ABSTRACT
Bach’s name is inseparably associated with fugue. Yet it is impossible to say when or how Bach came to recognize his special talent for fugal writing. C. P. E. Bach’s testimony that his father studied fugue on his own suggests that this took place during his years at Arnstadt (1703-7).1 Although such reports may have intentionally downplayed Bach’s dependence on teachers (as Williams 2004, 14 and infra, suggests), by the age of eighteen-barely out of childhood-Bach was indeed on his own. For a brilliant young musician this would have been a time of rapid development and self-instruction. Bach is unlikely to have disregarded what he might have received from his older brother or other teachers. But any genius is, in a profound sense, self-taught, and Bach would also have been storing away, in memory if not yet on paper (given the expense of the latter), all manner of ideas derived from music by other composers that he had sung, played, and heard. At the same time, by working out these ideas in increasingly complex and sophisticated compositions, he would have been teaching himself the art of writing fugues. By the time he reached Weimar in 1708, Bach must have mastered various types of fugal writing-not only in those keyboard pieces actually called fugues, of which only a few survive from that date, but in the fugal sections of larger keyboard pieces and vocal works.
