Phantasm, the consort of viols founded in 1994 and directed by Laurence Dreyfus, is now based in Magdalen College, Oxford, where Dreyfus is Professor of Music. Thanks to its many performances around the world and its recordings of music for viols by seventeenth-century English composers, it must surely be today’s leading group of its kind, known for its clarity of texture and meticulous attention to detail. They have now turned their attention to the eighteenth century with performances of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue) and transcriptions by Mozart for string quartet of some of the forty-eight keyboard Preludes and Fugues.
The Art of Fugue represents the last of the three great summations of Bach’s chamber music. The first of these – The Equal-Tempered Keyboard (to give it a more accurate translation) – was written in part to demonstrate the advantages of opening up the full range of keys to instruments with equal temperament. It is therefore a bit of an anachronism for these to be played by a natural tempered consort, restricting the range of keys to those near C major (even the E major of the Mozart arrangements is stretching things a bit). The Art of Fugue is both a set of fugues and a set of variations forming a sequence developing from the simple subject of the first, varying the subject in rhythm and inversion, and adding progressively new subjects which recur throughout.
The work is written as a set of nineteen Contrapuncti, grouped as four simple four-part fugues, three four-part fugues in contrary motion, four fugues on several subjects, four two-part canonic fugues, three mirror fugues and the final unfinished Contrapunctus XIX, a mammoth four-part fugue with four subjects, one spelling the composer’s name. Two great much-debated uncertainties surround the work. It is written in open score and no particular instrumentation or vocalisation is specified, indicating that it can be performed by any set of singers or instrumentalists. Why was it not completed? For the really talented keyboard player it can be used as exercise in reading from open score but for amateurs like myself a good way to get to know the work is the arrangement for piano four-hands by Bruno G Seidlhofer published by Breitkopf & Härtel. However, knowing it this way, there is a danger of not seeing the wood for half the trees. The opportunity to hear it played by a quartet of viols with the clarity of texture of Phantasm was a valuable experience; already in Contrapunctus III we noticed something previously missed. As for the unfinished ending, often attributed to the composer’s increasing blindness, I like to think of him saying with a modest smile to the performers, whether family or friends, ‘Now I have taught you enough – finish it yourselves’!
On this occasion the performers were Laurence Dreyfus, treble viol and director, Emilia Benjamin, treble, Jonathon Manson, tenor, and Markku Luolagan-Mikkola, bass viol, a perfectly integrated consort. The order of the programme was rather odd. It opened with six of Mozart’s arrangements, more exercises in composition than offering new enlightenment to the listener. There followed Contrapuncti I-VI before the interval – a strange place to stop. It would have been better to start the second half with the turning point of the work, Contrapunctus VIII, introducing three new subjects including the motif of repeated quavers which permeates the rest of the work. Instead we had the intrusion of a sonata by Domenico Scarlatti, a work of little merit compared to the surrounding Bach. It would have been far better to have interspersed the canonic and mirror fugues.
The surroundings of the crowded candlelit Chapel were ideal for the communal concentration on the music, despite the hardness of the pews. Thank you, Phantasm.