Reflections

This fugue features one of the most simple subjects in the whole of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Seven notes, all of equal note values move in a measured, unperturbed motion. The subject rings softly like a distant church bell. It's harmony is also simple, and bright, and open-ended. It sketches a I-IV-I progression, which is a most natural and easy beginning for a song. But it is only a beginning. The final note is the fifth of the scale (dominant), part of the tonic chord, but still a fifth. It hangs, suspended, emphasizing the furthest remove and the greatest tension yearning to resolve back the first degree of the scale (the tonic, A flat). And so Bach leaves us: bright opening that stops, half concluded, but half wanting. Perhaps this little subject is not so simple after all.

This is a gentle fugue. Altschuler has a fascinating essay about this one, judging it to be among the weakest of Bach's fugues owing perhaps to a fascinating historicism about tuning methods that rendered some keys as awkward, even typecast. Is there something flat, unstirring or simply unamazing about this fugue?

It seems that all these adjectives dance around another appropriate word, namely, subtle. The subtle and sweet nature of the subject is the small wellspring of a journey signaled by the smiling question in its last three notes. In all truth, it is really only answered by the final 1 and 1/2 measures of the fugue. The rest of the fugue is a lovely meditation on the infinite possibilities in the silence (or process) between question and answer.

Part of the searching quality to this fugue is the large quantity of episode (passages where the subject is absent). As a hint of this, there is a large codetta (a passage free of subject but used as a brief transition during an exposition) that interjects much space between the second and third entry in the exposition. The splitting of four voices into two pairs occurs throughout much of this fugue, emphasizing call and response, but still leaving the response open, yet unresolved. The episodes are lovely sequences that often feature a rich three-voice texture, the rhythmic independence of each voice allowing it to stand vividly apart from the others. It is sweet and it is subtle. A dreamy meditation of emotional nuance.

As you listen, you will notice that this fugue, aside from subject, countersubject, voices, episodes and the like, can be experienced as a simple contrast in three kinds of motion. First, there is the subject, which, moving in eighth notes, jumps in spacious intervals, sketching major triads. The second motion starts with the second subject entry and remains as a consistent thread running throughout the fugue: a smooth, step wise motion running more swiftly in sixteenth notes. The final motion is the most subtle. It is the slowest, most gentle motion in the fugue. It occurs more rarely. The third motion is made from quarter notes, half notes and ties. It always descends gracefully in basic steps.

With the spacious exposition and the open-ended nature of the subject, the fugue needs some final definition, a bit of maturity so that it does not end still green and unripe. Bach achieves marvelous closure in two steps. First, a "counter-exposition" begins the movement home. One by one, all four voices sing the subject in an orderly progression from lowest to highest. The forces are marshalled. The end is nigh. But even after the fourth and final voice, the mood is open, unresolved, almost confused. The open-ended subject still questions. The yearning is still unfulfilled. The ultimate three bars finish the story, raising the question one last time, answering it, finally, with its missing half. The harmony of the original, almost "incomplete" subject is extended to include the dominant chord so that the full sequence describes a perfect cadence: I-IV-I-IV-V-I. In addition, the even, almost unarticulated eighth notes of the original subject are extended to include the dominating contrast of counterpoint and episode in this fugue: sixteenth notes. The counterpoint, to slow the motion and incorporate the final quality of motion through the fugue, moves softly and smoothly in quarter notes, half notes and ties. The conclusion to this fugue brings a unity and a peace that wants only a moment of silence to savor it.