BACH Motif - History

History

"The figure occurs so often in Bach's bass lines that it cannot have been accidental." Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht goes as far as to reconstruct Bach's putative intentions as an expression of Lutheran thought, imagining Bach to be saying, "I am identified with the tonic and it is my desire to reach it....Like you I am human. I am in need of salvation; I am certain in the hope of salvation, and have been saved by grace." through his use of the motif rather than a standard changing tone figure (B♭-A-C-B♭) in the double discant clausula in the fourth fugue of The Art of Fugue.

Bach himself was well aware of the motif and had used it in a number of works, most famously as a fugue subject in the last Contrapunctus of The Art of Fugue. The motif also appears in the end of the fourth variation of Bach's Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her", as well as in other pieces. For example, the first measure of the Sinfonia in F minor BWV 795 includes a transposed version of the motif (a♭'-g'-b♭'-a') followed by the original in measure 17.

Bach's contemporaries knew of the motif's possibilities: it was discussed in Johann Gottfried Walther's Musicalisches Lexikon (1732), and used as a fugue subject by Bach's son Johann Christian and by his pupil Johann Ludwig Krebs. However, the motif's wide popularity came only in the 19th century during and after the so-called Bach Revival, when works by Johann Sebastian Bach were rediscovered by composers and the public.

Much later composers found that the motif could be easily incorporated not only into the advanced harmonic writing of the 19th century, but also into the totally chromatic idiom of the Second Viennese School; so it was used by Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and their disciples and followers. Today, composers continue writing works using the motif, frequently in homage to Johann Sebastian Bach.