Don’t miss the end of this episode where I play three of Bach’s earlier settings of the same tune, BWVs 700, 701, & 738!
We finish our study of this late masterpiece by reading some scholarship on the two different versions Bach made of his canonic variations on Luther’s 1539 melody. Whereas Wolff suggests both versions could be ‘authentic,’ Gregory Butler reveals that he believes the Original Edition was a mistake— one that prompted the handwritten fair copy.
As for the signature in the augmented canon— the finale in the fair copy— it is first spelled out in bar 19. See the top line, G, F#, A, G#:
These are not the same notes, but it is the same shape as B-A-C-H. The line that imitates this upper line is moving at half its speed. Therefore, it must repeat the spelling twice as slow later in the piece. See how it is joined by an independent line of counterpoint, now singing out the signature in parallel 3rds:
Two signatures in two different final movements!
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