Finally, Chapter Three begins by examining the relationship between chorale and fugue and by suggesting a possible pedagogical method of transitioning between the two. A growing body of sources from Bach’s circle containing multiple basslines under each chorale support the hypothesis that Bach’s teaching also included this technique. Next, Chapter Two explores the implications of the recent attribution of the Sibley Chorale Book to Bach’s circle and calls for a greater awareness of a generic distinction between chorale harmonization in the ornate, four-part, vocal Choralgesang style and the simpler, thoroughbass- and keyboard-centered Choralgesang style, which is in essence only two-voice (soprano and bass). Chapter one also explores the two most significant aspects of Heinichen’s thoroughbass theory: what I call “contrapuntal function” and “scale-degree function,” which are combined in Heinichen’s method of improvising a prelude. Bach may have attributed such significance to thoroughbass because it enables a single player to control a polyphonic texture in real time through the simplification, synthesis, and embodiment of traditional contrapuntal teachings. Chapter One argues that the primary reason thoroughbass emerged in Germany c.1700 as the dominant pedagogical and compositional method is that thoroughbass promotes an understanding of compositional relationships in a manner that tablature does not.
Bach, his father’s teaching involved three topic areas: thoroughbass, chorale, and fugue, each of which receives a chapter in this study. For these reasons, Heinichen’s conception of thoroughbass, which differs significantly from late-eighteenth-century thoroughbass theory, plays a foundational role in this reconstruction of compositional pedagogy in Bach’s circle. Additional support for linking Bach and Heinichen comes from my discovery that the anonymous “Vorschriften und Grundsätze” (1738), which originates from Bach’s circle, includes the same table of “fundamental” thoroughbass figures as Heinichen’s earlier 1711 treatise. Given that Bach knew Heinichen’s treatise and that both men associate thoroughbass with composition, this study posits that Bach’s Fundamental-Regeln are related to Heinichen’s rationalization of modern contrapuntal licenses in relation to a “fundamental,” stile antico background. Heinichen did in his treatise, Der General-Bass in der Composition (1728). I have discovered that, in an autograph manuscript likely used in his lessons, Bach used the words licentia and fundamental to rationalize a contrapuntal phenomenon known as anticipationes transitus in precisely the same manner as J. According to Bach, the Fundamental-Regeln (fundamental principles) of composition are derived from thoroughbass and the keyboard. (The file is too large for the Academia website.) The present work investigates the compositional pedagogy of J. 2: Examples, Appendices, and Bibliography. In both eras, the practice of interpretation coincided with and affected the reading of the genre's temporality. Whereas musicians of the early eighteenth century read counterpoint and the fugue allegorically and annulled time through the conceptual precision of the allegorical image, musicians of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries read the fugue symbolically and worked time into their interpretive process.
Composers sought to invest the fugue with a new dramatic and teleological thrust suitable to modern times, and critically minded musicians changed their interpretive method so as to emphasize the passage of time. The shift involved both a change in the technique of counterpoint and a change in the way counterpoint was interpreted. Despite the persistence of this critical topos, musicians shifted their approach to it around the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Throughout the history of Western music, musicians have almost invariably discussed the keyboard fugue and other extreme forms of polyphony as signs of something that transcends human subjectivity.
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