Intellectually rigorous and relentlessly contrapuntal describes the music of both Webern and J. S. Bach. Webern¹s orchestration of the six-voice fugue from the Musical Offering is a re-interpretation of Bach¹s masterpiece, one which is concerned with the work¹s detail, with its building blocks. Scored for flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, trombone, timpani, harp, and full strings, Bach¹s fugue, as musicologist Susan Bradshaw notes, is ³re-heard through Webern¹s ears.² Webern¹s meticulous reconstruction of Bach¹s piece focus on intervallic relationships, and with the minutiae of Bach¹s counterpoint. Significant rhythms and motives are isolated and emphasized through colour, with Bach¹s long melodic lines being broken up and divided between the different instruments in the orchestra. Webern transforms a Baroque work into a pointillistic, modern piece, one that exemplifies the notion of ³Klangfarbenmelodie,² or tone colour melody as the fugue becomes a coterie of soloists. For Webern, Bach¹s fugue was simply an ³abstract design,² and as such it was susceptible to a modern reinterpretation.



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