Search - Bach, Moroney :: Art of Fugue

Good, but scholarship gets in the music's way

DAVID BRYSON | 06/11/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Moroney's scholarship and competence are undoubted, and his treatment of the Art of the Fugue is musical and never boring - but never attractive either. His fiddling of the order of the fugues/canons is gratuitous (in spite of his close-minded arguments), and his own completion of the final fugue is abrupt. Generally, he's too dogmatic; he has a point to prove and Bach had better not get in his way."

DIVINE MATHEMATICS

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 09/05/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Who coined this phrase in relation to Bach I have long forgotten, and I have no idea whether it conveyed the same meaning to whoever it was as it does to me. Bach has a human face, he has a superhuman face, and he has a face that is inhuman but not inhumane, to borrow a memorable description I have seen applied to Stapledon. This last is the face he presents to us in The Art of Fugue. It is nothing new from him. Many of the fugues from the 48 and the pieces comprising The Musical Offering are in this category too, but The Art of Fugue is unique in the single-mindedness and severity of its presentation. It seems to me futile to look for expression in any ordinary sense in these wonderful musical theorems. They are sublime much as pure mathematics is sublime, they have a sense about them of exploring a universe at once mysterious and utterly orderly, and they are manifestly creative art where such a claim will always be disputed whenever it is made for Newton or Gauss.This is Bach's last composition, his final submission of a technical work to the Mizler society of composers whose members also included Telemann and Handel himself. He did not quite live to finish it, but he got far enough with the gigantic last fugue for Moroney (and before him Tovey and for all I know others) to be able to construct a conjectural ending. This particular performance comes near some kind of ideal of my own concept of the composition. Moroney's realisation is severe, as in my opinion it must be or the work will simply be cheapened. Technically he is flawless (anything less would be desecration) and there is the detached and (in the right sense) dehumanised feel about it all that seems to me to be essential.The recorded sound is admirable. Moroney makes a couple of changes to the printed sequence of the fugues, something that is historically legitimate and appropriate to his particular concept. He plays #3 before #2; and much more importantly he delays the colossal #8 to a sequence just before the equally colossal #11, building up a huge climax by doing so. He ends the work abruptly as the grim reaper ended it; and then he appends his own completed version of #14 as a codicil after the four canons. One can understand this, and cd technology makes it possible now simply to skip the pointless truncated stump.Moroney contributes an admirable liner note, scholarly but lucid and brief, to the production. I strongly recommend listening to this work with the help of Tovey. You will find an excellent short commentary in the Chamber Music volume of his Essays in Musical Analysis, and if you are brave enough you can then progress to his great Companion to the work."

Excellent Concept

DAVID BRYSON | 11/23/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is an excellent approach to the universe of Bach's "Kunst der Fuge". Moroney's interpretation is severe, thus matching the structure of Bachs last big composition. Moroney's concept makes sense, although presumably no one knows for sure whether the assumptions his concept is based upon are correct. Moroney realizes the complete recording on one harpsichord, leaving two(?) pieces aside (that are often played by two harpsichords) which he considers being transcriptions/revisions of two "Art of Fugue" mirror fugues, and thus not belonging to the original work. That is just one of his assumptions. But in spite of the vagueness, these assumptions reveal a thinking performer with an interesting approach to one of Bach greatest works. Moroney's own completition of Contrapunctus XIV (he plays it at the end as a kind of bonus track and humble suggestion) rounds it off to a recording really worth listening. Strongly recommended!"