BACH motif

One of the most frequently occurring examples of a musical cryptogram, the motif has been used by countless composers, especially after the Bach Revival in the first half of the 19th century.

There the motif is mentioned thus:[1]...all those who carried the name [Bach] were as far as known committed to music, which may be explained by the fact that even the letters b a c h in this order form a melody.

[4] Later commentators wrote: "The figure occurs so often in Bach's bass lines that it cannot have been accidental.

[15] The motif's wide popularity came only after the start of the Bach Revival in the first half of the 19th century.

[4] A few mid-19th century works that feature the motif prominently are: Composers found that the motif could be easily incorporated not only into the advanced harmonic writing of the 19th century, but also into the totally chromatic idiom of the Second Viennese School; so it was used by Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and their disciples and followers.

"b–a–c–h is beginning and end of all music" ( Max Reger 1912)
Excerpt of the Tristis est anima mea motet attributed to Kuhnau ( F minor )
Bach's E minor arrangement of the same passage: B–A–C–H appears in the alto voice
B–A–C–H (and its inversion) in the last bars of the Augmentation Canon of BWV 769
B–A–C–H in the tenor part of the last bars of Contrapunctus IV of The Art of Fugue
B–A–C–H opening the third and last subject of the unfinished fugue of The Art of Fugue
BACH motif followed by transposed version from Schumann's Sechs Fugen über den Namen B–A–C–H , Op. 60, No. 4, mm. 1–3 [ 12 ]
Note that C and H are transposed down, leaving the spelling unaffected but changing the melodic contour .
Schumann, Sechs Fugen for organ, Op. 60, No. 5, mm. 1–4
The motif may be used in different ways: here it is only the beginning of an extended melody. [ 13 ]
Charles Ives , 3-Page Sonata (1905), first mvt., first fugal complex
The BACH motif from The Art of Fugue Contrapunctus XIXc is the "1st Theme'/fugue subject" of Ives' combined sonata-allegro and fugal procedures. [ 14 ]