Musicalisches Opfer

In May 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach traveled to Potsdam to visit Frederick II of Prussia, whose son Carl Philipp Emanuel was the first harpsichordist of the court and his student Christoph Nichelmann the second. This visit is well documented, with a famous meeting between Frederick, a musically educated prince, and Bach. Frederick invited Bach to test Gottfried Silbermann's new fortepianos and to demonstrate his organ playing on various church organs. During this meeting, Frederick posed a musical challenge to Bach: he presented a theme in C minor and asked Bach to improvise a three-part fugue on it. Remarkably, Johann Sebastian did this on the spot, without any preparation. What follows is also fairly well known, but from this point on, the interpretation of the events becomes crucial. Bach published an opus titled Musicalisches Opfer, consisting of sixteen consecutive pieces in three fascicles; these pieces belong to three different musical forms; a trio sonata (the most beautiful and difficult ever composed), two fugues (called Ricercari) and ten canons. All these works elaborate on the Thema Regium, the melody that Frederick played for Bach "on the keyboard". This composition is known as the Musical Offering. Although many are familiar with this composition, not everyone is aware of its esoteric significance, which leads to various interpretations and rearrangements of the pieces using different instruments and sequences. It is clear that the Musicalisches Opfer is closely related to another enigmatic work by Bach, Die Kunst der Fuga, based on counterpoint. Several years ago, cellist and scholar Hans-Eberhard Dentler – student of Pierre Fournier and collaborator of Ernst Jünger (from humanitas), with thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek as a classical philologist and even mathematician – already published a study on "Die Kunst der Fuga", followed by an equally important study (published in Italian under the auspices of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia) on the Musicalisches Opfer, titled Il Sacrificio musicale di Johann Sebastian Bach, which revealed its Pythagorean significance. The interpretation begins with a consideration of the title of the work, as dedicated by Bach to King Frederick. The term Opfer translates specifically as Sacrificium, and this choice of words underscores the unique character of this work, which can be seen as a kind of Gradus ad Parnassum, an evolutionary path toward perfection. The second enigma arises from the Latin subtitle of the first fascicle: the opening words form an acrostic that yields the word RICERCAR, which refers to a contrapuntal work typical of the Renaissance and Baroque, the Ricercare: an instrumental form of the motet. It bears the title Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta, which translates as: "At the Command of the King: the performance of the melody (Cantio) and the rest (Et Reliqua) according to the canonical art (Canonica Arte Resoluta)". But canonical art means, as Johann Gottfried Walther's contemporary Musicalische Lexikon explains, "Canonica (lat.) kanoniké (gr.) refers to music that does not regard sounds on the basis of hearing, but as a reflection on numbers. […] Those who follow this practice are called canonic, the term that designated and still designates the Pythagoreans". By not regarding sounds "according to hearing", one understands that music is the echo of the harmony that emanates from the rotation of the planets. Dentler's discourse comes via Plato's Timaeus, Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (an important work for understanding the doctrine of the harmony of the spheres, generated by planets, revived and paraphrased in Dante's Commedia), the neoplatonist Giamblico, Boëtius and others, and reaches a milestone in modern civilization: Johannes Kepler's Harmonices Mundi. Libri V (1619). It is important to note that Frederick ordered Nichelmann to write an oratorio on Scipio's Dream, which the composer realized with Metastasio's Italian text. The Musical Offering is therefore intended as the realization of a piece that Kepler asked composers to produce. The composition, which would represent the Harmony of the Spheres and the Quadrivium (Boëtius' subdivision of the Liberal Arts), was never performed before or after Bach. Frederick II "the Great", King of Prussia, was a Freemason and liked to sign his correspondence as Philosophe de Sans-Souci, as his friend and correspondent Voltaire said. The esoteric masterpiece was written to be understood by him (since he had ordered it). The sequence of the parts can only be that which is presented in the original edition, which has been misunderstood by scholars in the past (and to this day). Ultimately we can therefore state that the Musicalisches Opfer is a composition that has always been misinterpreted by critics, who have always seen it as a form of court homage. In fact, Bach, beneath the superficial veil of the humble 'act of gratitude' (as a contemporary source called it), created a monument to the most important concept for a musician and for a true Christian, namely that music was nothing more than an earthly and material reflection of the much higher and spiritual 'Music of the Spheres'. Through the public tribute to Frederick II of Hohenzollern, Bach bequeathed to posterity and the world his own Credo as a "musico prattico", who knew how to combine the highest artistic knowledge with the devotion befitting a knowing Christian. Bach's meeting with his former student Lorenz Mizler enabled him to become in June 1747 (a month after the famous trip to Potsdam and the accompanying evening at the Stadtschloss) the fourteenth member (sic! BACH=14, 2+1+3+8, where a=1, b=2, c=3, etc.) of the Correspondierende Societät der musicalischen Wissenschaften [Corresponding Society for Musical Sciences, 1738-1761], of which Mizler was the first founding member, under the name "Pythagoras". In this numerological context, the choice of the date for the dedicated eulogy of the Musical Offering acquires a significance that goes beyond mere coincidence. Indeed, on 7 July 1747 (7-7-1747), the number fourteen appears three times, following the repeated mentions of the word Thema, which are also italicized. The sum of 7 and 7 equals 14 twice, while the individual digits, 1 and 4, together form the number 14. Also, the subtitle of the last part, Quaerendo invenietis, brings Bach's name into it, derived from the Gospel of Matthew, seventh verse of the seventh chapter. Again, 7 + 7 = 14. From all this, the secret, esoteric and religiously interdenominational character that characterized Mizler's society, its work and its members can be deduced. This also gives rise to the attempt to (insofar as one can justify a free artistic creative act) "explain" the completion of the Mass in B minor (BWV 232) in the years when Bach became a member. Although the choice of the Missa tota form seems to be in line with Bach's attitude in his later years, the 'universal' character of this choral masterwork seems almost his ultimate moral attempt to transcend himself as a musician and as an earthly man. "Vincer sé stesso è la maggior vittoria" is the subtitle of Rodrigo, Handel's first opera that he wrote for Italy, in Florence. In the sphere of the Neoplatonic and Pythagorean Academy, it is impossible to forget Alessandro Striggio's beautiful couplet, at the end of the third act of the libretto for the "divine" Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi: