Bach completed his first version of the Art of Fugue in 1742 (Lyrebird Music LBMP-013), at about the same time as composing or collecting together the 24 Preludes and Fugues that comprise the second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. However, he decided to continue working on and greatly expanding the Art of Fugue, a process that he had nearly completed by his death eight years later. The work was then engraved and published by C. P. E. Bach, with a slightly revised edition being printed in 1752. Although almost all of the work can be played on a single keyboard instrument, a pair of harpsichords, clavichords, organs or other keyboards provide an effective medium for the complete work, and this new arrangement is supplemented by the completion of the final fugue made by Donald Tovey (1931), and the quadruple invertible fugue he composed to fulfil the Obituary’s description of the work’s missing final fugue.

Francis Knights is a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, Chairman of the National Early Music Association and Editor of Harpsichord & Fortepiano. His research interests include manuscript studies, performance practice, music analysis, pedagogy, and early keyboard instruments. He has recently performed cycles of all Bach’s clavier works and of the complete Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and over the past decade he has taken part in nearly forty early keyboard duet concerts, on harpsichord, spinet, clavichord and chamber organ.