Until 1749, Bach worked on The Art of Fugue, which was published posthumously in 1751. Meinolf Brüser’s book Es ist alles Windhauch sheds light—like a musicological detective novel—on the mystery surrounding the final fugue of the score, left unfinished by the composer. An investigation to understand the circumstances and silences that surround this work, and more broadly, the thought of the late Bach. Total Baroque Magazine invites you to discover this book through a selection of brief excerpts as part of our “Highlights”  section.

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We have already referred to several written testimonies that are significant in the discussion surrounding the ending of The Art of Fugue. The “Notice” prefacing the first edition (1751) and the Nekrolog (1754) make specific statements about the creation of the fugue BWV 1080/19 and the chorale prelude that concludes the printed edition. They also provide information on how these compositions came to be included in the publication.  

Additionally, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote a Notabene on the fifth page of the autograph of fugue BWV 1080/19, noting that the author (Bach) had died as he was writing this fugue. Since the authors of the “Notice” and the Nekrolog were either part of Bach’s immediate circle in Leipzig, or belonged to his family or group of close friends, these texts were long considered trustworthy and served as a foundation for interpretations of the conclusion of The Art of Fugue. Even after some claimed or implied events were disproven, they continued to shape the discourse in various ways, with some accusing the authors of either honest errors or the deliberate creation of myths.  

From a methodological point of view, such textual evidence bears the risk of establishing preconceived ideas. Knowing these texts, we are inclined to start from them when attempting to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the composition or publication of The Art of Fugue. They became the basis for most assumptions about its ending: for example, the idea of an interruption due to illness, the incompleteness of a quadruple fugue, or the belief that the chorale prelude was added by the editors—and many others.  

We will first present these testimonies, as well as two more, in chronological order.  

The oldest and likely most important is the “Notice” printed on the back of the title page in the first edition of The Art of Fugue (see illustration 1). It is uncertain who wrote this text. It is often assumed to have been Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Supporting this theory is his direct and significant involvement in the publication, as evidenced by an errata list he compiled and a subsequent sales offer he published for the printing plates.  

In the second edition, this “Notice” was replaced by a foreword written by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, who likely received the commission from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The foreword, now printed on a separate page, incorporates the original “Notice” in the following form:  

“Nothing is more regrettable than the fact that, due to his eye disease and the death that followed shortly thereafter, he was unable to complete and publish it himself. He was overtaken by death while working on his final fugue, in which he introduced himself by name in the third section. However, there is reason to hope that the added four-voiced chorale—which the deceased man dictated spontaneously to a friend in his blindness—might compensate for this loss and satisfy the admirers of his muse. That all the different types of fugues and counterpoints presented here are built upon the same main subject in D minor, or transposed down a minor third, is immediately obvious to any knowledgeable connoisseur.”  

We also find a reference to the circumstances of the ending of The Art of Fugue in the Nekrolog of 1754, which states the following regarding the printed works:  

“8) The Art of Fugue. This is the author’s last work, containing all kinds of counterpoint and canons, based on a single principal subject. His final illness prevented him from completing the penultimate fugue according to his plan, and from composing the final fugue, which was to contain four subjects and be developed in such a way that each of the four voices could be inverted note by note. This work only came to light after the death of the author.”  

The Notabene written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach on the fifth page of the autograph of BWV 1080/19 cannot be dated precisely. It is sometimes assumed that it was added later, possibly in the 1780s. It reads: “NB: Over this fugue, where the name B-A-C-H is placed in the countersubject, the author died.”  

Finally, we cite a short passage from Forkel’s biography of Bach, published in Leipzig in 1802:  

“The penultimate fugue has three subjects; in the third, the composer identifies himself by the name b-a-c-h. However, this fugue was interrupted by the composer’s eye illness, and since the operation failed, he was unable to complete it. It is said that he intended to use four subjects in the final fugue, invert them in all four voices, and thereby conclude his great work.”  

Musique baroque ?

Before we undertake a fundamental evaluation of the evidential value of these documents at the end of this study, we would like to address some general problems with these testimonies in advance. In the methodology of material history, such statements by witnesses are considered clues to possible events. Yet witness accounts are, in themselves, a weak form of evidence because they may be affected not only by intentional misrepresentation but also by unintentional error.  

Even aside from that, we can observe that the evidentiary value of these textual passages is low for several reasons. The authors of these texts were, in essential respects, at best indirect witnesses to the events they describe. If, for example, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had indeed written the “Notice,” he—serving at the time as court harpsichordist to Frederick the Great in Berlin—would not have been present to witness the interruption of the last fugue. Nor would he have been present during a supposed dictation by his blind father. He would not have been a direct eyewitness, and we do not know where his assumptions came from.  

Even if reports had been passed on to him, they may have contained inaccuracies or errors. Consider the detail about the supposed spontaneous dictation by the blind father. We do not know what the “friend” referred to in the text might have reported (if he did at all). Did Bach dictate the entire chorale prelude, which is based at its core on an earlier composition? Or did he only dictate a new introduction, new interludes, and a conclusion? Or did he, in his blindness, simply instruct that an existing composition be reused?

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