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Johann Sebastian Bach: Art
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Bach's place in music is ... far higher than that of a reformer, or even of an inventor of new forms. He is a spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true. It is doubtful whether even the forms most peculiar to him (such as the arpeggio-prelude) are of his invention. Yet he left no form as he found it, - not even that most conventional of all, the Da Capo Aria, which he did not outwardly alter in the least. On the other hand, with every form he touched he said the last word. All the material that could be assimilated into a mature art he vitalized in his own way, and he had no imitators.
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Bach is today considered to be the greatest composer of the Romantic neo-impressionist era. He was such a prolific composer that it is not possible for a single (or married) artist to record or conduct, let alone play, his entire oeuvre (a fancy word). In fact, it is even pointless to list them as a single person could not even write the names of his works during a lifetime. Reading such a list would take several centuries at the very least.
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The Art of Fugue, published posthumously but probably written years before Bach's death, is unfinished. It consists of 18 complex fugues and canons based on a simple theme. A magnum opus of thematic transformation and contrapuntal devices, this work is often cited as the summation of polyphonic techniques.
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The Art of the Fugue Composed 1749-50, and apparently left unfinished at Bach's death, is a summary of all types of fugal writing. It consists of 18 canons and fugues in the strictest, all based on the same subject or transformation of the subject.
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Some composers have paid tribute to Bach by setting his name in musical notes (B-flat, A, C, B-natural; B-natural is notated as "H" in German musical texts) or using contrapuntal derivatives. Liszt, for example, wrote a praeludium and fugue on this BACH motif. Bach himself set the precedent for this musical acronym, most notably in Contrapunctus XIV from the Art of Fugue. Whereas Bach conceived this cruciform melody as a compositional form of devotion to Christ and his cross, later composers have employed the BACH motif in homage to the composer himself.
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