Re: GG-Wtc E major

On Tuesday, May 08, 2001 at 4:31 PM Bradley Lehman wrote:

> ...And it's interesting that this fugue's material was borrowed by
> Bach directly from JKF Fischer's _Ariadne Music_ (various copies exist from
> 1702/1710/1715), a direct predecessor of the WTC. Fischer in turn
> may have got the subject from Froberger. New piece, old cloth.
>
> Was Gould aware of that history? (I haven't seen that video.) In
> his 1972 essay introducing an edition of WTC1 (see the _Reader_, p15) he
> mentions this piece from WTC2 and gives a few bars as a musical example.
> But all he says is: "Other fugues, like that in E major from volume
> 2, exhibit much the same sort of modulatory disinclination; and here so
> tenacious is Bach's loyalty to his six-note theme, and so diffident
> the modulatory program through which he reveals it to us, one has the
> impression that they intense and fervently anti-chromatic ghost of
> Heinrich Schutz rides again." So, clearly GG recognized the archaism,
> but did he have the Fischer thread?

I read _Bodky on Bach_ some time ago and he does mention, in the text or in the notes, that the WTC II E major fugue is a reworking of the Fischer piece. Presumably, since Gould reviewed this book, he would have come across this information.

It IS strange, though, that years ago I marked out this piece as my favorite fugue from WTC. Subsequently I learned that both Gould and Monsaingeon claimed it as their favorite, too, and then I found out that it wasn't even wholly Bach!

As Michael Stegemann's liner notes to the '55 Goldbergs states, GG recorded this fugue as early as '57 as a "filler" to his album of the fifth and sixth Partitas, so special was this piece to him. Does anyone prefer Gould's brisk (1:47) '69 WTC recording of this piece to the much slower (4:17) '57 version or the even slower Monsaingeon film version of '79 (5:02)? I find his version for the WTC set too choppy for this beautiful fugue.

Dominic Lesnar
Asheville NC