Art Of Fugue Research Articles

Ferruccio Busoni, His Chicago Friends, and Frederick Stock's Transcription for Large Orchestra and Organ of the Fantasia contrappuntistica

Few works in twentieth-century music have attracted the attention of transcribers as much as Ferruccio Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica. This modern realization of Johann Sebastian Bach's Art of Fugue, which exists in four versions written by the composer between 1910 and 1921, has been arranged at least six times between 1911 and 1984. So far these arrangements have been only briefly introduced or mentioned in passing. The background and performance history of one of them, Frederick Stock's version for large orchestra and organ, deserves to be studied in some detail not only for itself but also for the light it sheds on Busoni's relationships with some of his American friends.

J.S. Bach's The art of fugue: the work and its interpretation

J.S. Bach's The art of fugue: the work and its interpretation

The Permutational Matrix in J. S. Bach's Art of Fugue. The Last Fugue Finished?

The Permutational Matrix in J. S. Bach's Art of Fugue. The Last Fugue Finished?

Of Realizations, Completions, Restorations and Reconstructions: From Bach's The Art of Fugue to Beethoven's Tenth Symphony

The assumptions that lie behind what have variously been called ‘realizations’, ‘completions’, ‘restorations’ or ‘reconstructions’ of unfinished works are generally unarticulated. Over the last few years such ‘realizations’ have become media events that threaten to blur the line between scholarship and public relations. Since for most of the general public these projects represent the sole contact with the discipline of musicology, the issue of ‘realizations’ is one that affects all members of our scholarly community. If you look to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians or any other standard music reference work for guidance on the subject of ‘realizations’ or ‘completions’, ‘restorations’ or ‘reconstructions’, you will find no such article. Indeed, I am not aware of any study that examines the conceptual basis of ‘realizations’ in the arts.

Demythologising Mathematics: Gödel, Escher, Bach Revisited

Why should a journal like New Blackfriars be looking retrospectively at books about mathematics? A short answer is that mathematics, or at least the myth of mathematics, affects the way we think. I shall be looking at two books which demythologise mathematics: The Mathematical Experience and Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty by Morris Kline. These help examine the myths of proof—the myths about how mathematicians think. Part of the demythologisation process is to look at alternatives to the myths; in particular I shall look at the role of intuition, and will illustrate this with reference to Catastrophe Theory and Gödel, Escher, Bach.The prompting for this investigation is the emergence of a new genre of books about mathematics following in the wake of Gödel, Escher, Bach, of which The Mathematical Experience is an example. It would be a fascinating aside to trace the rise of this genre from Fourteen Funny Bits of Mathematics in Avuncular Style as found on the shelves of most public libraries, alongside popularisations of pedestrian seriousness. No doubt it would mention the science-as-a-human-activity school as exemplified by Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers, or Watson’s The Double Helix, a vein continued by Catastrophe Theory. It would take a venture into catastrophe theory itself to explain the emergence of Gödel, Escher, Bach—a rogue book which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for general non-fiction, a picaresque which takes in the art of fugue, Zen koans, and the Jabberwocky and leads to questions at the heart of some of the problems in the foundations of mathematics and of artificial intelligence, while remaining accessible to a child of twelve (albeit the one I know is quite bright). The audience the genre aims at seems to be not so much the interested layman, but more the new technical elite whose computer skills and mathematical awareness can be used to outflank the experience of their seniors. In my years in radar design it was interesting to watch the gradual take-over of certain departments by mathematicians in spite of the active opposition of the electronics-trained managers. In my last department over half the people there had copies of Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Ordering Problems in J. S. Bach's Art of Fugue Resolved

Ordering Problems in J. S. Bach's <i>Art of Fugue</i> Resolved

Bach's Use of Hitherto Unrecognized Types of Countersubjects in the "Art of Fugue"

Bach's Use of Hitherto Unrecognized Types of Countersubjects in the "Art of Fugue"

Bach's Use of Hitherto Unrecognized Types of Countersubjects in the Art of Fugue

Bach's Use of Hitherto Unrecognized Types of Countersubjects in the Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

On Playing 'The Art of Fugue'

On Playing 'The Art of Fugue'

Art of Fugue

Art of Fugue

The "Great Fugue" Op.133: Beethoven's "Art of Fugue"

The "Great Fugue" Op.133: Beethoven's "Art of Fugue"

REVIEWS OF MUSIC

Journal Article REVIEWS OF MUSIC Get access Bach's Art of Fugue. Arranged for chamber ensemble by Leonard Isaacs. Score. ( Augener, 30s.) I. K. I. K. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume XXXV, Issue 1, January 1954, Pages 72–79, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/XXXV.1.72 Published: 01 January 1954

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

The Art of Fugue

BACH AND THE ART OF TEMPERAMENT

EVEN Bach scholars would be surprised to learn that the great Thomas Cantor had written a book called The Art of Temperament. A theoretical work by an outstanding composer on one of the most controversial subjects of his age! What wouldn't the bibliophiles give for a treasure so rare that, although it is referred to by F. W. Marpurg in his Versuch iiber die musicalische Temperatur, 1776, it is not mentioned in Eitner or any other bibliographical dictionary. But let us not become too excited over the possible find: Marpurg informs us that The Art of Temperament is a collection of preludes and fugues in every major and minor key: in other words, The Well-Tempered Clavier. Evidently the correct title had escaped him and he had very happily christened the work by analogy with Bach's Art of Fugue. Explanations of the of the musical scale are usually so full of figures that the non-mathematician shies away from them in terror. This is unfortunate, for the subject is not only of interest to the musicologist and theorist, but of immediate and practical concern to the performer. (Possible exceptions are the pianist and organist, too often slaves to the vagaries of the professional tuner.) Now, if the figures cannot be avoided completely in a discussion of tuning, their number can be reduced to a small minimum, and that is what is attempted in this article. Those whose knowledge of arithmetic extends to logarithms will find additional material in the appendix. The words tuning and temperament may be used almost synonymously. Strictly, tuning should be used for systems in which the frequencies of the notes in the scale are proportional to integers. That is true of all the ancient Greek systems for the various genera, as presented by Ptolemy.' Among the tunings he gave for the diatonic genus, the most important for us are the ditonic and the syntonic. The former, better known as the Pythagorean tuning, links together the notes of the scale by a succession of pure fifths and oc-

Review of Book: Transcriptions from the Art of Fugue

Review of Book: Transcriptions from the Art of Fugue