Beda modernus

This blog is not just about science and religion, but also aesthetics: its aim is an eirenic union between the three. Anyone who scents a whiff of late Kant about this endeavour may not be grotesquely misled, despite his notorious fondness for brass band music.

Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge and Schubert's last three piano sonatas are both sets of works that areromantically connected to the last days of the composers' lives. In fact, neither seem to be quite as late as fable requires. Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote "At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died" at the point where the famous Contrapunctus XIV breaks off in the 239th bar (see image below), but this may be an ugly attempt to conceal Bach's executors' incompetence. The idea is that the handwriting shows Bach wrote the work considerably before his death; and may have even finished it, only for the last part to be mislaid by his sons (the "manuscript X" of Wolff) . The art of fugue is the most demanding and unearthly work to listen to Bach wrote (and not a walk in the park to play): its complexity, built by necessity out of such a simple, even rather dull theme, bewilders and disturbs. Like other unfinished last works (the Mozart Requiem, Turandot etc) the dialectic of fascination and disappointment tugs us relentlessly. If only these works had been completed! Yet would they be the works they are if they had been? Isn?t partof their very appeal their tragic, iconic incompleteness? If nothing else, conspiracy (Mozart)and detective (Bach) theorists would have so few playthings.

Example. Contrapunctus XIV is a multiple fugue and labeled in Italian as being in three parts. But the principal theme of the entire Kunst is missing, which led to some confusion about whether this fugue even belongs here.

Bach's last word?

Such an idea was given obscure impetus by the claim that the rest of the Kunst adds up to 2135 bars, the same number as book 1 of Das Wohltempterierte Clavier. However, it seems more or less likely that the principal theme was to be introduced as the fourth part, so that CXIV is in reality an unfinished quadruple fugue. It seems from the space Bach left for its end that no more than 40 bars are missing, and this, combined with what is missing structurally from the fugue,gives a surprisingly strong idea of what the mysterious end must have been like. Efforts to reconstruct have been spurred on by Zoltán Göncz's publication in 1991 of the 'permutation matrix' of the structure of the fugue: a four-by-four scheme of the known three subjects in the four voices. When these are superimposed, four logically ordered gaps are left which surely must have been filled by the missing and thematic last subject.

Schubert's last three piano sonatas are, on the other hand (and somewhat unusually for him given the large numberof sonata fragments he left behind, not to mention the eponymous symphony itself) complete. For a long time neglected on the grounds of the length, supposed poor structure, unpianistic and so on, they have come to be seen as the final embodiment of his autumnal style. Probably sketched out well before the end, they may indeed have been finally completed in September 1828; six weeks later, at the age of 31 he was dead. The most famous of these last three is the final one, in B flat (banally obvious choices to listen to are Brendel and Uchida, but there are many others). Its slow movement, reposed and replete with the magical key and modal changes that only Schubert could achieve, achieves transcendental greatness. A point to which I shall return.

In Schubert's last years the contemplation of mortality during his own decline through syphilis informs his output. Quite simply, these works are, I choose my words carefully, some of the saddest ever written. But they would not be by Schubert if they did not contain within their melancholic cadences a golden thread of joy - the thread we must indeed seize. How can this be a thread of pain, offering, as it seems to, a respite and response to its tragic setting? This is the very point that has to be rigorously pursued. One starting point: why is it that the shifts into the major are the most affecting - just as in the first song of Winterreise, Gute Nacht?