PARTITIONS GRATUITES : QUATUOR DE SAXOPHONES
- Contrapunctus I: Art of the Fugue

SKU: PR.11441345S

UPC: 680160608829. 8.5 x 11 inches.

BACH-SHARDS was commissioned by the Brentano String Quartet as part of their Art of the Fugue companion-piece project. Ran deliberately stays within the realm of Bach-like vocabulary, altering syntax in ways that add up to something slightly different from the anticipated sum of the parts. The work builds up to a climax that makes the entry point into Bach’s Contrapunctus X seem thoroughly natural.
While composing Bach-Shards I found myself gravitating, intuitively and gradually, toward a dual goal.  First, though the tension and dissonance inherent in certain moments of Bach’s own maze-like  contrapuntal structures could quite easily and naturally lead one into a pungent contemporary terrain, I opted not to stray outside the realm of Bach-like materials and harmonic language.  Instead, it was my hope to alter their relationships and context in ways that add up to a something that’s slightly different than the anticipated sum of the parts.  A mildly deconstructed Bach, if you will.  The other important challenge I set for myself was building up the latter, toccata-like portion of Bach-Shards in a way that would make the entry point of the fugue which it precedes, Contrapunctus X, seem thoroughly natural.  It was my intent to have the first fugal entrance feel like a huge and much welcome release of the energy created by my Prelude’s penultimate stretch, with its bravura figurations elaborating on an insistent dominant pedal point.

SKU: HL.49006542

ISBN 9790001070942. UPC: 841886029484. 12.0x16.5x0.42 inches.

Written in the 1970s, Dieter Schnebel's arrangements of the Contrapuncti I, VI and XI from Johann Sebastian Bach's The Art of Fugue have long since been considered classics of contemporary choral music and of the cultivation of Bach's music. The works, which have previously been available in manuscript editions only, are now published as new editions in a high-quality, easily legible notation in a convenient standard format which adequately displays the works' polyphony.