Fugues Without Words: A Hearing of Four Fugues from "The Well-Tempered Clavier" as

Passion Music
Author(s): Timothy A. Smith
Source: Bach , 2009, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2009), pp. 45-66
Published by: Riemenschneider Bach Institute

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 Fugues Without Words:
A Hearing of Four Fugues from
The Well-Tempered Clavier
as Passion Music1

Timothy A. Smith

As concerns the playing of chorales, I was

instructed by my teacher, Capellmeister Bach,
who is still living, not to play the songs merely
offhand but according to the Affect of the
words.

Johnn Gotthilf Ziegler (1746)

tions between four fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier and the

This tions St. MatthewSt. article
Matthewbetween
Passion.offers Passion.in question
The fugues four a circumstantial The fugues fugues in The in argument question Well-Tempered for are motivic those Clavier in connec- and c-sharp the
are those in c-sharp
minor and b minor of Book I, and the f-sharp minor and b minor of
Book II. No doubt the most provocative place to begin threading
such a connection would be with Charles Burney's curious censure of
Bach's fugai technique in his 1789 General Histoiy of Music.

[Johann] Sebastian Bach . . . disdained facility so much, that his

genius never stooped to the easy and graceful. I never have seen a
fugue by this learned and powerful author upon a motivo , that is
natural and chantant, or even an easy and obvious passage, that is
not loaded with crude and difficult accompaniments.2

Adapted from a paper read at the University of Glasgow, April 25, 2009, in
conjunction with a study day on "Bach's Passions" sponsored by the Society for
Music Analysis.
2Burney, A General History of Music, III, 110, as quoted in Yo Tornita, "Bach's Credo
in England: An Early History," Bach Studies from Dublin , eds. Anne Leahy and Yo
Tornita (Dublin: Four Courts Press Ltd., 2004), 206.

45

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 46 Bach

What seems quaint

no place in music
sinister, or even th
Bach was sometim
oddness, revealing e
we shall see, the ob
and the fugue its r

Regarding Burney's
The Well-Tempere
(Example la). Its su
fourth, a melody th
today. For Bach, h
demands its hearin
concern, it is also t
the fervor of inquir
introductory gestur
awaits the arrival of other motives for its resolution.

Example 1. (a) 1722, c-sharp minor subject WTC I; (b) 1727, St.
Matthew Passion "Laß ihn kreuzigen"; (с) c-sharp minor obligo WTC
I; (d) c-sharp minor authorial inclusions WTC I

The promised resolution arrives in the fugue's obligo (Example lc),

a cambiata figure in counterpoint with the subject. This outwardly new
idea is actually the old motivo reinvented - in rhythmic diminution of

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 47

its contour, with transformation of its foul fourth to a third. To s

it may seem too bold a thought to describe Bach's method here as
"salvific" power of counterpoint applied to the lost, the implausibl
the misshapen, and grotesque. We shall return to this fascinat
fugue in a moment, but dare not leave it without first having obser
that its obligo represents not merely the solution to a musical prob
but the composer himself (Example Id).

Another solution to the diminished fourth is echoed in music tha

Bach would compose, five years later, in the St. Matthew Pass
paired turba fugues on "Let him be crucified" (Example lb). H
one might suspect that even Burney would have praised Bach's sett
of the affective word "crucify" with a diminished fourth. But if fit
here, why should any diminished fourth in Bach be thought stran
Obviously, words do make a difference, but is it Burney's alleg
that Bach was a "learned and powerful author" of texted music and
one insensible to nature in works for the clavier?3 This would ind
be the case if our examples had no connection to each other.
however, they come of the same purpose, then the latter su
interprets the former, with neither being odd.

The prospect of one fugue interpreting another raises

intriguing question. If it is true that the c-sharp minor fugue is pa
music, then is Bach's quotation of its obligo in the f-sharp minor fu
of Book II our cue to hear that work in the same way? Remarkably
these paired oblighi number among the rare motifs in The Well-Tem
Clavier that receive development in more than one fugue.4 Compa

^The hypothesis of this article represents the opposite of Johann Adolph Sch
complaint that Bach wrote choral music too instrumentally, with the pr
argument being that the "unnatural motivo " exists, in Bach, for the very rhet
purpose that Scheibe accused him of being ignorant. The reader will recall o
Scheibe's objections is that Bach "demands that singers and instrumentalists s
be able to do with their throats and instruments whatever he can play on the cl
But this is impossible" (BD II, no. 400). See the New Bacò Reader, eds. Hans T.
and Arthur Mendel, rev. and enlarged by Christoph Wolff (New York: W
Norton, 1998), 338.
''The A-flat fugue of the WTC И employs the same obligo in an ascending seque
The various genera of counterpoint {oblighi) are treated in David Ledbetter's bo
The Well-Tempered Clavier (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002
96. This particular figure is classified in Angelo Berardi's Documenti armonia (of

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48 Bach

Example 2 with th
twenty years befor

Example 2. 1742 WT
Note relationship w
Book 1 (Example l

Now that we are

note its two lament
eighteenth-century
bears reminder tha
in this very idea -
by melodic inversio
Bach would describe
who will crown tho

Bach made a copy, VBN

transposition. In the f-s
sharp minor of Book I,
steps of the same key. L
wit or conceit, hence a
the c-sharp minor fugu
a descending diatonic
ascending chromatic f
laments, in /¿«'г melod
2 treats the obligo simi
BWV 1077 (see footnote
sharp minor fugue mim
Not counting its melod
41 times in 14 episodes.
times - the first instan
5In BWV 1077 the can
follower voice. Beneath t
(literally, "Symbol: Chr

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 49

Example За, where the c-sharp minor fugue inverts its lamen
superimposing it upon the obligo , which has also been inverted.

Example 3. The lament, 1722, Well-Tempered Clavier Book I,

fugue in c- sharp-minor, (a) in the melodic inversion of the
obligo y (b) in its descending form.

The examples thus far have modeled chiasmus, chromatics,

the composer's name in tones. To that list, presendy, we'll ad

journal will require no reminder of Bach's use of Symbolům , too, in the Mass
Minor. It bears observation that the historical Symbolům conveys a meaning dis
from the modern English "symbol." In the tradition of St. Ambrose (fourth-cent
and adhered to through the Middle Ages), we are informed that each Ap
contributed one article to the Symbolům Apostolorum while under the inspiration o
Holy Ghost at Pentecost. Also of fourth-century provenance, Rufinus wrote tha
Aposdes "for many just reasons decided that this rule of faith should be calle
Symbol." According to Rufinus, the Greek öl)|ißoAov ("symbol'*) means: "indi
i.e., a token or password by which Christians might recognize each other, and co
that is to say an offering made up of separate contributions" (from The Ca
Encyclopedia). In the third-century correspondence of St. Cyprian and St. Firmili
word Symbolům had been used more simply as a Trinitarian symbol and confess
of faith prior to baptism. Either way, the "symbol" is both personal and corpor
an affirmation of one's own belief in concert with others of the same. In accord with

historical usage then, one might render Bach's Symbolům: Christus Coronabit Crucígeros
as: "This is my belief, in agreement with Christians of all times and places: Christ will
crown those who carry his cross," (see footnote 14).

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 50 Bach

fourth idea - the "Q

to include the Cruc
minor, such motifs
Bach's passion mus
with words. Accordi
present author has
the approach as the

The obvious allusio

music alone can car
said, what we are re
assodation of motifs
might argue that a
part chorales.6 Alt
without words, so
harmonized with s
precedence in the o
Bach's day, it bears
every Sunday and o
them, and they cou
automatically to mi
the theoretical liter
chorales as the rhet
is recognized to hav

6In his venerable essay

As we speak of chora
poetry, we cannot hel
works - a symbolism
does any other single d
in the life of a church
Bach was a cantor. Con
chorale, and you will understand Bach's specific use of it

granted that almost every listener knew these chorales, we know

association was by no means unconscious, that, as a matter of fac
quotations directed his thoughts into definite channels. . . . W
Bach leads a melody close to a well-known chorale tune, we ca
that many of those who listened for the first time to the aria (in
or in another work in which allusion to a chorale is made) assoc
new music with the old, the free invention with the traditional
tional hymn. (See http://www.oldandsold.com/articles02 /jsbach4
7Spitta found but six cantatas to be without direct or oblique allusio

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 5 1

Johann Gotthilf Ziegler, has reminded us in the quotation at the

beginning of this article, the musician's compositional and improvisa-
donai duty was fidelity to the text. With Ziegler's maxim no doubt in
mind, Robin A. Leaver has observed of published versions of the
four-part chorales that omit the words:

Without the texts one can state in theoretical terms what is

happening, but not why Bach chose these extravagant harmonies.

In knowing the text it becomes clear why he chose what at first
sight seems an extraordinary harmonic route to take. And then it is
not a question of simple word painting but the more significant
expression of a theological concept.8

Before applying the "without-words" method to another fugue,

one must be plain; this essay is not about to claim proof of any
referential or even correlative association between any of its examples.
It explores an intuition, really, and the critic might well object that it
offers no more of a case than the symmetry of two novels, let us say
by Dostoevsky and Hemingway, each having its character who says,
"Please pass the sugar."9 Whereas the argument is abductive, it is
logical nonetheless, and possessed of a certain power of explanation.10
The theory is simply this: it is reasonable to hear affect in non-texted

8Leaver, e-mail correspondence with the author, May 6, 2009.

9In his short story, "Three Versions of Judas," the Argentinean poet, Jorge Luis
Borges, observed the proper role of intuition as preceding proof in the formulation
of hypotheses: "Whoever peruses this essay should know that it states only
Runeberg' s conclusions, not his dialectic or his proof. Someone may observe that no
doubt the conclusion preceded the 'proofs.' For who gives himself up to looking for
proofs of something he does not believe in or the prediction of which he does not
care about?"
10Again quoting Rosenzvald (see footnote 6): "That which musicians commonly call
musical logic is by no means all we should be aware of, if we want to understand the
great, the architecturally beautiful forms of the cantor of St. Thomas. In order to do
justice to the logic of his proceedings, we must never confine ourselves to the analysis
of his music from the point of view of motives, themes, rhythms, harmonic fabric,
contrapuntal textures, and other purely musical devices, but we must always derive
the logic of the musical inspiration from the words - and not, as shown, only in
purely vocal music but also wherever instruments are used by Bach to illustrate the
religious context of vocal music and, to a large extent, in instrumental music. In turn,
we must not evaluate his poetry as absolute poetry but see it in close connection with
the liturgy, with worship, with Protestantism."

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52 Bach

counterpoint that h
In the case of the c

On then to Bach's s
Passion . Let us ima
duo aria with inte
Having scouted t
contrapuntist once
Well-Tempered Clav
all the clavier work
most likely. Its "d
Ledbetter, had "sev
fullness of human s

We've no need to
that it is chiastic
footnote on this c
taken by the affect
loveliest moments
profound tenderne
its stillness and tra
the angst of the f
which Bach has co

"Ledbetter, Bach's Well-

2002), 228, 332.
Example 4 is the elabo
solid- and dotted-line s
Bach's setting of gefang
merely the counterpoint
pitch classes. The b-m
Matthew , the counterp
analogous, either by r
structure is therefore
voicings for STB and S
is that one can hear dou
as to both contour and
of canon at the fifth.
"capture" of one contou
syllables of Example
contrasting modalities o
double counterpoint.

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 53

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54 BACH

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 55

descending pentachord. To Burney, the b-minor fugue might ha

represented the oddest of the odd - as an eccentric blend of motivos
ever there was.

But let us return to our story, as five years later Bach had th
impulse to quote this lovely music at the very moment, in St. Ma
thew's Gospel, when Jesus would be put into chains (Example 5
The operative word (gefangen) means "captured." At this dramat
point Prof. Burney would again, no doubt, have found it odd, Bach's
choice to quote neither the chromatic subject nor dismal count
subject of the b-minor fugue, but its serene episodic material.
Admittedly, the up-tempo of this quotation has effected a rathe
dramatic transformation of mood. By no stretch of the imagination
could one apply the word "serene." Yet somehow Bach has manage
to retain the compassion and tenderness. Herein lies the brilliance of
the quotation: mid the ruckus of the choir's haltets and bindet nichts, t
soprano and alto recall Gethsemane justly, as the garden it should hav
been, and the unjustness of Jesus' arrest is thereby amplified.

Yet the story continues. Fifteen years later we see Bach putting
the finishing touches on a second cycle of preludes and fugues. Hard
at work on the last fugue, he is determined now to dance. Reachin
into his tool bag of musical memories and techniques over the years
threaded for its quick reclamation of ideas, the composer determines
once more to exploit the gefangen complex (Example 5b). To appreci-
ate the similarity of these excerpts, compare Examples 4 and 5.

Before commenting on the implications of this, let us attempt to

cement a theory of relationship between b-minor fugues by highlight
ing the "Qui tollis contour" to which we have referred (Example
This melody is presaged in David Ledbetter's discussion of Langloz
influence upon Bach in general, and the b-minor fugues of the WTC
in particular. Although Langloz's work predates Bach's Mass in
Minor by two decades, one might be forgiven for having lapsed into
the habit of calling the parenthesized passage of Example 6a the "Qui
tollis contour." In the Mass, both the triad and sixth are minor

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56 Bach

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 57

although one might tentatively posit connection to the St. Matthew's

agonizing "Eli, Eli," where both are major (Example 6b).13

This is all very interesting of course, but it has nothing to do with

our thesis until we've observed that three fugues in The Well-Tempere
Clavier also employ the Qui tollis contour. Not surprisingly, the
include both of the fugues in b minor, as well as the f-sharp minor
Book II with its borrowed obligo from the c-sharp minor of Book
Obviously, this could all be grand coincidence. Obversely, relatio
ships like these are many times purposeful, therefore possessed of a
particular sort of meaning - the direction that we must now explore
Our theory being one of influence between Bach's passion music and
The Well-Tempered Clavier ; one must begin to suspect that the signifie
of chiasmus, chromaticism, the Qui tollis contour, and authori
inclusion, when observed in ample proportion to each other, may be
taken to indicate Bach's intentional reference to Christ's passion
testimony of his own.14

In voicing the word "intention," the present author is of course

well aware that he has touched the third rail of musicologic
discourse, in consequence of which there may be those who wi
dismiss the idea out of hand. To the skeptic he can but offer, in reply
Laurence Dreyfus's cogent rebuttal of the intentional fallacy in T

13Langloz's coupling of this gesture with a lament confirms the passionate subtext
although neither motif is intrinsically the property of passion music perse. Each id
alone could well exemplify Baroque affectation at its finest, and together they stri
precisely the right mood. If for no other reason than that Bach used the former t
set the clause, "who takes away the sins of the world," and the latter in the Crudfixus
then portions of the Mass in В Minor are germane to this article.
14In addition to the practical matter of augmenting the liturgical repertoire, Bach
compositional purpose was to glorify God. This outlook is represented in tw
sources. First, in his repeated dictation to his pupils, from Friedrich Erhard Niedť
Musikalische Handleitung (1706): "The aim and final reason, as of all music, so of th
thorough bass should be none else but the Gory of God and the recreation of t
mind. Where this is not observed, there will be no real music but only a devili
hubbub" (The New Bach Reader ; 17). The second source is the Symbolům canon (BW
1077) where the composer wrote: Domino Possessori bisce notulis commendare se volebat
S. Bach ("By means of these notes J. S. Bach wanted to please God*'), supra footnot
5.

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 58 BACH

Cambridge Companion
underlying assumpti
theory, is that thin
attempts to tell thos
poser's intentions. Se
conjecture has nothin
that commends a wor
has himself devised.1
self-quotations can hav
works to each other. T
of this power, and us
between Bach, his m
power of affectation.

Which returns us t
motivo ." In Bach it
terms with the motivo do indeed lead to the motive - not the musical
one but the composer's. It goes without saying that the recommenda-
tion is one of cognisance here, and not credulity , as the matter of course.
Discerning the purpose of many composers, if not impossible, is at
least tricky. But for Bach it is not all that difficult, really. Historically,
we have the pertinent artifacts, and the tools to interpret them.17 The
primary evidence for a relationship between b-minor fugues of The
Well-Tempered Clavier is musically motivic. By contrast, the primary
evidence for a relationship between said fugues and Christ's passion
is authorially motivic. In support of this interpretation, we have
considered Bach's self-quotations from the earlier c-sharp minor and

15Laurence Dreyfus, "Bachian invention and its mechanisms," The Cambridge

Companion to Bach , ed. John Butt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 171
ff.

16Daniel Melamed writes that "a work of art means what it means, not what its
creator says it does." This observation, while true, is of little help in determining what
the work actually means. On the other hand, Daniel Melamed's research on Bach's
Passions is enormously helpful. Melamed would no doubt agree that we are at least
curious about the creator's ideas about meaning, for what is the artwork itself if not
its creator's idea? Too, there is the possibility that the critic and composer may
actually agree. This being the case, we've no recourse but to affirm the meaningful
existence, though not necessarily the authority, of any authorial claim. (See Melamed,
Hearing Bach's Passions [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 132.)
17See footnotes 5 and 14.

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 59

b-minor fugues of the WTC I, to which the Stè Matthew Passion add
the words "kreuzigen" and "gefangen," and to which Bach added t
melody of his name. In short, the entire aforementioned appear to b
connected to each other, and to Christ's passion, by signifiers bo
musical and authorial. These signifiers integrate marked instances of
chiasmus, chromaticism, th z Qui tollis contour, and authorial inclusio

We shall return to this thought before long. But first, now seem
the right moment to address a knotty problem that our premise, if
be plausible, must engage. The problem is that the b-minor fugues of
the The Well-Tempered Clavier are of singular contrast in style and affec
with the earlier work commonly acknowledged to be passion mus
but the later comprising its contradiction. When conjoined wit
Christ's suffering, the latter is, to borrow Burney's turn of phrase, a
"unnatural motivo ." The reason? It is a lively and joyful dance. Unab
to reconcile the gravitas of the 1722 work with its jovial counterpart
of 1742, most commentators are content to write off the latter
parody. The parody comes to mind because suffering is, on the fa
of it, irreconcilable with the optimism of Bach's farewell fugue to T
Well-Tempered Clavier This is a serious problem. What are we to mak
of Bach's apparent association of Jesus' arrest with the steps of
passepied? Is this really passion music, or simply that species o
creativity sometimes exercised, like God's creation of the whale, for
the mere sport?

One solution is to hear the b-minor fugues, both the tragic and
comic (if one might put it that way), as being related by Aristod
rhetoric of the specific topos , an application of which is to reveal a
relationship by means of antithesis. While the b-minor fugues dwell
at opposite ends of the style spectrum to be sure, they share tonic a
mode, contoured outline of their subjects, and noteworthy instances
of Bach's name nonetheless. It seems plausible that such a contriv
likeness, in the face of such contradiction, may exist to poi
elsewhere - that nexus of meanings transcendent of the music itself
Theological in aim and intensely personal in method, Bach's rhetoric
reveals not suffering per se, but the joy and hope that Christ's sufferi
achieves for the individual believer. From this perspective it become
possible to reconcile the passepied with Christ's passion. Too, as E
Chafe has shown, there exists within Lutheranism a plausible accoun

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60 Bach

of such paradoxal
Kantian thought - t
where phenomen
epistemological ter
philosophers and th
edged the following

This is particularly
provide cheerful, da
death; quite often h
this juncture as if to
redirected towards
rhetorical texted wo
works demonstrate
intellectual love of

If one recognizes
Leibniz, and Spino
the concept of lov
tual love of God" i
intellectual forms o
That said, what th
tion, and the ration
ness, and the unnat
Above all, the hu
empathy - the spiri
therefore, to the
reminded the faith
heart and soul and s
Church Year a Hol
week. It is this fu
convict the individu
of turning the mi
problem of individu

x%Tonal Allegory in the V

1991), 15. Chafe likens
noting that they are ro
19<"A Mind unconscious
Wolff, Leibniz and Spi
(Cambridge University

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 61

say more? Indeed we must, for the habit of any artist, from C
to Warhol, of including himself in the work of art presu
unusual state of mind. The argument requires us, therefo
consider Bach's own frame of mind at a particular moment in t
Matthew Passion, a moment that will be identified in due course
as its relationship to the fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier ;
to make the point, however, it will first be necessary to devot
paragraphs to the religious context of Bach's Leipzig.

To the Leipziger of 1727, suffering with Jesus in his hour o

was motivated, in large measure, by the hope that this same Jes
"help" in the pain of one's own hour, a thread that is tighdy
throughout the fabric of Bach's liturgical oeuvre . Of singular
tance here is the actuality and worth of the individual human
for whose crime was it that Jesus suffered if not that of the
aged grocer in the third row, fourth from the left center aisl
Thomaskirche in the Vesper's service of Good Friday, 172
whose death did that grocer most dread but his own? Liturgica
course, it is true that Good Friday was a corporate observa
rite. But at its heart was the need of individual Christians to id
with their crucified Lord.20 The corporate exercise was therefo
directed toward, and contingent upon, personal devotion, w
intensifying the other. As to the individual, the most requisite
that was attended to in the recitation of Jesus' suffering belon
persons who could be repulsed by the cruelty that people inflic
other people, and who required periodic reminding that they t
selves had meted out the malice that they themselves endured.
passion belonged to those who could feel another's anguish
point of bleeding, crying, and dying to that secret impulse
another human being. In short, the purpose of Passion Week
commend compassion. From the post-Christian point of view
this is well and good - for some, no doubt, enough dogma t
to such a religious work as the St. Matthew Passion.

20Where the line was to be drawn between corporate and private devotion l
heart of the Lutheran debate that would exact its pound of flesh durin
Mühlhausen appointment, hounding him even to Leipzig. Vestiges of the
vs. Pietistic controversy continue among Lutherans today.

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 62 Bach

But to those with

more Christianly, i
nobody with firm e
the Via Dolorosa to
von Nazareth." The
compassion of th
incarnation of God
Hence too the high
parading his perfe
even to the good th
thize, perfecdy, wa
himself unable to extend in return.

Regardless then of one's point of view, this was a good and moral
drama. The liturgies of Jesus' suffering represented the acts of the
people, individuals in concert with each other, not the cold creed of
class, guild, confederation, holy office, parish, or diocese. The last
twenty-four hours of Jesus' life required, in consequence, a music that
was highly personal, emotive, kind, and supremely conscious of one's
weakness and offense, failings, transgressions, selfishness, vile
intentions, nakedness, and vulnerability in the face of death. To the
Lutheran of Bach's day, Christ's passion surely demanded, above all,
a music that was universal - for every Leipziger, that is, who had ever
sinned or who would ever die.

The polemic of the preceding paragraphs will have served its

purpose if the point has been made that even the composer could claim
no artist's right to be above the fray. While it is tempting to say that
aesthetics could not be allowed to trump "the holy," in Bach's manner
of thought it seems obvious that the liturgy was wholly aesthetic and
that no distinction could be made between metaphysics and aesthetics
as fixed in a drama with no authors - only actors. If Holy Week was
for the individual, then it was for the individual composer no less , and
for whom the creation of passion music could not seem to have been
dispassionately begun. This was music that demanded the alignment
and convergence of passions - that of the composer, the choir, the
congregant, and Christ - only after which could it be observed,
righdy, as corporate.

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 63

A poignant expression of this convergence is heard in the b

aria, "Gerne will ich mich bequemen" of the St . Matthew Pas
(Example 7). Here, six times in musical tones, Bach has spelled
name, with the words demanding the approach - "I will gladly sub
myself to take up the cross and cup, since I drink as my Savior di
The question here is, to whom does the personal pronoun "I" r
In applying the musical symbol for his name to the word "cross"
"unnatural motivo " of the first order)21 the composer has stipula
that "I" am Johann Sebastian Bach.

Example 7. 1727 - St. Matthew Passion, "Gerne will ich mich

bequemen" (23): chiasmus and authorial inclusion.

The practice of painting himself into the picture is one of the l

understood facets, and most misunderstood, in Bach. As unam
ous in manner as the foregoing example might be, we sometimes
it difficult to apprehend Bach's gesture as the abasement of se
may be that your experience has been like that of the present aut
with most people interpreting the b-a-c-h motivo , in the heady Ar
Fugue for example, as full of pride. Perhaps the idea of a penitent
broken Bach is too personal and passionate a thought - one t
requires of us, like the pedestrian who has spied the beggar on
corner, either to drop his humble farthing into the hat or to avert
eyes and cross the street. If the token is indeed one of humility,
how could it be otherwise in works of such presumptively n
liturgical provenance as The Well-Tempered Clavier or the Art of Fu
The argument closes then with the possibility that any self-reflex

21In Bach's hand copy, the Greek Chi (x) is substituted for the word "Kreuz.

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 64 Bach

gesture in Bach nec

have observed. Of th
three notable inst
alone (Example Id)
volumes (Example

Example 8. Authori
Tempered Clavier,
chromatic episode.

Conclusion

Over the years of listening to Bach's keyboard works, o

common experience has been to feel transported from the conc
hall to the prismatic and chandelier-strung palace, the privacy of t
parlor, the opera, the reverberant splendor of the cathedral, and e
to the shadow of the mighty fortress. Each of us has often wonde
why, in listening to variation 25 of the Goldberg Variations for exam
one feels like an eavesdropper on that private and passionate mome
of Peter's "Erbarme dich." In wordless works like these we have
experienced every idiom, form, and technique of the eighteenth
century, including the repertoire of Bach's own passion - church
music. To our ears the impetus to easy distinction, the canard of the
sacred versus secular, has in consequence been blurred, and the
schooled boundaries made permeable. Whereas the tide of this essay
implies four "passion" works in The Well-Tempered Clavier ; other
contenders would certainly include the d-sharp minor and b-flat

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 Four WTC Fugues as Passion Music 65

minor fugues of both volumes - indeed even more fugues and genres
than we could now name. The four in question were chosen for their
effective presentiment of "passion signifiers" - chiasmus, chromati-
cism, the Qui tollis contour, and authorial inclusion. Conveniend
these four also exemplify Bach's habit of self-quotation - motivic cue
that have directed us, however tentatively, to the St. Matthew Passion

While the connection may be, to our ears, tentative, to the

burgher of Bach's generation the experience of hearing these fugues
would have been quite unlike our own. Because we understand the
to have been made for pedagogical reasons, our ears are tuned to hear
them that way. But Bach's "congregation," having stepped outside th
house of worship to become his "audience" or "student," would no
have compartmentalized his music so. To summarize our mo
obvious example, how could they have heard as anything other th
passion music the c-sharp minor fugue of The Well-Tempered Clavier
with its cruciform subject in quotation of the "Crucify him" fugues
the St. Matthew Passio n, and their collective allusion to the adve
chorale, "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland?" Does not, even now, that
subject trigger a certain regress of memories and intertextual relation
ships? Again, one is drawn to the observation of Robin Leaver:

We are accustomed to hearing the Matthew Passion (and the John) in

isolation from the cantatas of the church year. This was not the
experience of the Leipzig churchgoers. The Passion undergirded
the weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper, and also daily
individual and family devotions. What we see as a once a year
experience, was for them a daily experience. Thus in this daily
culture a connection between the Well-Tempered Clavier and the St
Matthew Passion would not appear surprising as it does to some in
the 21st century.22

Inevitably, given the furious acceleration of Bach's compositional

output of the 1720s, incidences of self-quotation are bound to ha
occurred, if of no other cause than expedience or accident. The
foregoing examples suggest, however, that some of these were
anything but accidental. On occasion they seem rather to emana
from the mind that circles around a "predominant attitude" or

^Leaver, e-mail correspondence with the author, May 6, 2009.

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66 Bach

passion.23 As Leav
Bach's was an eschat
spiritual benefit of
point of this passi
carrying the cross
ostensibly so far rem
Tempered Clavier fr
belief that suggests

23Theterm "predomina
24Robin A. Leaver, "Es
Vocal Music," Bach Stud
Courts Press Ltd., 200

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