Fugue No. 19
A Major
Well-Tempered Clavier Book II
Johann Sebastian Bach
© 2016 Timothy A. Smith (the author)1
To read this essay in its hypermedia format, go to the Shockwave movie at
http://bach.nau.edu/clavier/nature/fugues/Fugue43.html.
Subject: Fugue No. 19, Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II
For there is a language of flowers.
For flowers are musical in ocular harmony.
For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.
Christopher Smart
Rejoice in the Lamb
In the midst of preparing this study, my wife and I
did a good bit of hiking on the San Francisco Peaks,
near where we live in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was fall, and
the aspens were in full color, as were many wildflowers.
She took that stunning photo to the right, and yes, the
sky really is that blue in Flagstaff! It is a glorious blue,
lifting the eyes to heaven.
And this is a glorious fugue! It lifts the spirit high,
and I can tell from David Korevaar’s performance that
he was truly inspired! Bach too must have had a
special fondness for this fugue, because it is one of a
1
You may print, copy, link to, or cite this document, for non-profit educational purposes,
so long as credit is given to the author as per fair use. You may not reproduce this document
electronically, enfold it into a web site, or incorporate it into a saleable product without written
permission from the author.
kind. It is the only fugue in the Well-Tempered Clavier to have gotten its subject
from a chorale!
A chorale is a hymn. And the particular hymn that gave this fugue its subject
is about glory, like the glorious aspens in that photo. Its title, Allein Gott in der
Höh’ sei Ehr’, means “Alone to God on high be glory.” The poem, by Martin
Luther, is a German adaptation of the Latin Gloria in excelsis Deo (“Glory to God
in the highest”). The second stanza ends with words that mean very much to
me: “How good for us is our splendid Lord.” It is for this goodness, of the beauty
of nature, our good relationships with those we love, for the joy of life, and for the
means to be at peace with God and each other, that this fugue is all about.
Soon we’ll learn more about this chorale — its history, words, and music. But
now is the time to hear it, very simply, in a setting by Handel’s first teacher,
Friedrich Zachow (1663-1712). Here it is, in Spangenberg’s 1545 Hymnbook,
from Magdeburg.
Now Zachow didn’t actually write this melody. His was an arrangement of a
tune by Nikolaus Decius, who was a disciple of Martin Luther’s. But in an odd
sort of way, even Decius was not the composer, for he adapted it from a
Gregorian chant. And guess what the name of that chant was? “Gloria!” Yes,
you have it right! Martin Luther adapted his poem from the text of the Latin
Gloria, and his friend Decius adapted the melody from the chant of the Gloria. It
follows, therefore, that Bach adapted the subject of this fugue from the Gloria.
So the roots of this fugue grow very deep! They reach back more than 1,200
years!
2.
But it is not just any Gloria that we are thinking about. You see, there are
several chants that can be used to set those words so joyfully spoken by the
angels who announced Jesus’ birth to shepherds “keeping watch over their flocks
by night.” This particular chant is sung on Easter Sunday, which is the most
glorious day in the Church year. On this day Christians celebrate not the birth of
Jesus, but his resurrection. In this way they affirm their own hope of resurrection.
Before this essay is done I will propose that this fugue, too, may depict the
resurrection, and why Bach’s decision to use the Gloria melody is well, so
“glorious.” In writing this fugue, it is possible —though but a theory— that Bach
may have thought of his own resurrection, as every Christian does. I write this
because not only did he compose a musical symbol of resurrection into the
fugue, he also included his musical signature! In all of this, we know for sure that
Bach wanted to give every bit of glory to God alone.
But I’ve gotten ahead of the story. So let’s return to Bach’s friend, Zachow,
and his simple arrangement of the Decius tune (which grew from the Gloria chant
for Easter).
You’ll have noticed that Zachow’s melody is rhythmically simpler than the
Magdeburg notation of 150 years before. The older notation has a lilting rhythm
(short-long, short-long). It is sing-songy, like that of a child reciting nursery
rhymes. It really dances! That is exactly the way Luther wanted it. He thought
that people should sing with gusto and with joy — like David Korevaar plays this
fugue.
But Zachow tamed the lilt, making the melody sound churchy. He also added
ornaments, and it is these that I’d like for us to think about right now. While
making this point could employ many technical words like diminution, foreground
and prolongation, I’ll make it much more simply. That is what the flowers are for!
Let us think of flowery subjects, like that of this fugue, as having their own
language, which involves main notes (like the vase holding the flowers) and the
ornamental pitches contained by the vase. Sometimes the flowers can totally
obscure the vase! But you can train your ear to hear the main notes, and that is
what I’d like us to do right now.
Play the fugue and watch the flowers as they grow. (Do notice that they are
yellow “Gloriosa” daisies in keeping with our theme.) Observe how five of them
leap for joy with each subject, each representing a main pitch. These five have a
1-3-4-5-3 contour (in doremi, that would be doh-mi-fa-sol-mi).
Stop the music and run your mouse through the daisies. Can you hear their
language? Can you see their harmony? Move slowly now, left to right, through
the first subject’s daisies, then play that subject by clicking its blue rectangle.
With these five pitches firmly in your ear, return to the chorale and play it.
Although in a different key, the two agree. Both the fugue’s subject and the first
phrase of the chorale have a 1-3-4-5-3 profile. The subject is an ornamented
version of these five pitches.
Remember these three points! First, simple melodies can be made complex
by adding ornaments. Second, ornaments can mask the original, sometimes
making it hard to recognize. And third, to hear the main tune behind the
3.
decoration, one must first know it very well – at least by heart, and maybe more.
Bach’s congregation knew this melody for sure, and very well. Even today,
both Lutherans and Catholics sing “Glory to God in the highest” nearly every
Sunday, with Allein Gott in der Höh being Luther’s German adaptation of those
words.
With his congregation singing “Glory to God in the highest” so often, Bach
needed to write many preludes on that melody. For the organ alone, Bach wrote
some fourteen preludes on Allein Gott in der Höh, and these are only those that
survive, not to mention other works that use this tune, including this very fugue!
In a moment I’d like for you to hear two chorale preludes that Bach composed
on Allein Gott in der Höh. But since few people know that tune today, we’ll need
some preparation first. Here’s the plan. Click the following link and play the six
“interpretations,” in the right-hand column (in blue). The first four will get the
melody firmly in your ears. Then the last two, the chorale preludes, will develop it
in a flowery way, as does the subject of this fugue. Explore! Enjoy! Here is
some “glorious” music to be heard!
Explore Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’.
So let us review. The subject of this fugue develops the first phrase of the
chorale, “Only to God on high be glory,” which melody evolved from a thousandyear-old chant that was used for Easter Sunday, a day when Christians affirm
their hope that one day they, like Christ, will rise to life again from the dead. I
can imagine Bach affirming this hope, in words, from his Luther Bible of 1545:
und warten auf die selige Hoffnung
and wait for the blessed hope
und
Erscheinung der Herrlichkeit
and the appearance of glory (glorious appearing)
des großen Gottes und unsers Heilandes, Jesu Christi.
of the great God and our
Savior,
Jesus Christ.
Titus 2:1
But Bach was a man of few words. His medium was music. How might he
have affirmed this hope musically, perhaps even in this fugue? Is this even
possible? Is this not a wordless, autonomous and absolute bit of pure music,
with no extra-musical associations of any kind?
This is a hot question that is not without debate and controversy. There have
been those, like the Bach biographer Phillip Spitta (1841-1894), who have
insisted that any pictorial associations are accidental, and should be ignored. By
contrast, there were those like Bach’s other biographer Albert Schweitzer (18751965), who believed that Bach was a painter of pictures in tones, and that his
4.
music represents concrete images, it being impossible to interpret rightly without
understanding its graphic implications. Even today this debate continues.
For the sake of demonstration, let’s follow the Schweitzer path. Here are the
facts in evidence. This fugue has four instances of a melody that Bach is known
♭
♮ (or ♭ac♮ if you
to have used as his musical signature. That motif is B -A-C- B
please). Here they are:
The soprano of mm. 7-8 and mm. 8-9, have transpositions of HCAB (the
BACH motif backward), as does the alto of mm. 17-18. The alto of mm. 23-24
has a transposition of BACH forward, with this one also combined with a
chromatic ascent of five semitones (I will explain this in a moment). Bach
included his name motif in only seven of the 48 fugues in the Well-Tempered
Clavier. Of the seven, this is one of the more important.
Did Bach here include these motifs in order to represent his own person? Are
his intentions even relevant? These are the questions that people ask, and
which you must answer for yourself. While the purpose of these motifs can be
argued, there is no question that they exist, and in a musical way. This
proposition is indisputable, since the motifs are indeed present. So we can say
with absolute certainty that Bach intended for these motifs to be heard in this
very fugue. As to why, we have only theories.
But what of that chromatic ascent? It would seem to be the perfect pictorial
representation, or “word painting” (as often called), of resurrection. There are
three of these, one in each voice: alto (m. 10), bass (mm. 20-21), and soprano
(mm. 23-24). That last fragment is the only one, of the three, to which Bach
attached his name.
Bach did indeed use this chromatic ascent of five semitones, graphically, in
other works. However, he did not use it in direct association with the
resurrection, at least so far as I know. By contrast, he associated it with the
incarnation, in the CREDO of the Mass in B minor, in his setting of the words: et
homo factus est – “and he (Jesus) was made man.” In the CONFITEOR of the
Mass, as well as the Crucifixus, he also used its melodic inversion (five
descending semitones) in association with the words “dead” and “crucified”
respectively.
A more convincing argument for resurrection can be made from a little-known
canon that Bach wrote in 1747 for one of his students. In BWV 1077 Bach
combined both the descending AND ascending forms of the chromatic scale,
interpreting that gesture with these words: Symbolum Christos coronabit
crucigeros (“Symbol: Christ will crown those who carry his cross”). Since Bach
elsewhere associated the descending form with death, it stands to reason that its
opposite, the ascending form, could mean resurrection.
Regardless of how one interprets the five rising semitones, it is an excellent
example of what composers in Bach’s day called a passus duriusculus, which
means “passage of difficult steps.” This motif was difficult not only to hear, but
also to compose. It is comparatively easy to harmonize five falling half steps, but
5.
to turn them around and make them rise again demands a composer of
extraordinary ability – one who has mastered the art of counterpoint. That’s just
the way that music works.
If it is your conclusion that Bach chose to personify himself in this fugue, in
association with a “passage of difficult steps,” possibly representing the
resurrection, then it would be significant that he sounded his name three times,
backwards and dissociated from two instances of the chromatic ascent, BEFORE
he united the two melodies with each other. Precisely at the same moment, in
the last sixteenth note of mm. 23-24, which begins the last hearing of these two
motifs, the composer at last joined them in counterpoint. Recalling the saying of
his canon BWV 1077 –“this is a symbol of Christ who will crown those who carry
his cross”— one can almost hear the composer say, in tones not words: “I
Johann Sebastian Bach have chosen to carry the cross so that I, too, may wear
the crown of life.”
Is this farfetched or what? No, I don’t think so. If there is one fact of which
the student of Bach can be certain, it is that the composer fairly shouted his
purpose to glorify God alone through the art of counterpoint and composition.
After all, he wrote the letters S.D.G. (standing for Soli Deo Gloria, “Only to God
be the glory”) after many of his works, including the fugue in B minor at the end
of the WTC, book 1. Here we encounter, again, that word “glorify.”
There is one more word with which we must conclude. Yes it is true that the
subject of this fugue elaborates on the first phrase of Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei
Ehr’. The first word of that chorale is Allein, which means “Alone.” In sum, the
subject, developing as it does the melody of Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’
(“Only to God on high be glory”), can be heard as Bach’s musical essay on his
lifelong theme: Soli Deo Gloria (“Only to God be the glory”). For there is indeed a
language of flowers!
For ‫[ ל‬Hebrew character lamed] is on the petals of all flowers.
For the doubling of flowers is the improvement of the gardner’s talent.
For the flowers are great blessings.
For the Lord made a Nosegay in the meadow with his disciples
and preached upon the lily.
For the angels of God took it out of his hand and carried it to the Height.
For a man cannot have publick spirit, who is void of private benevolence.
For there is no Height in which there are not flowers.
For flowers have great virtues for all the senses.
For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.
For the flowers have their angels even the words of God’s Creation.
For the warp and woof of flowers are worked by perpetual moving spirits.
For flowers are good both for the living and the dead.
For there is a language of flowers.
For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers.
For elegant phrases are nothing but flowers.
For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.
For flowers are medicinal.
6.
For flowers are musical in ocular harmony.
For the right names of flowers are yet in heaven.
God make gard’ners better nomenclators.
For the Poorman’s nosegay is an introduction to a Prince.
Christopher Smart
Jubilate Agno, from fragment B,3
7.