The Art of Fugue in Tibet (or, What Happens When the Lights Go Out in the Middle of Bach’s Last Breath)

Contrapunctus 14, the last movement  of Bach’s Art of Fugue ends abruptly. Bach literally died while writing it. In his original manuscript, the notes stop and are followed by a message in Bach’s son’s, Carl Phillip’s, handwriting  who was in charge of transcribing his father’s musical ideas onto paper as Bach battled blindness in old age:

“Über dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme B A C H im Contra-subject angebracht worden, ist der Verfasser gestorben.”

Translated into English, it means:

“At this point in the fugue, where the name B-A-C-H appears in the countersubject, the composer died.”

The rest of the score is blank. Empty hand drawn staves extend to the bottom of the page. 

Theoretically, a score is just symbols. Ink scratches on paper. Without a performer, it lies inert. But when a musician conjures Bach they’re not just reading - they’re channeling. They’re breathing life into a set of instructions written by someone who is no longer here. They align their body, their breath with someone else’s mind, often across a gulf of centuries and culture. The composer is dead; the music is not. And the performer’s job is to bring that ghost back into the room.

And when the musical seance is done well—you can feel it. The room changes. Time and space warp a little. It’s not just you hearing something—it’s you being in the presence of someone.

J.S. Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge—The Art of Fugue—a kind of farewell note… the musical equivalent of a man drawing a mandala on his deathbed and then leaving the last corner blank, mid-stroke, hand arrested in air. The final movement, Contrapunctus XIV, trails off mid-line. No final cadence, no ritardando, no D minor chord to finish. Just gone.

And here’s the part that will sound like a parable even though it isn’t one.

We were in Tibet. My sister was slated to play Art of Fugue in concert and I had the role of page turner. We were told the electricity might go out. This was presented with the same matter-of-factness as “the restrooms are down the hall to the left.” Something about rotating power grids, something about rationing, something something elevation and batteries. So I brought a flashlight. 

Now imagine this: my sister onstage playing the 90-minute sequence of fugues and canons, each one built like a crystalline scaffold of pure intellect, themes folded into themselves like those snakes that swallow their own tails. There’s no tempo markings. No instrumentation instructions. Bach left it like a musical koan: interpret this how you will. Solve this labyrinth if you dare.

About halfway in, right during the triple fugue—this is the one that eventually spells out B-A-C-H (in German notation: B♭–A–C–B♮), a kind of contrapuntal signature, an audio fingerprint folded inside the fugue—the lights go out.

And not like a flicker. Total. Gone. The hall is in sudden full blackout. You could hear people, shuffle. My sister, maybe not seeing but somehow sensing, doesn’t skip a beat. She keeps playing. Unfazed. The music continues—disembodied, a sonic ghost in total darkness. And I, from her side , flick the flashlight on. Only the sheet music glows now. A small cone of light in the sea of darkness. 

I turned the pages.

And for the next 30 minutes, we are in this dimension  of negative space—black on black, notes bouncing  around  in near darkness—and the audience, who cannot see her, only hear her leading the musical odyssey. Everyone’s sense of hearing  is heightened with nearly all visual distractions removed. 

And then we reach the end.

Except—there is no end. The music stops. No resolution. No closure. It breaks off in the middle of the third subject, right as the B-A-C-H motif returns. And the story goes that Bach died while writing it. Like literally expired with the quill still raised. 

And I click off the flashlight. The hall went from dimly haunted to utter black.

No one claps. Not right away.

Because we all know something had happened. Like we’d glimpsed the ghost inside the notation. The unfinished fugue—the final fugue that loops on itself, that encodes the composer’s name inside itself and then vanishes—had been played in the dark. And the only thing illuminating it had been this tiny cone of light, aimed not at the player but at the pages. The score. The artifact. The trace.

I think that’s when I understood what a musical performance could be. Or at least, what this piece is. It’s a mirror Bach left for us with his dying breath. And because he couldn’t finish it, we have to finish it. Not musically—I mean spiritually. Interpret that however you want. Just bring a flashlight.