The Musical Offering includes canons that are presented as puzzles, with Bach providing only the data to be deployed and sometimes no instructions, under the motto 'Quaerendo invenietis' (Seek, and ye shall find).
Interpretation
The original edition of the Musical Offering is a 'veritable maze,' with no definitive argument for the intended order of its components, leading to various scholarly interpretations of its structure.
Critical Reception
The work, its style, and its obsequious preface (in German) have sometimes been interpreted as a vindictive snub or a theological lesson from Bach to Frederick II.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Bach included special hints for Frederick II in the Musical Offering, such as votive mottoes comparing the growth of note-values to the king's fortune and the gradation of modulations to his glory.
Composition History
Bach composed the Musical Offering after being challenged by Frederick II, the King of Prussia, to improvise a fugue on a complex chromatic theme during a visit to his court in May 1747.
Performer Biography
Philippe Pierlot, the bass viol player on this recording, is also a conductor who has adapted and restored operas by Monteverdi and Marin Marais, and Bach's St Mark Passion.
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