The final notes

For quite some time, it has been believed that The Art of the Fugue was the final composition that Bach was engaged in before his passing.

This belief stemmed from the presence of an incomplete final fugue within the manuscript, accompanied by the inscription allegedly penned by his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel:

"At the point where the composer introduced the name B-A-C-H in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died.”

Imagination has led to popular speculation that Bach literally dropped dead while writing the last bar…

At a recent chamber music concert I gave with two colleagues, we performed some of Bach´s music, including this final fugue which ends abruptly with no harmonic conclusion.

Many performers and scholars have penned down their own conclusions to this fugue in order to try give a more solid and meaningful ending to this masterwork. The strange thing is, they tend to sound orthopedic, somewhat unnatural.

We tried to end the piece with the suggested ending by Donald Tovey, and even if it´s masterfully written, for some reason it didn´t feel as comfortable to play as Bach´s writing.

Or were we biased by this information?

Today on my Classical playlist, I´ve included this fugue in the version of the amazing Cuarteto Casals, who slightly changed the ending notes to make it sound as if it has concluded, but didn´t add any further bars, something that I found very appropriate.

Listen to my Classical playlist here.

Enjoy, and have a great day.

Claudio.