BY B. BOEKELMAN.
Music as well as science is to-day under the inflexible scalpel of logical analysis. But such analysis is the safety of any true, and as we believe, immortal work. We can never throw too much light on the creations of our great writers.
It has been my ambition of late years to analyze certain compositions of one of the greatest masters the world ever saw. It is to him I owe the discovery of a new way to expose analytically the construction of the fugue-form, by means of colors and differently shaped notes.
The careful study of the single voices, which I have been obliged to make, led me to find a hitherto unnoticed entrance of the principal subject, which is missing, in the Fugue C sharp minor No. 3 of the Well-tempered Clavier, beginning with measure 104. All editions have the following reading of measures 104-107:
The perfection of the work indicates clearly that the omission of the subject in the third voice is the result of careless copying or a printer’s mistake. It should be rectified by changing about the second and third voices. The third voice should exhibit the principal theme, which is missing at present and should read thus:—
I call the attention of Bach connoisseurs to this, and invite expression of their opinion and criticism.
I would add, that this error, which occurs in the present edition of my “Eight Fugues from Bach’s Well- tempered Clavier, with Analytical Exposition in Colors and Appended Harmonic Schemes,” will be rectified in the new revised edition, as the original meaning and perfection of the Master’s Fugue surely demands.
