyries

Sonata for Piano and Clarinet (or Viola) No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1 (1894)

Coda: Tchaikovsky Rediscovered in His Dwelling Place—Notes of a Visit to the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin

Quintet for Piano, Flute, Clarinet, French Horn, and Bassoon in B-flat Major (1876)

Symphonic Suite: Scheherazade (“After ‘A Thousand and One Sights"’), Op. 35(1888)

Le Coq d’or (The Golden Cockerel): Introduction to the Wedding Procession (1906–7)

Symphonie Concertanie in E Minor for Violoncello and Orchestra, Op. 125 (1952)

Song of the Forests, Oratorio for Children’s Choir, Mixed Choir, Soloists, and Orchestra, Op. 81 (1949)

FOREWARD

The foundations of my father’s legacy are the rock-solid volumes found in every music library, the indispensable Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians and Music Since 1900. Compiling and updating successive editions of these works occupied much of his later life, along with writing his autobiography, Perfect Pitch, and a more idiosyncratic “reading dictionary,” the Lectionary of Music. The Lexicon of Musical Invective, vituperative reviews of composers’ works since Beethoven was, and is, a classic; in a very different way, so is the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, a dizzying musical sourcebook greatly valued by composers, arrangers, and performers.

In addition to these and other volumes, he produced a huge number of short pieces over his entire adult life in the United States, appearing first in the Boston Evening Transcript and in musical publications in the 1920s. In succeeding decades, his short writings appeared as program notes, reviews, record liner notes, and newspaper and magazine articles on every conceivable musical topic, especially composers, performers, individual works, musical form and technique, national styles, as well as innumerable musical oddities, anecdotes, and minihistories. Each was written for a single specific purpose and publication—he never wrote on spec.

The Listener’s Companion includes a small portion of these miscellaneous writings. With few exceptions, these entries have not previously appeared in book form. Most of the biographies were written for the Christian Science Monitor during the 1950s and 1960s, and a substantial number of the entries on individual pieces were written as program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Little Orchestra Society. The rest were culled from accumulated clippings and carbon copies dating from the 1920s into the 1980s. This considerable time span, and the publications’ differing readerships, accounts for interesting variations in perspective, writing style, and level of musical analysis.

In selecting these composers and these works, I was obviously constrained first of all by what exists and, within that, by what groupings might constitute a relatively balanced and complete “chapter” on a major composer and his (alas, there are no women covered in this volume) works. Considering that these writings were individual and unrelated in origin, the coverage turns out to be remarkably broad, though regrettably missing important composers and compositions. I hope that readers will find the book no less valuable for not being all-inclusive.

This volume is all Slonimsky. Nothing inauthentic has been added, written, rewritten, inserted, substituted, elongated, or otherwise corrupted. Nevertheless, these materials could not always be presented together in full exactly as they originally appeared in a newspaper, concert program, or record liner. Editing consisted primarily of cutting repetitive biographical or analytic material. Present-tense references to composers alive at the time of writing have been changed to the past tense and mention of contemporaneous events deleted.

Although he was relatively diligent about retaining manuscript copies and clippings, my father never reworked them for later use. Indeed, I doubt he ever looked at them again. Every piece was written afresh. In compiling this volume, I often found myself comparing two or even three articles on the same piece of music, all different, all differently interesting, with not so much as a phrase repeated. In some such instances I retained and inserted valuable or especially well-written segments from versions not selected.

My father took delight in dropping indigestible words into his writings, little verbal nuts that must be cracked before being swallowed. I have been merciless in retaining all that appeared in my selections. Accordingly, you are warned that, if the meaning of, for instance, “colubrine,” “gemmation,” “purfling,” “Canossa,” or “fanfaronade” has slipped your mind, a dictionary—the larger the better—should be kept close at hand.

It is not intended that this book or even its chapters be read straight through in their entirety. The book is conceived as an extended set of program notes anchored in a biographical base, a volume to consult in association with listening to a live or recorded performance, a companion and guide to brief you on the event, designed to expand your musical experience. And if you like a guide/raconteur with humorous anecdotes and spicy stories, you’ve got the right guy—albeit the risqué parts are sometimes a bit quaint.

This book comes into being as, I hope, a credible addition to the Slonimsky “canon.” If it is successful in that regard, thanks are due to a number of musical types who provided valuable guidance to this nonmusician editor. Richard Carlin of Schirmer Books showed the first gleam of the eye, spending days with me in the bowels of the Library of Congress digging the raw materials out of acres of boxes housing the then-uncatalogued Slonimsky collection. When I had sorted and created a preliminary assembly, Dr. Malena Kuss provided an incisive qualitative scan that helped me cook the materials down to a provisional table of contents. Robert Beckhard found some additional articles and reviews in his addictive archival pokings. Styra Avins and Terry Eisinger, the ultimate Brahms mavens, reviewed that chapter for factual and linguistic accuracy. Randy Schoenberg and the entire Schoenberg family responded to my request for permission to quote their eminent relative, and Sabine Feisst provided many specifics as well, plus overnight translation service. Finally, Richard Kassel vetted the entire manuscript, plowing undaunted through the words and the works and the centuries. He pointed out issues resolved by subsequent scholarship, advised on the relative importance of musical works, established the order of entries in each chapter, and proposed cuts and revisions.

The project was animated by my belief that musicians and music-lovers would welcome more Slonimsky writings. No longer can there be new ones, but the trove of which this is part enjoyed only ephemeral exposure at publication and deserves to be explored. In a lifetime that actually exceeded a century, my father was witness, participant, and chronicler of the transformation of his art. Educated in the traditional, he championed the revolutionary. In his first career, as a conductor, he challenged a reluctant public to open its ears and reconsider its assumptions. When he took up the cause with words, he found a second and perhaps less risky career as a musicologist, in which his commitment to the new could be expressed alongside his mastery of the great musical tradition.

For me, compiling this volume has, in a way, extended that long life. In the process, I have reexperienced the flavor of the sixty-two years of our joint existence, and tried to assure that he continues to be heard.

PRELUDE: Interview with Myself

My visitor came in without ringing the bell—the door was ajar—and surveyed the rows of bookshelves lining the walls and the orchestral scores lying in artistic disarray on top of the piano with an air of intimate acquaintance with every object in the room.

“L. O. Symkins is my name,” he declared, and his voice sounded strangely familiar, like a phonograph recording of one’s own words. “I came to ask you how you happened to select musicology as your vocation.”

“I did not select musicology,” I replied. “Musicology selected or, rather, annexed me.”

“I am sure,” my visitor observed, “that the annexation was not against your will. You’ve been called the Scourge of Music Dictionaries, and no one becomes a scourge unwillingly.”

“Perhaps you are right. Musicology came to me by way of general lexicography,” I said. “Ever since childhood I was fascinated by encyclopedias. I memorized the alphabetical indications on the bindings: ‘A to Anno’; ‘Annu to Balt’; ‘Balt to Brai’; ‘Brai to Cast’; ‘Cast to Cole’; ‘Cole to Dama …"’

My visitor nodded: “Yes, yes! The Encyclopedia Britannica.” He seemed well versed in lexicographical matters.

“My interest in encyclopedias,” I continued, “made me aware of their inadequacies. Some information found in these impressive volumes lacked precision. That annoyed me. Particularly unsatisfactory were the articles about music and musicians. And since I am a professional musician, I naturally began to think of ways and means to secure documentary data from unimpeachable sources, such as birth registers, old programs, and similar documents that would confirm or refute the information in music dictionaries.”

“So I suppose you were delighted when you found that musicians were born on wrong dates, that opera stars sang Wagner at the putative age of ten, that Lully was appointed court orchestra leader at thirteen …”

“How do you know all this?” I exclaimed. “This is exactly the sort of thing I have been extirpating from the dictionaries. Take the Lully case. According to a highly reputable encyclopedia, he was born in 1639 and was appointed music director of the court orchestra in 1652; that is, at the age of thirteen. But he was really born in 1632 and got his job at twenty, which is precocious enough for anybody. Incidentally, Lully’s tercentenary was celebrated on the wrong day all over France. He was born on November 28, 1632, and not on November 29, as most music dictionaries say.”

“I suppose you have obtained Lully’s birth certificate to prove the date. Undoubtedly you got the exact hour of his birth as well.”

My visitor was silent for a moment. “This … chronomusicology is not the only thing that interests you in music, I hope,” he said.

“Certainly not. Musicology, as I understand it, covers a lot of ground: musical analysis, musical theory, even musical geography.”

“By musical geography you probably mean the mapping of musical regions, particularly those yet unexplored,” remarked the visitor.

“Quite so. For instance, I became intrigued by the fact that so few Latin American composers were represented in music dictionaries. So I made a grand tour south of the border, and when I returned, I had two hundred and ninety composers in my musicological bag. I figured out that there is one composer per four hundred forty-three thousand square miles of territory in South America, Central America, and the West Indies. I also drew a map of Latin American dances. The national dance of Chile is the zamacueca, and the name fitted very nicely into the elongated strip of Chilean territory on the map.”

There was a knowing look in my visitor’s eyes. I had a definite feeling that he knew the answers to his questions in advance. Still I decided to go along. I admitted that I was the author of a huge book of newfangled melodic patterns, very serpentine in outward appearance on music paper, complete with master chords that would enable anyone to produce as dissonant a harmony as the heart desires.

“One more question,” my guest insisted. “Did you ever invent a word that got into a dictionary?”

“’Pandiatonicism,"’ I repeated firmly. “It is the modern technique of free combinatory usage, melodically, contrapuntally, and harmonically, of the seven different tones of the diatonic scale.” I was convinced that he could readily supply the definition himself. Anticipating his further importunities, I told him that my polysyllabic creation has been duly incorporated into several American and European music dictionaries.

“No,” I replied. “I did not. A friend of mine did, but I used the word for the index in my anthology of criticism entitled Lexicon of Musical Invective.“

I could not bear the knowing look in my visitor’s eyes. “It is now my turn to ask you a question,” I said. “Is L. O. Symkins your real name?”

“Why, of course! In fact, it is my surreal name. I am your anagram.” He quickly looked at his wristwatch, and I noticed that it was not a wristwatch at all, but a word-counter. “I must really be going,” he said. “It is already 861 words o’clock.”

The word-counter on my own wrist gave the same number of words in our interview.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
(1685–1750)
Musical Fountainhead

The word Bach means “brook, stream.” It is symbolic that the greatest man of music, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), should bear such a meaningful name. For Johann Sebastian Bach, music is the fountainhead of crystal waters. The stream divides itself into contrapuntal branches; the speed of the stream varies; the tributaries of intricate counterpoint reach a confluence of harmony; but this confluence is often stirred by turbulent undercurrents, creating a suspended dissonance; it is only after further progress that the final equilibrium is reached, resolving into a final chord, serene and triumphant.

Johann Sebastian Bach came from a remarkable family of musicians. Long before his time, musicians named Bach were famous throughout Thuringia as municipal players, the Stadtpfeifer, so that even musicians of different names were commonly described as “the Bachs.” The family was clan-conscious and often arranged meetings in the towns of Eisenach (where Johann Sebastian was born), Arnstadt, or Erfurt. At one of these meetings, 120 Bachs made their appearance. They amused themselves by performing popular songs with improvised vocal and instrumental parts in a fine polyphonic manner. These Bachs were expert artisans, but they also possessed jollity. Johann Sebastian himself was greatly interested in his family, and in his later years started a detailed genealogy, which is preserved under the title The Origin of the Family of Musical Bachs.

With such a musical background, Bach as a boy was destined to become a professional musician. He was lodged with his elder brother, who held him in strict discipline, never allowing him to go beyond prescribed exercises. But Bach’s musical curiosity could not be stifled. In a latticed cabinet in his brother’s house there was an alluring object; not a sweet pie, not a sugary confection, but something much more precious to young Bach: a volume of pieces for the harpsichord by various German composers. His brother would not permit him to use the music, but Bach managed to extract the rolled sheets through the lattice openings and copy the music at night by moonlight. An old story relates that he completed his task in six months, a few days each month when the moon was shining. This was the only surreptitious act in Bach’s entire life, for it is difficult to find in the annals of music a master more forthright and less tempted by guile than Johann Sebastian Bach.

Intellectual curiosity and a reverence for older masters were the great driving forces of Bach’s character as a musician. As a boy of fifteen he started out on his life’s career, first as a choirboy, then as an organ player. When he served as an apprentice in North Germany, he undertook a walk of thirty miles to Hamburg, to hear the great organist Johann Adam Reinken. He stopped at a roadside inn, and had two small fish for his meal. To his surprise, he found a coin in each and so was able to provide for the next meal.

Bach’s first important position was as an organist in Arnstadt. Only eighteen, he was already well qualified to perform, to compose, and to improvise. But his artistry drove him farther than the requirements of this modest post. He let his musical fancy roam, and was strongly reprimanded by his superiors for using “strange variations” in playing the hymns, which in this unusual form confused the congregation. There was another reason for this reprimand; drawn by the fame of the organist Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1701), Bach took a leave of absence to make a journey to Lübeck, where Buxtehude held his famous evening concerts. Legend has it that Bach made the entire long journey on foot.

There are indications that Bach hoped to inherit Buxtehude’s job in Lübeck after his retirement, but encountered an insurmountable obstacle in the person of the eldest of Buxtehude’s five daughters, who was offered to him in marriage as a conditio sine qua non for getting the job. (Buxtehude himself had to marry his predecessor’s daughter to obtain his Lübeck position.) At another time, Handel also made a trip to Lübeck, and he, too, was deterred from seeking the post by the confrontation with Fräulein Buxtehude.

Bach returned to Arnstadt with renewed zeal for music. At the age of twenty-three he went to Weimar, leaving his cousin, one of the innumerable musical Bachs, in charge of his post at Arnstadt. In Weimar, he wrote most of his great organ works, and in his next place of employment, Cöthen, the greatest of his chamber music works. He conducted the orchestra for Prince Leopold, who himself took part as the player on the viola da gamba. It was in Cöthen that Bach wrote his famous Brandenburg concertos, dedicated to Duke Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg.

Bach learned the art of composition through a diligent study of the vocal and instrumental works of German and Italian composers of the seventeenth century. Sometimes he copied works by contemporary masters; manuscripts extant in Bach’s own handwriting without further identification have plagued generations of Bach editors and have at times led to the erroneous attribution of these copies to Bach himself. The chronology of his works is not always easy to establish. Not many original manuscripts have come to us, and very few bear the date of composition.

The circumstances of Bach’s life and his teaching in Leipzig are well known, and the records of his pedagogic activities are plentiful. The Thomasschule (St. Thomas School) was an ancient and venerable institution founded in the year 1212 “to uphold and expand Christianity and German culture on a pagan frontier.” Bach arrived in Leipzig in 1723, with a family of five children. Charles Sanford Terry, in his biography of Bach, gives a complete account, from the archives of the Thomasschule, of the small things in Bach’s domestic routine. Thus we know just what repairs were made in Bach’s house, the exact dates when the walls were whitewashed, and even the name of the scrubwoman. We know that Bach’s kitchen got a new oven. From the birth records we also know that children were born into Bach’s family annually. The mortality was high. There was a little girl Bach born in 1723, who died shortly thereafter; there was an imbecile child born to the Bachs in 1724. There was another one who died in infancy in 1725. Finally, in 1726, a daughter was born who not only survived infancy, but eventually got married. There were four more children after her.

Bach’s appointment at the Thomasschule did not come without difficulties. The senate of Leipzig, in whose hands the appointment of teachers was placed, first turned to Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), then to Christoph Graupner (1683–1760). Telemann had declined the offer, and Graupner could not accept it because his patron, the landgrave of Hesse, would not release him from his contract. When finally the senate invited Bach, a member of that august body declared: “Since it is impossible to get the best, we will have to be satisfied with second best.”

Bach’s duties were manifold. He was a cantor, director of a chorus of fifty-five boys. The school played a great role in the community, and one of its important civic duties was attending the funerals in town. It was also profitable: the school charged a definite fee, so many groschen for attendance by the entire school, correspondingly less if only part of the school attended. The cantor was to receive fifteen groschen for each funeral when the entire choir attended. The town authorities cooperated by arranging funerals in the afternoon, so that lessons would not be missed. Weddings were also profitable: Bach’s fee as choir director was one thaler for each wedding.

Discipline at the Thomasschule, as in all German schools of the time, was very severe. The scholars were punished both by fines and by whipping. The use of impertinent language, in Latin or German, was punished by a fine of six pfennigs, and vomiting, even if involuntary, and not as a consequence of drinking, called for a fine of two groschen. Musical faults were punishable, too, and a mistake in singing called for the application of the birch. The rods and birches were in the charge of older boys who were called “purgers” (Purganten).

Bach was fortunately relieved of some of the duties of a cantor. To escape the association with extramusical tasks, he preferred to be styled director musices. The comparative leisure allowed Bach to compose prodigiously, but there is no evidence that Bach himself or his immediate colleagues ever realized the greatness of the music written by the cantor of the Thomasschule. An early French dictionary sets Bach down as a “skillful composer of polyphonic music,” nothing more.

Frederick the Great of Prussia, who was a flute player and a composer himself, wished to see Bach at his Potsdam Palace. When Bach was finally able to accept the invitation, Frederick himself led him through the palace. At the king’s request, Bach tested the harpsichords and pianofortes installed in the palace rooms, and improvised a fugue in six parts for the king. Frederick then gave him a theme, which Bach elaborated in the form of a trio for flute, violin, and harpsichord. The final version of the work was in the form of a “puzzle canon.” Bach presented it to Frederick with a flattering dedication, in conformity with the custom, to “a sovereign admirable in his music as in all other arts of war and peace.”

Bach’s works were intended in most part for the practical purpose of instructing young musicians. The technical achievement of Bach’s forty-eight preludes and fugues is an unexcelled marvel of creative music. Bach’s inventions for keyboard instrument are no less wonderful from the structural point of view. And yet these studies, designed to instruct, possess a beauty of expression that is apparent even to the untutored. In some passages of these works, Bach transcends the limits of harmonic combinations permissible in his time; such moments presage the development of modern music.

With the exception of opera, Bach left the mark of his genius in every musical form. For a modern musician, his music is a treasure trove of fantastically bold contrapuntal and melodic devices; his use of unrelated diminished seventh chords and modulating excursions into the tonality of the Neapolitan sixth comes very close to the techniques of atonality and polytonality. It is even possible, by selecting appropriate passages in Bach’s works, to find quasi-dodecaphonic usages.

INSTRUMENTAL WORKS

Chaconne in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, from Partita No. 2, BWV 1004 (1720)

Bach’s sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin present an unexampled challenge. In these works Bach achieved the extraordinary feat of writing counterpoint in two, three, and four voices, and even fugues, on a single stringed instrument. This he achieved by double, triple, and arpeggiated quadruple stops; by dint of harmonic and melodic figurations a rich pattern of modulation is contrived, all this without sacrificing the fluency of the melodic line and the clarity of harmonic progressions.

Bach wrote a group of three sonatas and three partitas for unaccompanied violin in the period between 1718 and 1723, when he was in his middle thirties. In Bach’s time, the term “sonata” still retained its etymological meaning “sounded"—that is, to be played on an instrument, without further specification as to form, as distinct from a cantata, meaning “sung.” An instrumental sonata was usually in the form of a suite in four movements, alternately slow and fast. A partita (partita in Italian means “divided”) was an instrumental suite of dance forms, known as “classical suite.” It includes an allemande (which means “German” in French, but the reason for this attribution is obscure) in fast Y time; courante (literally, “running”), a rapid dance in T time; sarabande (the origin of the word is dubious, but the form developed in Spain), a stately dance in measured triple time; bourrée (French for “brushwood”), a rapid dance in y time; and gigue, a fast movement in V time.

Bach’s Second Partita for Unaccompanied Violin includes the most famous movement ever written for violin solo, the D-Minor Chaconne. A mystery surrounds the etymology and the origin of the chaconne. There is a theory that it was imported from Mexico in the sixteenth century and was originally an unrestrained and orgiastic mestizo dance. If so, then the chaconne lost all its wildness during the passage from Mexico to Europe. The Baroque form of the chaconne is one of the most concentrated and unified movements, further restrained by a thematic bass line that governs the harmony.

This particular unaccompanied Chaconne is a marvel of melodic, harmonic, and contrapuntal organization. Beginning in deliberate T time, in the key of D minor, it maintains a stately movement with a quarter note as the principal unit. It is then “doubled” twice, and proceeds in animated motion in sixteenth notes, with several passages in thirty-second notes. There follows a section in D major. The illusion of full harmonies is sustained by the rapid alternation of the lower and upper pedal points on the dominant. Then the original statement in D minor returns with ingenious variations in sixteenth notes, thirty-second notes, and triplet passages. The coda simply recapitulates the original statement.

Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 (c. 1729–31)

The suite is a collection of dances, with a prelude or an overture to open the series. The number of dances and their nature varies. Usually the first dance is in common time (Y), and in quick movement. The second dance is slow and stately. The third dance may be a spirited allegro. Then comes a group known under the comprehensive name “gallant dances.” These may include a minuet or a gavotte, or any of the French dances current in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The concluding movement is usually a gigue. In Bach’s time, not much significance was attached to titles. A suite might have been called an overture, a partita, or even a sinfonia. It is only later in history that the titles have assumed the significance of a definite form.

The Overture of Bach’s Suite No. 3 in D Major is in common time (Y), which is the usual time signature for the opening movement in most suites. There are three themes in the Overture, and the one in dotted rhythm serves as background for the entire Overture. The counterpoint is not as complex as it is in Bach’s fugues, and even the Bachian device of inversion is free, so that only the direction of the melody is reversed. The Overture consists of two contrasting sections. The first is of a symphonic nature; the second section is based on the imitation of a characteristic rhythmic figure.

The melody of the second movement has become popular under the title Air on the G String, in a violin arrangement by the German violinist August Wilhelmj (1845–1908), who transposed Bach’s original melody a ninth lower in order to exploit the rich sonorities of the lowest string on the violin. In Bach’s original, the violin part does not require the G string at all. The late Donald Francis Tovey called it a “devastating derangement.” Derangement or not, it is effective, and the temptation to use it in place of the movement as written by Bach is great.

The third movement of the suite is a twin Gavotte, each gavotte consisting of two sections. The first Gavotte is repeated after the second. A Bourrée follows the Gavotte. Both the gavotte and the bourrée are dances of French peasant origin, but it would be risky to try to establish the etymological derivation of these dances. The final movement of the suite is a Gigue, which is a frenchified version of the old English jig. It is in Z time, and, like all the dances of the suite, is in two sections.

Concerto No. 1 in C Minor for Two Harpsichords, BWV 1060 (1729)

The solo parts in Bach’s concertos were often interchangeable. A concerto for harpsichord could have been originally a violin concerto. Double and triple concertos were often arranged by Bach for different groups of solo instruments. The Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C Minor was probably written not for keyboard instruments but for violin and oboe with orchestral accompaniment. At least, traces of typical oboe or violin passages are detectable in the two harpsichord parts.

The concerto must have been written in 1729 in Leipzig, at the time when Bach took over the direction of the Collegium Musicum there. The meetings were held weekly, and Bach was expected to provide the music. It is probable that there were good pianists (or rather, harpsichord players) among the members of the Collegium Musicum. It is possible also that Bach had in mind two of his sons as soloists in the concerto.

The C-Minor Concerto is in three movements, Allegro, Adagio, and Allegro. The opening movement, in Y time, is distinguished by the characteristically Bachian persistence of musical motion. The solo instruments and the accompanying orchestra echo one another in free imitation. The thematic material is expressive and rhythmic. The succeeding slow movement, Adagio, is in V, in the key of E-flat major. The rhythmic design contributes to a feeling of sustained energy, with even division of twelve or twenty-four notes to a bar. A modulation leads to the dominant (fifth step, G) of the principal key of C minor. The final Allegro, in + time, proceeds along a brisk pattern. The rhythmic drive is determined, leading to a conclusive ending.

Ricercare à Six, from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747), orchestration by Anton Webern

We hear from Potsdam that last Sunday, May 7, 1747, the famous Kapellmeister from Leipzig, Bach, arrived with the intention of hearing the excellent Royal music. In the evening, at about the time when the regular chamber music in the royal apartments usually begins, His Majesty was informed that Kapellmeister Bach had arrived at Potsdam and was waiting in His Majesty’s antechamber for His Majesty’s most gracious permission to listen to the music. His August Self immediately gave orders that Bach be admitted, and went, at his entrance to the so-called Forte-and-Piano, condescending also to play, in person and without any preparation, a theme to be executed by Kapellmeister Bach in a fugue. This was done so happily by the aforementioned Kapellmeister, that not only His Majesty was pleased to show his satisfaction, but also all those present were seized with astonishment. Bach has found the subject propounded to him so exceedingly beautiful that he intends to set it down on paper in a regular fugue and have it engraved on copper.

In these words, the Spenersche Zeitung of Berlin, in its issue of May 11, 1747, apprised its readers of the visit of Johann Sebastian Bach at the palace of Frederick the Great of Prussia. On that famous occasion the king, who was an excellent musician, played for Bach on the harpsichord a fine tune of his own invention, containing both diatonic and chromatic elements, and asked him to improvise a fugue on it.

Bach’s response is history. Upon his return to Leipzig, he expanded his improvisation by writing a magnificent “musical offering” (Das musikalische Opfer), a cornucopia of learned devices comprising a mirror canon, imitation in contrary motion, a crab canon (with the royal theme played backward), and culminating in a magnificent “ricercare” in six voices. His offering was entitled “Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta” (“At the King’s Command, Theme and Additions Resolved by Canonic Art”).

The term ricercare or ricercar (literally, “to research”) was originally applied to the “searching” of correct intonation on a string instrument, in other words, tuning. By a semantical extension it came to signify the seeking of the tonality of the principal part of the work, a preamble or a prologue. Through further differentiation, the ricercare developed into a full-fledged fugal exposition, and the terms “ricercare” and “fuga” became interchangeable. Bach’s Musical Offering is indeed a manifestation of the highest art of the fugue.

Bach’s marginal remarks in the manuscript are most revealing of the traditional obsequiousness to ruling sovereigns of the time. To illustrate the augmentation, in which the thematic notes assume double value. Bach writes: “As the notes augment, so may the King’s fortune grow.” At the change of the key, Bach submits, “As the modulation rises, so may rise the glory of the King.” There is also a riddle canon, with the Latin motto “Quaerendo invenietis” (“By seeking you shall find out”), in which the performer must find the proper place and form of the entries. The quest is not simple, since the imitation is to be made in inversion.

Anton Webern (1883–1945), who adapted his great polyphonic skill mainly to dodecaphonic techniques, had profound reverence for the great masters of the Baroque art, and particularly for Bach, and approached the task of orchestrating the concluding portion of Bach’s ricercare with great fidelity to the spirit of the music. But he believed, as did his revered teacher Arnold Schoenberg, that Classical music must be arranged in terms of modern instrumental ideas. In his orchestration, Webern used a flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, harp, and string quartet. The opening notes of the “Royal Theme” are given to the muted trombone, and the rest of the subject is allotted to muted horn and muted trumpet. This overlapping of instruments is fashioned after the medieval hocketus (literally, “hiccup”), an effect created by a deliberate discontinuity of a melody. Expression marks and tempo indications in Webern’s score are noteworthy: zart fliessend, fliessender, sehr fliessend, rubato. Who would think that an ultramodernist like Webern, arranging the music of Bach, would ask the players to perform tenderly, flowingly, more flowingly, and in free measure? In this instance, classicism and modernism suddenly turn romantic.

ORGAN WORKS

Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564 (c. 1708–17)

In 1703, when Bach was only eighteen years old, he received his first position as organist, at the New Church in Arnstadt. His duties were set forth as follows:

Whereas our right honorable and gracious Count and Lord, Count of Schwarzburg, has been pleased to appoint you, Johann Sebastian Bach, to be organist of the New Church, you shall in particular be faithful, loyal, and useful to his lordship, and in general show yourself apt and adroit in your calling, eschewing other tasks and occupations, and on Sundays, feast days, and other seasons appointed for public worship in the said New Church, shall attend at the organ committed to you and perform thereon as shall be required of you. In your conduct and behavior you shall be God-fearing, temperate, well disposed to all, shunning ill company, and in every way show yourself an honorable servant and organist before God and your worshipful masters. In return, you shall receive for annual pay and entertainment 50 florins, and for board and lodging 30 thalers, drawn as follows: from the tax on beer taverns, 25 florins, from church funds, 25 florins, and the rest from the hospital.

This was the beginning of Bach’s career as a virtuoso of the organ. But apparently his extemporaneous embellishments of church chorales were not always welcomed by the congregation. In the minutes of the New Church of Arnstadt there is found the transcript of Bach’s questioning by the Superintendent Olearius, in which the latter admonished Bach to abandon his ways of playing: “Complaints have been made that you accompany the hymns with strange variations, and mix the chorale with many ornaments alien to the melody, which confuses the congregation. If you desire to introduce a counter-theme, you must keep it, and not change it to yet another.”

CONTENTS

FOREWARD

PRELUDE: Interview with Myself

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
(1685–1750)
Musical Fountainhead

INSTRUMENTAL WORKS

Chaconne in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, from Partita No. 2, BWV 1004 (1720)

Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 (c. 1729–31)

Concerto No. 1 in C Minor for Two Harpsichords, BWV 1060 (1729)

***Ricercare à Six, from* The Musical Offering, *BWV 1079 (1747), orchestration by Anton Webern***

ORGAN WORKS

Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564 (c. 1708–17)

CONTENTS

FOREWARD

PRELUDE: Interview with Myself

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH(1685–1750)Musical Fountainhead

INSTRUMENTAL WORKS

Chaconne in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, from Partita No. 2, BWV 1004 (1720)

Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 (c. 1729–31)

Concerto No. 1 in C Minor for Two Harpsichords, BWV 1060 (1729)

Ricercare à Six, from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747), orchestration by Anton Webern

ORGAN WORKS

Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564 (c. 1708–17)

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
(1685–1750)
Musical Fountainhead

***Ricercare à Six, from* The Musical Offering, *BWV 1079 (1747), orchestration by Anton Webern***