Prelude and Fugue in A major BWV 864 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in A major , BWV 864, form a pair of works in the 1st part of the Well-Tempered Clavier , a collection of preludes and fugues for keyboard instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach .

Sheet music is temporarily disabled.

Prelude

The prelude is a sinfonia in threefold counterpoint. As in the Sinfonia in F minor BWV 795, the three Soggetti are exposed right at the beginning in a three-part movement. The soprano brings a cantable head motif with sequencing , the motif of the middle voice is rhythmically profiled and at the same time harmoniously connecting. The bass course is reminiscent of a lamento bass , but as in the Sinfonia in F minor, the first bass note is not yet thematic.

The reason why much more was written about the F minor symphony than about this prelude may be that the character of the prelude in A major seems more light-hearted and relaxed than the minor variant.

Gap

What is striking about the fugue theme is the beginning with a separate single note, followed by three eighth rests, as well as a number of ascending fourths. In addition, the issue goes beyond the use of Comes and terminates in the third bar on the dominant - you could say the joint starts with a stretto . The work was interpreted very differently by the interpreters: Carl Czerny marked the first note with an ff and the continuation with a p . Hugo Riemann finds the fugue "of the most intimate feeling and an almost touching naivete"; Donald Tovey she holds on as "delicate and complicated Scherzo", which by the dance- ⁹ / ₈ may be due -Stroke. The structure of the joint is also strange. It initially contains two parts of equal length: bars 1–20 in eighth notes, bars 21–41 in sixteenth notes. This is followed by a two-part coda , which first repeats the first part in bars 41-48, then the second part in bars 49-54, ie a form A B a b. The joking character in the first part is emphasized by the fact that after the regular first three themed appearances in bar 6 there is a fourth entry in the bass, which, however, turns out to be a sham entry.

literature

• Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005.
• Alfred Dürr : Johann Sebastian Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier . 4th edition. Bärenreiter Introduction to Works, 2012, ISBN 978-3-7618-1229-7 .
• Cecil Gray: The Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach.  - Internet Archive . Oxford University Press, London / New York / Toronto 1938.

Web links

• The Well-Tempered Clavier I, Johann Sebastian Bach : Sheet Music and Audio Files in the International Music Score Library Project
• Hermann Keller : BWV 864. (PDF)
• BWV 864. (Flash) Edward Parmentier

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005, p. 66
2. ↑ Hermann Keller ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) p. 99 
3. ↑ Cecil Gray: The forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach . Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 66