i will tell you right now and without reservation that bach’s “die kunst der fugue” is the highest musical achievement in all of human endeavor. it is really more than that, it is among the highest artistic achievements of all humankind.
it is unfortunate that bach’s instrument of choice, the church organ has so many other connotations, especially for the modern listener, but it is surprising and disappointing to me to see how little attention this astonishing but sadly unfinished set of compositions receives among the musical community.
there are a few transcriptions for ensembles of strings and horns, but so far, and with rare but exceptional moments, i have found none that really cover the depth of insight, the breadth of emotion, the nuanced ingenuity of the master the way a complete treatment does.
maybe its presumptuous of me to think that this lack of attention may be due to a true lack of appreciation, even among the musical cognoscenti of the accomplishment this work represnts, its perfection down to the unfinished ending of number 19, the fuga a tres sogetti.. as the work of bachs last years conclude a set of carefully constructed, almost mathematical formations with an unresolved harmonic progression…
everything is in there, its like a mandala, its perfect, particularly with this final imperfection.
maybe its my mathematical mind, structured as it is through years of computer programming. i remember my first exposure to the musical offering by way of hofstadter’s book “Gödel, Escher, Bach…” which, if you have not read, please stop reading this now, and go find right now and read.
that is, if you care about any of this..
but i wondered what hofstadter was talking about, and checked it out, and i was kind of struck, especially given a little bit of an anticipatory set, how the nature of the human mind, of thought itself is kind of expressed in this kind of music, but that music carries so many other aspects of our humanity with it, love, sex, longing, desire and guilt, grief, hope, righteous outrage and anger, among all the musical forms of blues, rock, folk, jazz, and traditional music of all sorts, and all the things everyone is trying to say through these pieces, and it reminded me of some dreams i started having when i first began studying computer science.
they were strange, sort of like that segment of disney’s fantasia, where just before the elephants start dancing on the mushrooms or whatever, where there’s nothing but black background and streams of staffs and notes and then they start to wave, but my dream was not exactly like that, the notes in my mind were the bits of the computer and i understood them, saw them, sort of like that critical moment at the end of the first matrix movie where neo sees the matrix for what it really is, except this was back in the seventies, when i was studying this stuff, it was much more abstract when all you’ve got to work with is punched cards, or maybe an electronic terminal.
but nevermind that, maybe what i’m trying to get at is this correspondence between bach’s mazelike accomplishment in the art of the fugue and our modern work with computers. there’s this requirement of a certain level of comprehension before you can even begin to contemplate the thing. and as i said, i suspect that even very capable musicians, composers, and people you think should know better, that there’s something missing from their perspective that causes them to lack the ability to percieve this accomplishment, even as they claim that they do…
but never mind that either..
just do this: sit down with a good version of die kunst der fugue (i recommend marie-claire alain). and listen to it straight through for a whole day. lather, rinse, repeat. drink deep, my friend. you won’t be the same when you’re done.