Bach Contrapunctus 1 From the Art of Fugue Norton

emerson-art-of-fugue-cover-400ph Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon; cover photograph past Marco Borggreve.

The Emerson String Quartet: J.S. Bach, The Fine art of the Fugue, BWV 1080
CD Deutsche Grammophon 474 495-ii
(Streaming via Tidal; no hi-res download appears available.)

Recorded January and February 2003 at the American University of Arts and Letters, New York Urban center. Da-Hong Seetoo, producer and engineer.

One of the bits of musical not-trivia that I have carted around me for ages is the fact that American composer Roy Harris (whose third symphony is for me the best example of mid-twentieth-century, typically exuberant American musical inventiveness) also, with collaborator G.D. Herter Norton transcribed for string quartet Bach's The Fine art of the Fugue.

M.D. Herter Norton, past the way, was Margaret (also sometimes Mary; and, informally Polly) Dows Herter, who with her hubby W.Westward. Norton founded the publishing firm that bears his name. (Due west.W. Norton is still a major publisher—if not the major publisher—of music-history texts and anthologies for college use in the English-speaking globe.) Margaret Norton was a violinist, an independent scholar of music, and translator from the German of most a dozen volumes of the poesy of Rainer Maria Rilke. She was very important in the early on years of the American Musicological Society, every bit well equally co-authoring, editing, or translating articles for the The Musical Quarterly.

After the jump, at that place is a scan of the cover of that score, from 1936. And generous sound samples. I think well-nigh music lovers will find this CD (or the stream from Tidal) extremely rewarding.

harris-bach-art-600-ph Roy Harris' idea, after all, was not crazy. First, Bach did not specify instrumentation. Although the score was unfinished, I think that had Bach wanted to specify detail musical forces, he would have done so at the beginning of the score.

As a practical matter, the options to performThe Art of the Fugue in the modern era include pianoforte, harpsichord, or organ; or some instrumental ensemble. (OK, I estimate the Swingle Singers could vocalize it–just would you actually want to listen to 70 minutes of that?).

Pianoforte is monochromatic; harpsichords can be jangly; organs are mostly found in churches; and mixed instrumental ensembles' tonal distinctions can over-emphasize differences while underplaying the commonality of the musical lines. Whereas a cord quartet'south shared tone color tin can lend a transparency to the texture of the scoring and provide supple residue to the interweaving musical lines. The liner notes to the Emerson Quartet'southward CD practice not credit the transcriber, so nosotros can assume that this was non played from the Harris/Herter Norton score.

There is no question that the Emerson Quartet thought very deeply nearly every attribute of this music, to the extent of reversing the seating of the quartet for the inverted portion of the mirror canons, and having the second violin play viola (and the violist play tenor viola), so that low notes in some numbers that are not available to their usual instruments can be heard. Besides important to signal out is that several of the numbers (three out of 21) are played as string trios (as was the example in the Harris/Herter Norton score). This lends both variety, and even greater transparency. I plant the trios to be the about affecting parts of the recording.

J.S. Bach left off working onThe Fine art of the Fugue because of ill health and encroaching blindness. Therefore, the final fugue in the manuscript ends suddenly. There is a story that on his deathbed, Bach dictated revisions to his chorale "Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein" to brand upwardly for the unfinished nature of the score. That tradition is followed here. Information technology goes without maxim that the string playing is world-class; very clear in timbre but not sounding common cold, with pristine, non-Romanticized execution. The soundworld is (at least for me) very like shooting fish in a barrel to get into. Bedroom-scaled Bach on cord instruments tuned to modern concert pitch of A = 440Hz is non jarring. Afterward all, the string-quartet grade did non exist in Bach's lifetime.

The recorded sound is excellent, and the liner notes enviably complete. Well done all effectually.

lisa-mazzucco-400-ph Photo by Lisa Mazzucco.

My recommendation is that all serious classical-music lovers purchase this CD. Perhaps emblematic of the parlous state of the classical-recordings business, when you buy the physical CD from Amazon (at the very reasonable price of $14.12), y'all also go a costless MP3 download. And there is streaming via Tidal for the merely curious.

Sound samples:

1 Bach/ The Fine art Of Fugue, BWV 1080 – Contrapunctus 1 start