In the last hours of a dedicated life, Johann Sebastian Bach realized his ultimate goal of musical "purity" in a final homage to the art of the fugue. In the last few hours of a life dedicated to musical service, James Barrett Welton conceived the idea of this recording which herein fulfilled in loving memory.

This contrapuntal monument, undesignated as to instrumentation, was the crowning achievement of an abstract artist whose physical sight was gone, but whose spiritual sight was firmly fixed upon universality and the eternals.

Protected by Bach's own imaginative daring in his numerous transcripts of his own music and his unhesitating appropriation of other men's music, we may safely guess that the greatest transcriber in musical history would have thoroughly approved of this setting, especially for instruments he did not know. He was always the prophetic artist whose imagination was equal to writing for instruments that either had not yet been invented or developed to the point of fulfilling his obvious intentions.

When Bach himself transcribed, his unique power of organization made the results incomparably more beautiful than the original. This we especially find in his appropriations of Vivaldi whose works he freely utilized without acknowledging their source, in keeping with the conventions of the day. But then, whatever he touched became his; whatever he used, including his own materials, was transformed through his elevated inspiration and flawless technique.

His ability to absorb the styles and methods of his German, English, French and Italian predecessors and contemporaries accounted for his status as a synthesis of the Baroque style as well as for the oblivion of his music for nearly a century following his death in 1750. Bach himself was less fortunate in the transcriptions of his work by others, and also in the posthumous misinterpretations of his original music until quite recently. Bach's art was so deeply rooted in the conventions of the past eras that even as he produced his mature masterpieces, they were already being branded as "old fashioned".

Its widespread revival began with the issuance of the "Deutsche Bach Gesellschaft" (founded 1850) which aimed to issue the mater's complete works based on the original manuscripts. Typical of the well-meaning but misguided 19th century approach to this music so deeply rooted in the 17th century, was its editor's faith in the drastically the musical, theological and social changes of the last half of the 18th century affected the composition, publication and performance of music, so do we now know that the skeletonized scores of Baroque composers are not trustworthy guides to their composer's full expectations and practices as they are with later composers.

The scholarly research of our time has revealed to what degree Baroque practices differed basically for a later day. We must be mindful that this was an improvisational era and that the specific divisions which separated compositions from performance had not yet come to pass. All composers were also performers and all performers were composers. With publication being both rare and extremely expensive, many details of interpretive directions were not indicated in the manuscript, but instead were left to be extemporaneously created by the performer as a test of his imagination and skill.

Today, musicians are fully aware that ornamentation is the most typical (and troublesome) feature of Baroque style. This brings the realization that the Baroque score was but an outline of the composer's intentions, not an authentic document which showed how the composer wanted his work performed nor how anyone performed it. Baroque "urtexts" also indicate how vitally knowlegable ornamentation was expected to affect such crucial matters as melodic progression, consonance and dissonance, and rhythmic design, called "movement".

The fact that ornamentation was left almost entirely to the performer's judgment led to the fallacious conclusion that was purely a matter of individual tastes. Nothing is further from the truth. The contrary is true. Although the performer was free to select from a large number of stylish material, it was very precisely confined to 17th century convention. Its freedoms and limitations were accurately dictated by style; perfectly understood by those trained in its disciplines. Exactly the same practices apply to matters of rhythm and temp. Although Baroque manuscripts reveal practically no tempo indications or dynamic markings, the composer's intentions were entirely clear to performers. The Old Tradition made a distinction between two movements, fast and slow. It was the combination of note values, with the smallest value always treated as the fastest which indicated the overall movement. If the composition consisted of only two note values such as 1/8ths and 1/4ths, or 1/4s and 1/2s, it would be a fast movement. However, if the music were divided into three or more note values, the movement would slow down accordingly.

Undoubtedly, it is the Quartet's respect for the great work which led them to an investigations of the Old Traditions and the assumed the responsibility of becoming creative partners of the composer, an opportunity which the style not only affords, but actually necessitates. It also accounts largely for the expressivity and directness which their interpretation brings to the noble work.

The Los Angeles Saxophone Quartet had its beginnings at West Point, New York, where three of its four members were performers in the Saxophone Quartet of the United States Military Academy Band. While completing their military obligation as bandsmen, the quartet toured the Continental United States and Hawaii. Upon completion of military service, Messrs. Pittel, Greeenberg and Yoshioka, with Mr. Morosco formed THE LOS ANGELES SAXOPHONE QUARTET.