[Smt-talk] Bach Quiz

[Olli Väisälä]

Dear List,

Since I have not gotten any new suggestions for fifths in WTC for  
several days, I might now reveal the CORRECT answer.

It is: Part I, Fugue in B minor, bar 22, the motion to beat 4. The  
soprano (stems upward) goes from G# to F# while the bass goes from C#  
to B.

I hope you won't mind some speculations about this point in Bach's  
composition and about the results of this quiz/query:

Is there something to mitigate the effect of these fifths? First,  
there is voice crossing. The listener may be likely to hear the F# as  
coming from E# (even though the quarter-note countersubject should be  
quite familiar to him/her by this point). Second, since the main  
harmonies in the latter half of m. 22 are, locally speaking, the V  
and I of F# minor, the bass B is a non-harmonic tone: an  
appoggiatura, or a "misplaced" (delayed) accented passing seventh.

What does it suggest that no one replied to this quiz/query so as to  
mention these fifths or any other equally unequivocal 5–5  
successions? Of course, I should not exaggerate the significance of  
this absence of "correct answers," since I know people have better  
things to do than replying to all sorts of trivial questions.  
Nevertheless, I think that if someone who read my post had noticed  
these fifths, he/she would probably have replied. This, in turn,  
supports the view that the circumstances in which they occur, indeed,  
make them less easy to hear.

Moreover, the fact no other equally clear fifths were mentioned  
suggests that they are indeed very rare or perhaps unique in WTC (if  
we don't count those caused by very rapid sixteenth-note figuration  
between upper voices in WTC II, D-major Prelude, bar 18).

Since Bach was thus usually very strict with avoiding 5–5 (at least  
in WTC), might it be possible that he did not notice them himself in  
the B-minor Fugue passage? Or did he just judge them as not harmful?

Olli Väisälä
Sibelius Academy
ovaisala at siba.fi