Search - Bach, Malloch, Sheffield Str Ens :: Art of Fugue

"The Old Geezer's Guide to the Fugue." :-)

Bob Zeidler | Charlton, MA United States | 09/06/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Forgive me my double sin against both Johann Sebastian Bach and Sir Benjamin Britten. But this brief description was simply too good to pass up. Chalk it up to a minor epiphany visited upon me as I listened to this work (yet again) while my mind was spectacularly unoccupied and in "free association."



Bach's "Die Kunst der Fuge" (The Art of Fugue) was his final major work, left unfinished at his death in 1750. For more than 250 years (well, at least since Felix Mendelssohn's successful efforts at reviving interest in the music of Bach some 100 years after Bach's death), "The Art of Fugue" has been an enigmatic challenge to composers, musicians and musicological researchers, as the work is barely fleshed out, and not orchestrated, nor is any indication of performing force(s) given. As a result, it exists today (aside from the original manuscript sketches) in various guises: as a keyboard work (for piano, for harpsichord, and for two harpsichords), as a realization for string quartet, and, in various arrangements, as an orchestral work, both with and without keyboard continuo (harpsichord or organ). One such orchestral arrangement, by Karl Munchinger, concludes with the chorale "Vor Deinem Thron" (an approach whose aptness was not lost on William Malloch, the creator of "The Art of Fuguing").



The everlasting significance of this final Bach work transcends its immediate impact on those in the music community. One of my favorite quotes regarding its importance was made quite some time back by Lewis Thomas, the great medical scientist/essayist, who offered that a "National Institute of Music" be established, with a very limited mission and a modest budget, to field a narrow question: "Why is 'The Art of Fugue' so important and what does this single piece of music do to the human mind?" Indeed! And what this single piece of music did to the human mind of William Malloch was to encourage him to create a work of sheer joy, starting from Bach's original manuscript.



Malloch (1927 - 1996) was probably best know to west coast Americans as the longtime music director of the Los Angeles Pacifica Radio station, KPFK. To this particular east coast American, he is best known for his musicological work on behalf of Gustav Mahler. (Malloch had been, for many years, the music director of the Mahler Society of California, in addition to his radio duties and his work as composer/musicologist.) But, with posterity now all that is left working on his behalf, he might well be remembered in the long term as the creator of this "realization" of Bach's final work, "The Art of Fuguing."



Malloch saw in Bach's contrapuntal writing of "Die Kunst der Fuge" something that no one prior to him apparently did. (Such prior realizations of "Die Kunst der Fuge" were, as he describes them, "doughty.") He saw the musical line of the work in prophetic terms, where to his mind Bach seemingly anticipated the music of the future, from Beethoven and Mozart to Wagner and beyond. It was these "prophetic" features that he chose to emphasize in his "The Art of Fuguing" realization, scored for chamber orchestra having very unusual instrumentation for such "raw material": piccolos and alto flutes, as well as English horns, in addition to the usual Baroque woodwinds, a battery of percussion in addition to the usual timpani, and a keyboard continuo of piano and celeste, all to go along with more conventional strings and woodwinds.



These "extra" instruments make their presence known soon enough, when, in an early variation, Malloch uses the timpani in much the same manner as did Britten in his famous variations on a Purcell tune, "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra." (Now the explanation for my modestly witty epiphany is made perhaps clearer.) Matters go further afield as we hear phrasing (and orchestration) in later variations that suggest Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and even Khatchaturian, Shostakovich and Shchedrin. Yet, throughout, the underlying themes and contrapuntal variations remain solidly rooted in the Bach original. Things DO get a little zany just prior to the final chorale, when the orchestra seems to take a short time out to tune up. But matters are then straightened out, with a boy choir intoning the concluding chorale for a perfect "cap" on the work.



Lukas Foss (the composer) leads the Sheffield Ensemble (likely a west coast pick-up ensemble) and the California Boy's Choir in a performance that must be considered definitive. (As far as I know, Malloch's realization has not been recorded by any other forces.) The album, now about 25 years old, and a certifiable collector's item, originally appeared on the Sheffield Labs audiophile label as a pair of LPs which I believe were "direct-to-disk" (a standard Sheffield Labs practice at the time). This digital remastering to CD dates to 1995, but the booklet notes do not state what the original source material was, i.e., whether Sheffield Labs used the original direct-to-disk lacquers or analogue or early digital tape masters. But the mastering is well-done, with fine sound, and the CD is part of the "Sheffield Gold" series (with the reflective CD layer being gold, rather than aluminum). The booklet notes include an extensive in-depth essay by Malloch that appears to have been photoreduced from larger originals used in the 2-LP set. The type is very small, causing this particular old geezer to pull out a strong pair of reading glasses.



Well, old geezer or not, I find this to be a splendid modern-day setting of a sublime piece of western art, and a thing of fun and joy to listen to. It may be difficult to find; but it's worth your effort.



Bob Zeidler"

Real Music Making

codiferous | Pleasanton, CA USA | 11/27/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Being a fan of Bach and a zealous proponont of Bach arrangements, I was delighted when I spotted this disc in a bargain bin for [money]! Had I known how wonderful these arrangements were I would have paid full price for them on Amazon[.com] a long time ago. The Bach-Malloch moniker is quite apt. This is a new piece by Malloch based on Die Kunst Der Fuge. Every moment is rich with joyous music making. Complicated rhythmic structures provided by the percussion underlie many of the arrangements, colorful orchestrations, and inventive additions to the counterpoints make this piece a must have for any Bach junkie. Malloch has done for Bach what Ravel did for Mussorgsky. I am also a fan of Lukas Foss, the conductor, whose works are worthy of repeated listenings. Check out his "Phorion", a deconstructed version of a Bach Sarabande, coupled with his seminal piece "Time Cycle"."

Brings back fond memories

Michael Schell | www.schellsburg.com | 10/02/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I remember Bill Malloch, with his trademark ponytail, presenting this work to a roomful of composition students at USC in the early 1980s. He was constantly relating Bach's work to what followed in the 19th and 20th Centuries. One detail I recall is how Contrapunctus 2 reminded him of Sibelius's Night Ride and Sunrise. And sure enough, in his setting of this fugue he throws in sleigh bells and other percussion to refer to the Sibelius and draw out its rhythmic similarities with this fugue.



Clearly the point of Malloch's orchestration and, in several cases, free extension of Bach's fugues, canons and deathbed chorale prelude is not so much to clarify the polyphony with timbre and stereo separation as it is to shift the emphasis from counterpoint to prophesy. Take his setting of Contrapunctus 9, the triple fugue with a fast-running first subject. At roughly the midpoint, Malloch inserts a digression starting with an extended quotation from the fugato section of Beethoven's Eroica finale...but in inversion! (I believe Malloch was working on The Art of Fuguing contemporaneously with Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, which also spoofs this movement). After the Beethoven we go through a variety of other quotations in the spirit of the Bach original (these include the 1812 Overture, Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream overture, the Flight of the Bumble Bee, and more) before we pick up where we left off in the original. There's a similar "cadenza" inserted toward the end of the Canon at the 10th (at the location provided for such by Bach) that quotes a famous and brilliant passage from the code of Leonore Overture No. 3.



Occasionally Malloch looks backwards in history too. In Contrapunctus 5 he sets the syncopated sequences in such a way as to superpose renaissance dance rhythms over the counterpoint. How nice to have the opportunity to revisit all these memories of mine with some inexpensive MP3 downloads.



I've always found listening to the entire Kunst der Fuge troublesome due to the starts and stops, the lack of architectonic structures across the movements and the fact that everything is in D. But sampling them in a free setting like this is a nice way for me to warm to the work, especially with a copy of Tovey's essay on The Art of Fugue in hand. The late Lucas Foss is an interesting choice of interpreter, with his own history of performing and recasting Baroque music (as in the Baroque Variations). He had a history of antagonizing musicians under his conductorship, but he seems to "get" this music, and although the ensemble is ragged at times (I concur that this sounds like a pickup group in the recording studio) the essential concepts seem to come through. My only regret with the MP3 route is the lack of program notes, but perhaps you'll be fortunate enough to find a copy of the now out-of-print CD."