Unlike the cosmopolitan careers of his contemporaries Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann, the life of J.S. Bach was – on the surface – rather dull and uneventful. He never left German-speaking territory, had a large family he had to provide for, and lived virtually all of his life in a small area in Saxony and Thuringia. One of his few trips away from his place of work was made during his youth, specifically to meet and to hear the artistry of Dietrich Buxtehude, the Danish organist/composer who lived in Lübeck. He overstayed and was punished by his employer when he returned home.
Unlike the composers mentioned above, only a very small portion of Bach’s voluminous output was published during his lifetime. He was known less as a composer than as an organist, an improviser, and a teacher.
One of his published pieces was “Musical Offering,” a strange but masterly collection of contrapuntal works, for a small ensemble. This astonishing, intricate work was composed in the space of two weeks, immediately following a visit to the court of King Frederick the Great of Prussia. Frederick was a devoted amateur flutist and had nightly chamber music sessions in his palace. In his employ as court harpsichordist was Bach’s son Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, and father Bach made the visit, along with his older son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, not only to see his son but also to check out the organs in the Berlin area.
On hearing that the elder Bach was visiting, King Frederick invited him to one of his chamber music evenings to see and hear his new-fangled instrument, the fortepiano (an early version of our piano) and to improvise for the court musicians. The King challenged Bach to improvise a fugue on a particular melody of the King’s making. The Three-voiced Ricercare (a fugue) that begins “Musical Offering” is probably Bach’s written-down memory of that improvisation. It begins with the “Royal Theme” which Frederick had devised. Upon Bach’s return home to Leipzig, his fertile imagination typically found that melody inspiration for much more: a six-voice fugue, ten ingeniously diverse canons, and a gloriously elaborate, 4-movement trio sonata. Unlike his hundreds of multi-movement church cantatas, orchestral works and keyboard solos, most of which were published a full century after Bach’s death, the composer proudly oversaw the publication of “Musical Offering.” He sent a dedication copy to Frederick, which remained in the King’s library unopened.
Aston Magna has recorded the complete “Musical Offering,” available on Centaur CD 2295, or online
