Classical music is often described as “pure”, “timeless” and “intellectual”, three epithets guaranteed to make most music-lovers reach for the off button in panic. Fortunately they’re not true. If ...

The pairing of Bach’s unfinished composition with Webern’s spare pieces for string quartet works well, although background noise takes the shine off The three works for string quartet by Anton Webern ...

He continued with a poetic clarity akin to that of the piece itself. On the fact that it is unfinished: he cited the note by CPE Bach that “at this point [during Contrapunctus 14] the composer died”.

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 Emerson Quartet plays the Contrapunctus No. 11. It's from the quartet's new recording of the Art of the Fugue by Bach.

"Contrapunctus Eleven (XI)," from Bach's "Art of the Fugue," performed by the Emerson String Quartet. It's music from their latest CD.

At its most basic level, over the course of an hour and a half, we witnessed the human body treated as if it were an idea in a fugue. We saw it the right way up, flipped upside down, horizontal, ...