The Musical Offering (German: or ), BWV 1079, is a collection of keyboard canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, all based on a single musical theme given to him by Frederick the Great (King Frederick II of Prussia), to whom they are dedicated. They were published in September 1747. The Ricercar a 6, a six-voice fugue which is regarded as the high point of the entire work, was put forward by the musicologist Charles Rosen as the most significant piano composition in history (partly because it is one of the first). This ricercar is also occasionally called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself.
History
The collection has its roots in a meeting between Bach and Frederick II on May 7, 1747. The meeting, taking place at the king's residence in Potsdam, came about because Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed there as court musician. Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach a novelty, the fortepiano, which had been invented some years earlier. The king owned several of the experimental instruments being developed by Gottfried Silbermann. 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 theme on which to improvise a three-voice fugue. He did so, but Frederick then challenged him to improvise a six-voice fugue on the same theme. Bach answered that 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"):
Four 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.
Possible origin of the King's Theme
Humphrey F. Sassoon has compared the theme issued by Frederick II to the theme of an A minor fugue (HWV 609) by George Frideric Handel, published in Six fugues or voluntarys for organ or harpsichord. Sassoon notes that "Handel's theme is much shorter than the King's, but its musical 'architecture' is uncannily similar: jumps followed by a descending chromatic scale." He also elaborates on their additional similarities, which led Sassoon to suggest that Bach used Handel's A minor fugue as a structural model or guide for the Musical Offerings Ricercar a 6, and that its musical concepts may also have influenced Bach's development of the Ricercar a 3. Nevertheless, the Ricercar a 6 is longer and incomparably more complex than Handel's fugue.
Arnold Schoenberg, in his 1950 essay on Bach, suggested that the Thema Regium was created by Bach's son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, on the orders of the king, as a well-prepared trap to embarrass J. S. Bach.
Structure and instrumentation
In its finished form, The Musical Offering comprises: Two Ricercars, written down on as many staves as there are voices: a Ricercar a 3 (a three-voice fugue) a Ricercar a 6 (a six-voice fugue) Ten Canons: Canones diversi super Thema Regium: 2 Canons a 2 (the first representing a notable example of a crab canon or canon cancrizans) Canon a 2, per motum contrarium Canon a 2, per augmentationem, contrario motu Canon a 2, per tonos Canon perpetuus Fuga canonica in Epidiapente Canon a 2 "Quaerendo invenietis" Canon a 4 Canon perpetuus, contrario motu
A Sonata sopr'il Soggetto Reale – a trio sonata featuring the flute, an instrument which Frederick played, consisting of four movements: Largo Allegro Andante Allegro
Apart from the trio sonata, which is written for flute, violin and basso continuo, the pieces have few indications of which instruments are meant to play them, although there is now significant support for the idea that they are for solo keyboard, like most of Bach's other published works.
The ricercars and canons have been realised in various ways. The ricercars are more frequently performed on keyboard than the canons, which are often played by an ensemble of chamber musicians, with instrumentation comparable to that of the trio sonata.
As the printed version gives the impression of being organised for convenient page turning when sight-playing the score, the order of the pieces intended by Bach (if there was an intended order) remains uncertain, although it is customary to open the collection with the Ricercar a 3, and play the trio sonata toward the end. The Canones super Thema Regium are also usually played together.