We arrive at the final fugue in J.S. Bach’s great The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080. This is the famous 'unfinished' fugue, number 14. We discuss how one could have understood this fugue to have been unfinished after Bach’s death, and what exactly is missing.
Here is the last page where one can see the 'corrupt' staves where it would have been impossible to complete such a dense fugue— Note the missing line and other features of the corrupt staff.
And we hear, finally, the combination of all four themes as we imagine they were intended to be combined:
Though we needn’t stick to this order of voices. Here is the same music with the themes all shuffled into different voices:
Bach’s obituary mentions the fugue was ‘inverted note for note.’ Does this mean the entire fugue, or just the combination of the four themes, as in this idea:
That last one shows us how difficult it is to imagine what Bach would have done. Inverted around which note? Inverted in which order of voices?
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Concepts Covered:
In this episode, we analyze the final fugue in The Art of Fugue, the famous 'unfinished' fugue number 14, exploring its the reasons it is often thought to be incomplete. Should this be in fact a quadruple fugue? And where is the missing fourth theme? How could all four themes come together in a final combination, along with a note-for-note inversion, as referenced in Bach’s obituary of 1754? We discuss the 'corrupt' staves on the final page, the impossibility of completing such a dense fugue there and the known numerical symbolism of B+A+C+H = 14 and B-A-C-H as both melody and fugue subject.
