LDV200

38 BACH_THE ART OF FUGUE BWV1080 The solutions put forward by André Isoir for the arrangement of these pieces are, in this respect, both revealing and convincing, and they bear all the virtues of originality and logic: each group of contrapuntal sections presents perfect reflections, the four canons evoke the duetti at the end of the Clavier Übung III, and the unfinished fugue, suspended from the B.A.C.H, comes in themythical fourteenth position. Judicious though they may be - and necessary, too (for they are no less legitimate than the options chosen by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in his time) - these options nevertheless nurture a pure illusion in their result; for, when all is said and done, they cannot prise The Art of Fugue from the grip of chaos in the mathematical sense of the theory of the same name: because of the infinite splitting of causes from all effect, constantly pushing back the limits of the analysable, the complexity of the most elaborate systems at the same time increases the deepening of their observation.