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In May 1747 Johann
Sebastian Bach went to Potsdam to visit
his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was
court cembalist to Frederick the Great
of Prussia. The king wanted to make the
acquaintance of the celebrated Cantor os
St. Thomas's Church, Leipzig, and when
they met he played a theme on which Bach
had to improvise a six-part fugue. The
master found the theme unsuitable for
this purpose and improvised on a theme
of his own, promising, however, to
compose a work on the "royal" theme.
Soon after his return to Leipzig he had
completed the piece. He had it printed
at his own expense and as early as July
of the same year was able to send to the
"most gracious king" a "Musical
Offering, the most distinguished part of
which is derived from Your Majesty's own
noble hand."
This work, consisting of a number of
separate sections, contained nine canons
with numerous technical refinements and
Latin annotations, e. g. "Quaerendo
invenietis" (Seek and ye shall find),
including so-called "riddle canons,"
which had been popular since the Middle
Ages; there were also a canonic fugue,
ricercares in three and six parts, and a
trio sonata. The king was probably
overtaxed by the riddles, for he
presented his copy to his sister Amalia;
to judge by the good condition yjis copy
is in, it was hardly used.
In most of the numbers Bach grave no
exact indication of the instrumentation.
As with the "Art of Fugue" this led to
various later attempts to find the
"correct" arrangement. For instance,
Zelter, Mendelssohn's teacher, had the
six-part ricercare performed by a string
ensemble, while in the twentieth century
Anton von Webern tried to elucidate the
structure of the same ricercare by the
use of tone colour. In the present
recording the "Musical Offering" is
performed in the scoring suggested by
Dr. Erich Fiala. String instruments of
the Amati school are used exclusively.
All the modernisations which have been
incorpored over the years have been
eliminated by careful renovation in
order to restore the instruments'
original tone quality. The flute is a
conical wooden flute with a ring-key
system, made around 1840 by G. M. Bürger
of Strasbourg.
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