Will check out the St. Petersburg Opera Orchestra / Titov recordings today — thanks for the recommendation!

But it's not for everyone. I had a colleague who called the violin double concerto tedious and long-winding, whereas I think of it as a fantastic piece which by itself is enough to put Bach in the top tier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddbxFi3-UO4

to the a cappella version by the Swingle Singers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhU7euFPWwo

Some music is very much tied to a particular instrument, but Bach is more or less universal.

The two pauses in contrapunctus 1 are, in my opinion the two best pieces of silence in the whole musical canon. I always think of the chords that come after theme as 'from his mother's womb untimely ripped'. They can make me weep when I'm in the right mood. (sorry for the over-sharing...)

In case you haven't already: check out Vulfpeck /// Bach Vision Test; a really nice visualization of Contrapunctus IX a 4 alla duodecima.

https://youtu.be/vJfiOuDdetg?si=GF1mbszFHOky2QVd

https://www.youtube.com/@cedarvillemusic/videos

He can improvise fugues on the spot. A lot of earlier composers could do so as well because their training from the get-go was improvisation.

We should all listen to the Jupiter and decide for ourselves if 'Mozart was never able to'.

https://interlude.hk/fugues-and-other-musical-charms-from-ba...

* ending of the last movement of the Jupiter Symphony

* Introitus of the Requiem (four-voice ricercare in the instruments, then cascading upward in SATB choral writing, both combined with an operatic-style accompaniment)

Here's a mind-blowing one-- at the end of his String Quartet K. 387 in G major. This is a modified rondo-sonata form where the rising figure of the rondo theme-- normally just a simple, catchy, tune-- is actually the subject and answer of a fugue! I'm fairly certain Mozart is the only composer of his era to substitute a fugal exposition for the rondo theme in a modified rondo-sonata form[1].

Even more impressive, the 2nd theme is a different fugue which continues into the rondo theme for-- you guessed it-- a double fugue.

All of this is so fast, effervescent and seamless that someone like OP could be forgiven for not even noticing the fugue. So now OP must ask-- how many other examples are there of Mozart subtly shifting into and out of first-rate Bach-like contrapuntal textures?

It's a question Beethoven undoubtedly knew the answer to, at least for all the Mozart scores he could get his hands on.

1: Haydn has a great musical joke at the end of the so-called "Lark" quartet-- in the middle of a fast, old-school Rondo he switches to minor and plonks down a thick four voice fugal exposition and development against the fast-flowing figuration from earlier. It disappears as quickly as it came, like Carl Stalling but before the era of cartoons!

Second, what I mean by "composing a fugue well" is to be able compose a piece or movement whereby three or more, usually four, voices are heard in a contrapuntal, not harmonic, manner for an EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME (i.e., maintaining this for many measures).

I looked closely at some of the examples people brought up like the last movements of both the Jupiter Symphony and his String Quartet No. 14 and nowhere do I see 4 voices simultaneously acting contrapuntally for more than just a handful of bars. Mozart would often write a given voice contrapuntally, but would often quickly revert that voice to a harmonic function. If you look at measures 91 to 106 in the last mvt of Quartet No. 14, that writing is a joke if you say he can write fugally. The second violin, viola, and cello are all mainly serving a harmonic function; they're just playing chords. One part that might look truly fugal would be in measures 112 to 117, but that's just one small part and not extended, as in the great fugues of Bach and Beethoven. Measures 61 to 90 kind of look truly fugal, but he really only has 3 voices going contrapuntally here at any given time, not 4. Look at measures 63 until 68 where the cello is playing an extended rest, for example.

Yes, Mozart wrote fugues. Did he write truly sophisticated, truly "fugal" fugues? I still think not.

I'd also like to plug the album released by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, who did a double album of the Art of Fugue and the Musical Offering, and used a variety of different scorings for each movement.

By all means,there's no way anyone, even the great Master himself, could have undertaken a project of 14 fugues with various subjects, with the final one (14, not 15) being a quadruple fugue that combines four of them together, without being certain of what the subjects were and that ultimately they could indeed be combined.

Bach scholars have analyzed the paper and the device used to draw staff lines to show that a completed version likely existed, now lost.

[0] https://youtu.be/zHm-GAuy8CI?si=8iSgsn_D5g0LFovt&t=72

As a musician, stuck in a bit of a rut of late, this kind of thing really helps get the juice flowing again. I’ve spent 15 minutes churning through some fingering and activating old muscle memory I’d forgotten about completely since the piano lesson days, and tonight’s jam session with my band is going to have some new flavours to introduce.

Good stuff, thank you!

Practising Bach's music certainly helps.

But yes, just letting it flow and paying attention without trying to learn or remember anything, is probably the best answer.

It's like an orchestra (or the different sections of one), the melodies are written to fit together perfectly.

There are many almost "poppy" feeling fugues in the Well-tempered clavier with four voices.

In comparison, The Art of Fugue feels more academic and dry to me personally. I still like it, but don't feel as connected to it in as to many of his other works.

Tangent ahead: even good pop songs require melodies that are more than just homophonic. Best example in rock, pop, disco for this are good bass lines I think.

Incidentally, "bass lines" are also an important fixture in the history of baroque music.

I'm not preaching here, I'm not good at music theory or playing music. But I think many pop songs also follow counterpoint rules, at least to a degree. There are also varying degrees of strictness regarding these rules in Bach's music.

It doesn't need to be an academic puzzle as many make it out to be, I think the intent was to formalize how to write good music for multiple voices.

All that said ... you are still right :D

But it's even more impressive the way solo keyboard artists can articulate these voices.

Not to mention the organists.

The FIRST thing that came to mind when I read that headline was Hofstadter's Contracrostapunctus in THAT book!

Check it out! Read it! And if you DON'T find the WHOLE hidden message, read it again, because it's spelled out RIGHT in the dialog!

Happy hunting!

So playing an instrument (usually keyboard) helps - JSBach's inventions and sinfonias were written to teach counterpoint IIRC. If playing is out of scope then I found listening to orchestral music can be helpful because you can latch onto different instruments and learn to interpret what they're doing individually (first) then how they are interacting with other voices after. Strong quartets will similarly allow you to listen to multi-voice music that may sound more distinct than just keyboard.

The other piece of advice is to get very familiar with a particular musical work and listen to it repeatedly. Once the familiarity is there you'll start to pick up different things on repeated listens. If you then start changing the recording/performer you'll also notice how they choose to interpret passages differently and certain voices may sound more prominent which can be a hook for your ear to latch onto...

Just some initial thoughts, hope that helps!

EDIT - Pachelbel's Canon in D is probably one of the most accessible songs to practise listening to. Poor cellists always grumble about playing this one, see if you can hear why