Bach's Art of Fugue
Lucie Skeaping focuses on JS Bach's last great masterpiece, The Art of Fugue
The Early Music Show · BBC Radio 3
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Show Notes
Lucie Skeaping takes expert advice from Simon Heighes to explore the background, purpose and music of JS Bach's last great masterpiece - The Art of Fugue.
At the end of his life Johann Sebastian Bach set out to create a great summary of his thoughts and ideas about an intellectual musical form he'd made very much his own - the fugue. The result is the "Art of Fugue" which he left unfinished at his death - or did he? How should we regard this work? Was it intended for performance and if so, how? Who was it written for?
Lucie pulls together various recordings of the work and, in conversation with Bach expert Simon Heighes, unpicks some of the thinking behind this extraordinary composition.