Fantasia and Fugue on BACH

The Fantasia and Fugue on BACH is not virtuoso piano music in the ordinary sense of the term. It was written originally for organ – for the inauguration of a new instrument in Merseburg Cathedral in 1856 – and, in spite of the masterly accomplishment of Liszt’s piano transcription, it remains an organ inspiration. Had it been conceived for piano in the first place, the keyboard figuration would be different and while, as a tribute to J.S. Bach, it would have been no less contrapuntal in texture, it would not have had to compensate for the absence of a pedal board by imposing such weight on the pianist’s left hand.

The true virtuosity here is in the composer’s treatment of the four notes B flat, A, C and B natural – in German terminology B, A, C and H – which    add up to a theme Bach himself used in the unfinished final fugue of the Art of Fugue. Liszt was not the first to emulate Bach in this respect but, taking into account the original organ version of 1856, the revised organ version of 1870 and the piano transcription of the latter, no one did it more devotedly. There is scarcely a bar in the 12-minutes of the Fantasia and Fugue which does not contain the BACH theme in one form or another. In fact, so much material is derived from those four notes that Liszt’s structural strategy is not only a revival of baroque contrapuntal practices but also an anticipation of the serial technique Schoenberg was to develop 50 years later. In the four opening bars, for example, it is heard no fewer than seven times in left-hand octaves. In the remaining 100 or so bars of the Fantasia section, as the tempo gradually rises, it appears in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes, thematically informing bravura passages of semiquavers, emerging briefly and unexpectedly as an expressive solo voice in the right hand and at the climax of this section, after a series of heroic arpeggios, it is presented fff in a massively augmented version at the same time as a diminished version in rumbling octaves.

Inevitably, a work based on those four notes will display conspicuously chromatic harmonies. But at the beginning of the second section, which follows a dying descent of quavers and a short pause, Liszt goes out of his way to intensify that chromaticism. Instead of beginning the Fugue with the BACH theme at its original pitch he precedes it (misterioso) with the same motif a major third lower so that, with the additional eight notes that complete the fugue subject, he has introduced an all-but authentic 12-note row. So, not surprisingly, much of the Fugue is of indeterminate tonality. Like most Liszt fugues, it drops fugal conventions at an early stage and, as in the Fantasia, its construction is based on a rising tempo scheme. It proceeds from an expressive Andante, to a scintillating Allegro con brio, increasing in volume through a molto fuoco passage of descending scales and passing through a violent martial episode to a triumphant Maestoso proclamation of the four-note motif. The complete fugue theme reappears in octaves before a comparatively short coda based, of course, on the BACH theme.