Bach: The Musical Offering by Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen (2021 Remastered, Vienna 1965)
1 disc(s) - 17 track(s)
Total length: 00:50:09
The Musical Offering includes 17 or 23 different pieces (depending on whether one counts the two ricercare as single or multi-part compositions.) For just six of them Bach had indicated the instrumentation. The miraculous beauty of this music is itself sufficient justification to orchestrate the other eleven pieces, some of which were simply sketched out like a sort of musical puzzle.
Bach, who loved this kind of game, left it to the curious to figure it all out. Vuataz's version has nothing in common with his orchestration of the Art of the Fugue (also at Scherchen's request): in fact, this orchestration is based on the principle of an orchestra physically arranged like an organ, with four separate keyboards: the entire polyphony is subdivided accordingly.
The origins of the Musical Offering are the stuff of legend. Bach's third son Carl-Philipp-Emanuel had been hired as a musician in the chapel of Frederic Il, the King of Prussia. The king repeatedly expressed his wish that the famous Kantor of Leipzig come to his Court. In May 1747, Bach accepted his request and came. Frederic asked the Maestro to try out all his keyboard instruments.
Bach invited the King to give him the theme for a fugue, which he then improvised. The King asked Bach to take his theme and compose a single fugue in six parts. But Bach realised the King's theme couldn't really handle this difficult request, so he proposed a fugue in six parts on a theme of his own choice. In fact, problems with the royal theme became obvious as soon as Bach came to the strettos - (overlapping fugal entries).
The king's theme of the Offering offered no real possibilities for natural strettos. The frue subject of the fugue is in fact a melody so well conceived that at the end of the work one realises that the conclusion is contained in its initial presentation. On July 7, 1747, Bach sent the King eight pieces including the Ricercare in three parts.
Later, Bach sent three more pieces, including a Ricercare in six parts. Finally, Bach sent a last shipment of a Sonata in trio in four movements. We don't now how the Prussian King reacted to these compositions in which all the canons are in the forms of musical puzzles, which has led several musicologists Albert Schweitzer amongst them - to declare that they are an intellectual conundrum.
Later, Bach sent three more pieces, including a Ricercare in six parts. Finally, Bach sent a last shipment of a Sonata in trio in four movements. We don't now how the Prussian King reacted to these compositions in which all the canons are in the forms of musical puzzles, which has led several musicologists Albert Schweitzer amongst them - to declare that they are an intellectual conundrum.
It would be wrong to pretend that some canons are not extremely abstract but this characteristic stems from certain rare associations of different musical sounds. Roger Vuataz later said: "The Royal theme ofthe Offering is a bridge with three unequal arches, its two endsfirmly rooted in the bedrock of the tonic scale. That in itselfmakes it a closed theme that contains its own unity instead ofopening up towards the dominant and letting the answer return to the tonic. Through the simple artifice of a modulating appendix (an added bar) Bach finds an answer which also satisfies tonal laws."
Scherchen recorded this work in 1950, in the Vuataz version. He probably wasn't satisfied with this release, so he recorded his own orchestration for Westminster, in stereo in 1964. (Similarly with the Art of the Fugue: after having first played the Graeser version as early as February 1928, then his friend Vuataz's version, he made his own - extraordinary - arrangement which he premiered in Lugano on May 14, 1965).
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