BACHdimensional – [the electronic art of fugue]

The first realized live-project of Klangspiegel is Bach‘s »Art of Fugue« his last unfinished composition.

Since it’s date of origin around 1750 this collection of 16 fugues and 4 canons comes along with myths: as mathematics with tones it was not present after Bach’s death. In the first years of the 20th century this composition was rediscovered in several forms of appearance: as a solo-work played on organ or piano and as transcriptions for different instrumental-ensembles.

[the electronic art of fugue]
is a new instrumentation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s »Art of Fugue« for abstract and concrete electronic sounds. The transformation in this contemporary soundscape refreshes the historic piece of music and illustrates the complex musical structure by using significant sounds for the polyphonic texture. For the first time a consequent four-channel sound projection is used in live-performances.

 

Excerpt from Glenn Gould »The Well-Tempered Listener«

»I would like to try … a recording […], presented in four-corner stereo, a speaker in each corner of the room; it would be a totally unreal performance and one would not in any sense be confronted with the spectacle or the sense of the awareness of somebody up there on the podium playing at you. You would be in the centre of the problem, so to speak, and I think that’s really what the listener should try to do and the way in which performance experiment with Bach must continue. […] I’m sure it would change the listener’s whole notion of what Bach was, what the Baroque represented, what that whole incredibly involved experience of Baroque counterpoint really meant.«
(On February 18, 1970, CBC-TV broadcast an interview that Gould had recorded the previous year with Curtis Davis, the director of cultural programming for National Educational Television, »The Well-Tempered Listener«.)

 

Titel of the single parts

spaces of statues …
1. … the mystical
2. … the substantial
3. … the mirrored
4. … the serenely
spaces of fluctuation …
5. … the emerging
6. … the mechanical
7. … the ordered
spaces of figures …
8. … the meandering
9. … the skipping
10. … the striding
11. … the touching
spaces of mirrors and grades …
12. … the symmetrical mirrors (regular)
13. … the crossed mirrors (regular)
14. … the increasing grades
15. … the periodical ascending grades
16. … the escalating grades
17. … the erratic grades
18. … the crossed mirrors (inverted)
19. … the symmetrical mirrors (inverted)
space of recumbent motion and decomposition

 

Titel [the electronic art of fugue] – »Art of Fugue« (synopsis)

spaces of statues …
-
Gruppe der einfachen Fugen
1. … the mystical
-
Contrapunctus 1
2. … the substantial
-
Contrapunctus 2
3. … the mirrored
-
Contrapunctus 3
4. … the serenely
-
Contrapunctus 4
spaces of fluctuation …
-
Gruppe der Spiegelfugen
5. … the emerging
-
Contrapunctus 5
6. … the mechanical
-
Contrapunctus 6
7. … the ordered
-
Contrapunctus 7
spaces of figures …
-
Gruppe der mehrthemigen Fugen
8. … the meandering
-
Contrapunctus 8
9. … the skipping
-
Contrapunctus 9
10. … the striding
-
Contrapunctus 10
11. … the touching
-
Contrapunctus 11
spaces of mirrors and grades …
-
Gruppe der Spiegelfugen und Kanons
12. … the symmetrical mirrors (regular)
-
Contrapunctus 12 (rectus)
13. … the crossed mirrors (regular)
-
Contrapunctus 13 (rectus)
14. … the increasing grades
-
Augmentationskanon
15. … the periodical ascending grades
-
Oktavkanon
16. … the escalating grades
-
Dezimkanon
17. … the erratic grades
-
Duodezimkanon
18. … the crossed mirrors (inverted)
-
Contrapunctus 13 (inversus)
19. … the symmetrical mirrors (inverted)
-
Contrapunctus 12 (inversus)
20. space of recumbent motion and decomposition
-
Fuga a tre sogetti