Ricercare from The Musical Offering (arr. Webern)

orchestrated by Anton Webern (1883-1945)

“It will show my feeling for the character of the piece,” said Webern of his orchestration of the Bach Ricercare: “What music it is! The ultimate object of my bold undertaking was to make it available at last by trying to show in my arrangement my view of the work! Isn’t it worth while awaking what still sleeps here in the seclusion of Bach’s own abstract presentation and so for most people remains either completely unknown or at least unapproachable?”

On the one hand, it is Webern’s colour coded analysis of Bach’s six part fugue, which he breaks down by his characteristic mode of Klangfarbenmelodie orchestration into its motivic components: Frederick the Great’s theme, for example, moves phrase by phrase between muted trombone, muted horn and muted trumpet, making seven entries in an eight bar melody; the counter-theme is similarly distributed between muted second violins and muted solo viola. And so it goes on, the intellectual clarity reflected in the acoustic clarity of the chamber-style orchestration, until the the first application of the full orchestra in the closing bars. On the other hand, as Webern told Hermann Scherchen, it is an expression of his feeling for the piece. Though scarcely comparable in this respect with Elgar in his glamorous orchestration of Bach’s Fugue in C minor, Webern reveals something of a romantic in himself in the slowing of the tempo at the end of the theme, the swelling dynamics, the timpani rolls, the use of divided strings, the almost grandiose ending.

Dedicated to Edward Clark, the BBC producer who fostered a valuable relationship between Webern and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Ricercare arrangement was first performed with Webern conducting the BBC SO in London in April 1935.