The contrapuntal masterworks which Bach was to produce in the following decade can be seen as his answer to Scheibe’s attacks. Rather than capitulating, he brought precisely those elements which so irritated the younger generation to a summation which would never again be equaled. Common to those works (the Goldberg Variations, the Canonic Variations on Von Himmel hoch for organ, the Musical Offering, and culminating in The Art of Fugue) is an almost scientific exploration of the possibilities of canon and counterpoint. The Goldberg Variations present canons as each third variation, beginning with canon at the unison, then canon at the second, with nine such, followed by a quodlibet. The Variations on Von Himmel hoch, not as systematic, present a variety of canonic accompaniments to the chorale, followed by a canonic treatment of the chorale itself with a free accompaniment. The Art of Fugue presents Bach’s explorations of the many contrapuntal possibilities of single relatively neutral theme, culminating famously with the quadruple fugue, which does not survive complete. The Canonic Variations (along with the canon BWV 1076) was submitted by Bach upon his entrance to the Corresponding Society of the Musical Sciences in Germany (whose membership, in spite of what was said above, also included Telemann), and apparently the Musical Offering and Art of Fugue were to be submitted to the Society as well.
Bach and the king
The Musical Offering, as is well known, owed its genesis to Johann Sebastian Bach’s visit to the court of Frederick II, king of Prussia, at Potsdam on May 7, 1747, an event worthy of note in the Berlin press several days later. Frederick (1712–1786) had studied flute with Johann Joachim Quantz since the late 1720s, and by the early 1730s had a substantial number of musicians in his employ, including Carl Heinrich and Johann Gottlieb Graun, and Franz and Johann Benda. He acceded to the throne in 1740; Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach became harpsichordist at the court in that same year, and Quantz, who had been a member of the famous orchestra at Dresden, joined the establishment in 1741. Quantz had a particularly important position as flute teacher to the monarch (we can imagine that this required remarkable tact, no matter how skillful the monarch). The relative positions of Quantz and C.P.E. Bach at court can perhaps be judged by the fact that Quantz was paid at the level of the opera singers, while C.P.E. Bach received a sixth of that amount. Similarly, though C.P.E. Bach worked at the court for 30 years, he produced only a handful of concertos and sonatas for the flute; Quantz produced hundreds.
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