J.S. Bach was perhaps the greatest technical genius in the history of music. His mastery of counterpoint and harmony are unmatched, especially in such late works as "The Musical Offering" and the "Art of the Fugue". It is surprising to learn, therefore, that Bach was largely self-taught in contrapuntal technique, studying the works of other great masters to get a feel for the art. It is perhaps because of this that there can be found several strange instances in the music of Bach in which traditional conventions are breached. Some of these appear to be deliberate, while others were due to carelessness (although the latter case is extremely rare). Following is a list of unconventional quirkeries that may be found in Bach's music. Enjoy.
While taking a music class in high school, I was told that the tympani was looked on as soley as a percussion instrument until the mid-ninteenth century, when composers began to write actual melodies for the instrument. I quickly raised my hand and asked the teacher if there were any exceptions to this rule in, say, the Baroque era. He replied emphatically that there were no exceptions. "Are you sure?" I asked. He repeated, somewhat impatiently, that the tympani was never used to play melodies in the Baroque era.
Fortunately, I was intelligent enough to keep my smart little mouth shut from that point, but there was a reason I was being so insistent-- I knew of an instance, right off the top of my head, where J.S. Bach used a tympani to play a melody. The Bach Christmas Oratorio begins with this tympani part:
After a lengthy instrumental introduction, the choir enters with this:
It is a simple melody, but obviously the one played by the tympani in the opening bars. It appears from this that Bach was over a century ahead of his time.
A year or so later, the same teacher was introducing us to the harmonic and melodic minor. The harmonic minor, he said, meant that the seventh scale degree only was raised, while in the melodic minor the sixth and seventh scale degrees were raised in ascending melodic lines, and lowered again when the line descended. Although I knew that this was just a theoretical model, rarely adhered to in practice, I asked if there were any instances where the reverse was true; where the sixth and seventh scale degrees were raised going down, and lowered again going up. He denied that such a scale existed, and went on with the lesson.
Once again, however, I knew of an instance where the "inverse melodic minor" was used. In the Art of the Fugue, the subject of the ninth fugue is as follows:
As you can see, the sixth and seventh scale degrees (B-flat and C) are raised going down, and left alone ascending. Clearly, Bach had no respect for theoretical models.
The famous Tocatta and Fugue in D minor is a bizarre piece of music. Although strange things can be expected to happen in a tocatta, it is the fugue that has the lion's share of quirks in this particular piece. Below I have listed some of the strange things that happen in the fugue.
Traditionally, the fugue subject is answered by a voice in the dominant key. If Bach had adhered to this tradition in the Tocatta and Fugue, for instance, the answer would have been in A minor, since the subject was in D minor. However, the subject:
is answered in the sub-dominant, G minor:
This appears to be necessitated by the structure of the subject. Usually, in a fugue subject where the fifth scale degree is prominent, it is lowered to the fourth scale degree in the answer so that it is not too jarring to the ear. This is called a "tonal answer". In the case of the Fugue in D minor, the fifth scale degree is not only prominent, it is central to the subject. In order for Bach to employ a tonal answer in A minor, the answer would have had to look something like this:
This would have given the answer an unsatisfactory sound.
Next, Bach sometimes uses unorthodox chord sequences in the fugue, such as this one:
Here, Bach appears ready to employ a half-cadence in the key of A minor, only to go to a bizzare (in this context) first-inversion tonic chord in C major.
In other places, Bach's voice leading is strange. Traditionally, the seventh in a dominant-seventh chord is always resolved by step, usually resolving to the third in the next chord. Therefore, a dominant-seventh chord in third inversion--that is, with the seventh in the bass--will resolve to a first-inversion chord. However, here
Bach inexplicably goes to a root-position chord, resolving the seventh by a leap of a fourth instead of a step. Then, to top it all off:
he ends the piece with a plagal cadence. Outside of the "Amens" that so often end the choruses of Handel, I know of no other major Baroque composition that ends this way, with a root position subdominant chord resolving to the tonic. Even more unusual, Bach doesn't bother to use a Picardy third here, content to end the piece with a minor chord.
The Tocatta and Fugue in D minor stands out as a truly revolutionary piece of music for its time. It is, however, not the only organ piece of Bach's to employ unorthodox techniques. In the G minor Fantasy (which precedes the famous Great Fugue), Bach thought nothing of using melodic skips of an augmented fifth in the bass:
Parallel octaves are, of course, forbidden in Baroque counterpoint. Bach himself said that they "sounded ill". He did, however, use parallel octaves deliberately on occasion, for effect. An example is the bizarre fugue in E minor in the Well-Tempered Clavier. However, the following example appears to have been a grievous error.
The parallel octaves between the viola and solo violin in the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto were certainly not deliberate, especially since Bach tried to correct the problem. Unfortunately, he failed to notice that his correction in the viola part resulted in parallel fifths between the viola and harpsichord. Because parallel octaves are easier on the ear, the first version is usually the one played today.
Clearly, the seventh in the flute was not approached by step; in fact, it is approached by a downward leap of an octave! A couple of other things are strange about this excerpt: The chord sequence between the diminished seventh in root position going to the dominant in first inversion is unusual, as is the "cross-over" between the flute and the voice, especially since it results in a major-second dissonance between the voice and the flute.
In this bass aria from Cantata 126, the continuo is TWO OCTAVES above the melody! In addition, the two lines resolve in parallel octaves in contrary motion, although this convention was not observed with much rigidity by any Baroque composer.
What can we conclude from all these examples? That Bach was an iconoclast? That he was only human, and prone to mistakes? I think it shows merely that Bach was open-minded. Although he possessed a complete mastery of counterpoint, his ultimate goal was to delight the listener, who was often ignorant of esoteric compositional conventions. In other words, Bach just wanted the music to sound good.