Description
Book SynopsisWritten late in his life, J. S. Bach's The Art of Fugue has long been admiredin some quarters reveredas one of his masterworks. Its last movement, Contrapunctus 14, went unfinished, and the enigma of its incompleteness still preoccupies scholars and musical conductors alike. In 1881, Gustav Nottebohm discovered that the three subjects of the movement could be supplemented by a fourth. In 1993, Zoltán Göncz revealed that Bach had planned the passage that would join the four subjects in an entirely unique way. This section has not survived, but, as Göncz notes, it must have been ready in the earliest phase of composition since Bach had created the expositions of the first three subjects from its disjointed parts. Göncz then boldly took on the task of reconstructing the original template by putting together the once separate pieces.In Bach's Testament: On the Philosophical and Theological Background of The Art of Fugue, Göncz probes the philosophic-theological background of The Art of Fug
