Echoes of Aloysius: Examining Fugal Form in Bach’s BWV 856 in Light of Gradus ad Parnassum — American Musicological Society Southern Chapter, 2021 (original) (raw)
2021, American Musicological Society Southern Chapter
There is no substantial body of research studying the tripartite fugal organization outlined by Johann Josef Fux in his Gradus ad Parnassum of 1725. Previous scholarship has questioned the applicability of this model to fugues outside of the Gradus itself. Indeed, many scholars have made the specific point of arguing that this tripartite organization is inapplicable to the works of J. S. Bach, das wohltemperierte Clavier in particular. In this paper I demonstrate how individual fugues from das wohltemperierte Clavier do indeed follow this form, and analyze Fugue no. 11 in F Major, BWV 856 (1722) as a case study. Tracing the development of the Fuxian model back to Gallus Dressler’s Praecepta musicae poeticae of 1563, I demonstrate how Bach’s BWV 856 brings this form to fruition three years before the publication of Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum of 1725, BWV 856 containing all of the necessary structural elements of exposition, counterexposition, and stretto outlined in the Gradus. This chronology forces us to reevaluate our understanding of Fux’s generally dismissed theory of fugue; it liberates the Fuxian model from the realm of the theoretical hypothetical, the so-called “textbook fugue” of the fugue d’ecole, and contextualizes it within contemporary artistic practice. This analysis exhibits how rather than outlining an extinct tradition, Gradus ad Parnassum was rather observing a compositional practice that was still evolving and manifesting itself even in the fugues of J. S. Bach.
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