It seems to be the practice these days to leave out the second "the" and refer to the work as The Art of Fugue. I don't know the reason for that. The German title is "Die Kunst der Fuge," which according to my high school (and little bit of college) German is literally "the art the fugue." (I don't know how English came by that second "u," or why the German doesn't include one of those "of"-type words, like "auf.") The two recordings of it or parts of it that I have, by Glenn Gould and Gustav Leonhardt, were made in 1962 and 1969 respectively, and reissued in the 1980s, and both say "the fugue." I assume there is some good linguistic reason for discarding the "the," though it sounds off to me. I also assume that's why this article by Jonathan Gaisman, in the May issue of The New Criterion is called "The Heart of Fugue."
I have a sort of compulsion, which I'm trying to break, to read every magazine to which I subscribe from cover to cover, in order. It was hard for me not to defy that compulsion in this case, as the fugue article is the last one in this issue, and I was eager to read it, because I have a problem with the fugue as a musical form and am always vaguely hoping for some sort of breakthrough in that difficulty.
I've always found the form somewhat…I hate to use this term…dry. Almost inaccessible. Around this time last year I started the project of listening thoroughly to the entire Well-Tempered Clavier (see this post). My intention was to listen to every prelude-and-fugue pair at least three times. I knew I would like the preludes, in general, but had my doubts, based on past experience, about the fugues:
With a few exceptions, the form has left me cold. It seemed dry, abstract, academic. You get the statement of the subject–which is frequently not all that interesting in itself–three or four times, and at that point I usually lose the thread: the piece just becomes a lot of wandering counterpoint, with the subject emerging from time to time.
I don't think I ever reported on the completion of that project, but I did complete it, with many stops and starts, probably six months or so after I started it. And I very much enjoyed it. And the pattern of very much liking the preludes and being unenthusiastic about the fugues continued throughout. I did, as my listening continued, find that I was enjoying the fugues more, but still they continued to seem, well, all the things that I just mentioned.
The New Criterion article pointed me toward a possible resolution of the problem: just give up. I think it's an excellent brief introduction to the form, and to The Art. But it makes clear to me that a true appreciation and enjoyment of it is beyond me, because my ears and brain are not capable of grasping the structures that make it so impressive and fascinating to those who can grasp it.
I'm very well aware that there are subtleties and complexities in most classical music that I don't and can't grasp. And that some of these are accessible only to those who have substantial training in music theory and very good ears. That undoubtedly limits but does not present a major obstacle to my enjoyment; to be brought to raptures by a piece of music is sufficient, even if I'm missing a lot.
Why is the fugue different? The opening of the article is a simple observation:
Many people, if they wonder how music is made up, suppose that it consists of a tune and an accompaniment. The paradigmatic guitarist in front of a campfire croons the melody, while his hands create the harmonies that give it color.
Well, yeah, but I'm more sophisticated than that, I thought, mildly annoyed. But Gaisman goes on with more elaborate examples:
Frédéric Chopin admired Bellini, and his nocturnes reproduce the same model: the right hand unfurls a line of singing melody on the piano, and the left provides (in his case) exquisite harmonic support.
Yes, a long way from the campfire guitar, but the basic concept is there in Chopin. Counterpoint, on the other hand, is:
… a compositional method in which there is not a dominating tune and a subsidiary accompaniment, but contrariwise a democratic parity between the voices. (They are called voices even when they are instrumental, not sung.) A choral piece by Johann Sebastian Bach or Handel typically shares out the elements equally between soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, so that the distinction between melody and harmony does not apply; every line contributes to both.
This may seem pretty obvious. It is pretty obvious, in essence. But in this case, as often happens, I had missed the implications of the obvious: on reflection, I realized that almost all the music that I really enjoy exhibits to some degree that voice-and-accompaniment relationship. I would call it, in more elaborate music, a foreground and background relationship. The foreground usually involves melody, a single distinct line or perhaps a mingling of multiple lines, which may be one or two instruments or a whole section of an orchestra or even the orchestra as a whole, with harmony and/or subordinate melody and/or rhythm less prominent. There may be and often is a lot going on in this supporting stuff, but it isn't generally the center of attention. The relationships between foreground and background are far more complex than Gaisman's first simple voice-and-guitar instance, but they do participate in a structure where not everything is of equal prominence (I don't say "importance"–that's no doubt a tricky judgment).
"… the distinction between melody and harmony does not apply…." That's the key, I guess. When I listen to a fugue, my ears keep searching for that prominent voice, the stirring tunes sailing over an ever-varying sea of harmony and rhythm, passages connected by transitions that in themselves keep my interest. And not only do my ears not find those things, they don't really grasp what they do hear. They hear a great many notes, but they don't grasp, they don't feel, the interrelationships among them.
All the fourteen fugues and four canons in The Art of Fugue derive in some way from a single theme or “motto” in D minor, but, following an initial treatment that almost wilfully eschews the usual devices, their ingenuity and increasing complexity amount to one of the great intellectual and artistic achievements of Western civilization…
Alas for me, I cannot hear that "ingenuity and increasing complexity."
If this interests you at all, please read the whole article. It does make me wish I could experience what the author describes. The credit on that article, by the way, says only that "Jonathan Gaisman is a King’s Counsel, practicing in commercial law." Having gone into law after obtaining an undergraduate degree in music, perhaps.
If you read all the above and think you deserve a reward, here it is. If you didn't, my feelings are hurt, but here's your reward anyway. I didn't bother making notes of which pieces in the Well-Tempered Clavier I especially liked, but I think the F minor prelude and fugue from Book 2 were among them.
Light On Dark Water 
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