BWV 1079 - J.S. Bach - Musical Offering

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514Y%2BwA82kL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

The collection has its roots in a meeting between Bach and Frederick II on May 7, 1747. The meeting, taking place at the King's residence in Potsdam, came about because Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed there as court musician. Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach a novelty, the fortepiano, which had been invented some years earlier. The King owned several of the experimental instruments being developed by Gottfried Silbermann.[2] During his anticipated visit to Frederick's palace in Potsdam, Bach, who was well known for his skill at improvising, received from Frederick a long and complex musical theme on which to improvise a three-voice fugue. He did so, but Frederick then challenged him to improvise a six-voice fugue on the same theme. The public present thought that just a malicious caprice by the King, intent upon humiliating philosophers and artists. Bach answered that he would need to work the score and send it to the King afterwards. He then returned to Leipzig to write out the Thema Regium ("theme of the king"):[3]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/score/j/w/jw3ikreg2qczbwilrtrfnx9b190u9m5/jw3ikreg.png

Two months after the meeting, Bach published a set of pieces based on this theme which we now know as The Musical Offering. Bach inscribed the piece "Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta" (the theme given by the king, with additions, resolved in the canonic style), the first letters of which spell out the word ricercar, a well-known genre of the time.

Poll Results

― j., Thursday, 2 October 2014 15:51 (ten years ago)