Kington
Group: Members
Posts: 4
Joined: June 2009 |
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Posted: Mar. 08 2013, 18:16 |
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Interesting take on it, but the short answer is no.
The Fugue subject of the T&F in d min is said to be an inspiration rather than a direct copy. Mike states that he turned the idea "upside down". In Music composition this is called an inversion which is quite a different thing to playing something backwards (which is called retrograde).
What the opening of TB and the d min Fugue have in common (along with plenty of other examples from Baroque composers) is a figure that maintains motion by having a set of notes that move being alternated with a static note, (and this is turn was a popular technique with string writing because the static note would be played on an open string).
If you look at the notes of the Fugue subject, you'll see that every alternate note is always the A (you'll also notice that the A is always the topmost note of the figure):
A G A F A E A D A C# A D A E A F A A(octave down) A B A C# A D A etc
The famous opening figure of TB uses a similar technique but as Mike said, he turned that idea upside down (inverted) by having the static note as the lowermost note of the figure:
E A E B E G A E C E D E B C E A E B etc
The notable difference is of course that Mike's idea does not regularly alternate back to the E - it's not always every other note. That combined with the change of time signature every 4th bar, is one of the satisfying things that takes it further from Bach and makes it distinctively Mike 
Inverting an idea is a different thing to literally inverting the actual notes (which coincidentally is something that Bach used to do a lot). When I'm next on the computer (on iPod at the moment), I'll put together some better examples with proper notation and post them.
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