Written late in his life, J. S. Bach's The Art of Fugue has long been
admired--in some quarters revered--as 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 Fugue, revealing the
special structures that supported the 1993 reconstruction. Bach's
Testament investigates the reconstruction's metaphysical dimensions,
focusing on the quadruple fugue. As a summary of Zoltán Göncz's
extensive research over many years, which resulted in the completion of
the fugue, this work explores the complex combinatorial, philosophical
and theological considerations that inform its structure. Bach's
Testament is ideally suited not only to Bach scholars and musicologists
but also intellectual historians with particular interests in
18th-century religious and philosophical ideas.
