On Tuesday, May 08, 2001 at 4:31 PM Bradley Lehman wrote:
> ...And it's interesting that this fugue's material was borrowed
by
> Bach directly from JKF Fischer's _Ariadne Music_ (various copies exist from > 1702/1710/1715), a direct predecessor of the WTC. Fischer in turn > may have got the subject from Froberger. New piece, old cloth. > > Was Gould aware of that history? (I haven't seen that video.) In > his 1972 essay introducing an edition of WTC1 (see the _Reader_, p15) he > mentions this piece from WTC2 and gives a few bars as a musical example. > But all he says is: "Other fugues, like that in E major from volume > 2, exhibit much the same sort of modulatory disinclination; and here so > tenacious is Bach's loyalty to his six-note theme, and so diffident > the modulatory program through which he reveals it to us, one has the > impression that they intense and fervently anti-chromatic ghost of > Heinrich Schutz rides again." So, clearly GG recognized the archaism, > but did he have the Fischer thread? I read _Bodky on Bach_ some time ago and he does mention, in the text or in
the notes, that the WTC II E major fugue is a reworking of the Fischer
piece. Presumably, since Gould reviewed this book, he would have come
across this information.
It IS strange, though, that years ago I marked out this piece as my
favorite fugue from WTC. Subsequently I learned that both Gould and
Monsaingeon claimed it as their favorite, too, and then I found out that it
wasn't even wholly Bach!
As Michael Stegemann's liner notes to the '55 Goldbergs states, GG
recorded this fugue as early as '57 as a "filler" to his album of the fifth and
sixth Partitas, so special was this piece to him. Does anyone
prefer Gould's brisk (1:47) '69 WTC recording of this piece to the much slower
(4:17) '57 version or the even slower Monsaingeon film version of '79
(5:02)? I find his version for the WTC set too choppy for this
beautiful fugue.
Dominic Lesnar Asheville NC "You may not be an old-fashioned girl, but you're gonna get dated..."
-Elvis Costello
"The older I get, the more dead people I know..." - Me |