Bach - Musikalisches Opfer BWV 1079 (1/6)

The Musical Offering (German title Musikalisches Opfer or Das Musikalische Opfer), BWV 1079, is a collection of canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, based on a musical theme by Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great) and dedicated to him.

The collection has its roots in a meeting between Bach and Frederick II on May 7, 1747. The meeting, taking place in the king's residence in Potsdam, resulted from Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel being employed there as court musician. Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach a novelty: the piano had been invented some years earlier, and the king now owned several of the experimental instruments being developed by Gottfried Silbermann.[1] 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 figure to improvise a three-voice fugue. Frederick, then, challenged Bach to make that into a six-voice fugue. The public present thought that just a malicious caprice by the king, intent upon humiliating philosophers and artists. Bach answered 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").

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.

The "thema regium" appears as the theme for the first and last movements of the 7th Sonata in D Minor by Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, written approximately 1788, and as the theme for elaborate variations by Giovanni Paisiello in his "Les Adieux de la Grande Duchesse ds Russies" written in approximately 1784, upon his departure from the court of Catherine the Great.

[Wikipedia]

Painting: "The Flute Concert of Sanssouci" by Menzel, 1852, depicts Frederick the Great playing the flute in his music room at Sanssouci.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Bach
• Musikalisches
• Opfer
• BWV
• 1079
• 1

[Gustaveleloup]

Can anyone confirm what recording this is?

Is it Le concert des nations with Pierre Hantai on the harpsichord?

[BachHarmony]

@Gustaveleloup I don't remember it now... but all my recordings are taken from Bach 2000 set

[polymath7]

I feel like conducting a little informal poll: Thumbs up if when you listen to the Musical Offering, you almost feel as if you are hearing the very laws of the universe, aurally codified.

(Didn't Goethe say something like this?)

[Gustaveleloup]

One thing bothers me. There are so many views for Part I, but only a fraction of listeners moved on to Part II and the numbers continue to decline after that. It's sad. People don't know what they're missing.

[FranLesPaul]

@LunaWHDavies7 I find the theme to be quite... horrible. What Bach had done to it is miraculous, but I find the "bare" thema regis at the very start anything but extraordinary. This is just my personal opinion, mind you!

[Gustaveleloup]

@Paul1239193 What are you on about?

[LunaWHDavies7]

@Paul1239193 Yeah...but I thought Frederick II's interests as a youth were philosophy and music. He was a trained musician who tried to escape his father and his responsibilities, albeit he still ascended to the throne. But I get what you mean, the theme is quite extraordinary a composition in itself and was probably concocted by someone with a very solid musical background, and not someone like Frederick II.

[Paul1239193]

This makes sense now: it was C. P. E. Bach who gave Frederick II the theme for A Musical Offering! It never made any sense to me that a politician, Frederick II, could motivate this sort of thing.

[erasmo67adr]

belissimo

[Gustaveleloup]

@BachHarmony I've found it! It's the Concentus Musicus Wien.

amazon.com/Bach-J-S-Musical-Of­fering-Musikalisches/dp/B00002­4TA5

(or released with the Bach 2000 collection: amazon.com/Musical-Offering-Ba­ch/dp/B00004S4MX)

I am delighted beyond belief. It's at an unbelievably low price.