The secrets of the hidden canons in J.S. Bach's masterpieces

By Giovanni Pietro Orefice

Why does J.S. Bach's music deeply resonate in our soul and in our churches like no other one? How can treasures keep hidden in a work that was studied and explored during three centuries?You'll find here the lonely and passionate discovery of marvelous multiple canons structures in many of the famous works of a music history's giant, crowned by surprising revelations, that give some new path of attributing the pieces. The analysis of the historical and cultural context and of some contemporaries' masterpiece let emerge Bach's outstanding earing and compositive talent, explaining his excellence during the organ tournaments. This unveiling is the starting point for a speculative journey using room-acoustics, psycho-acoustics and music performer's practice knowledges to explain why Bach did adopt this compositive strategy, this "secret ingredient" to excel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Release date: Feb 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9791221485417

Book preview

PART I CANONS, not CANNONS

1 Visible canons and hidden, immanent canons

To read about the hidden canons discovery jump to chapter 2.

The matter of the following chapter is to distinguish between the canons that are explicitly visible in Bach's compositions and the hidden ones that will be treated in the second chapter.

Some words about the usual understanding of the Canons of J.S. Bach

The most famous and developed canons of J.S. Bach are the 10 explicitly written in the Musical Offering BWV 1079 for the Prussia king, see [1], very appreciated by Anton von Webern who developed the Ricercare in 1935. Bach also wrote the canonical variations on Von Himmel hoch (for organ) BWV 769 as a presentation piece for the Mizler Society in Leipzig, of which he became a member in 1747. These two works show how important the canonical form was for him, and how high he was praising his own ability to handle with it, to consider it as a presentation card and even a valuable gift for a king. A canon can even be found in Anna Magdalena's Büchlein (Canon, BWV Anh.120), elected in this way as highest love gift.

Beside the previous musical pieces his short canons BWV 1072-86 were known and mostly classified as pedagogic staff for his pupils and children, or exercises/occasional small piece (BWV 1073), or, on the contrary, sanctified (canon triplex BWV 1076) [9]. See for instance the first canon in Fig.1.

Figure 1: One can observe there that the melody line is oscillating, like a wave, a sinus function and that there are four voices fitting within the bars lines and four voices (the intermediate ones) overlapping it and creating a more complex rhythmical effect. The same element is repeated infinitely. A ninth voice would of course be identical with the first