Prelude and Fugue in B flat major BWV 866 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in B flat major , BWV 866, form a pair of works in the first part of the Well-Tempered Clavier , a collection of preludes and fugues for keyboard instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach .

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Prelude

The piece begins with virtuoso chord sequences resolved into playing figures. In contrast to the preludes in D major and D minor from Part 1, this motif is not retained, but rather interrupted three times by runs. The second beat of bar 11 in the middle of the piece is marked in handwriting with “Adagio”. At this point, the thirty-second rhythm is suddenly slowed down, full-fledged chords sound, and the prelude becomes a toccata , largely shaped by targeted but unconfirmed modulations . Similar to the gigue of the Partita in B flat major , the melodic line rises at the end of the piece to b ² . In a contemporary manuscript as well as in the edition by Carl Czerny , this floating figure is followed by a whole note B as the final note, which not only seems implausible, but actually reverses Bach's compositional intentions.

Gap

The fugue is a regular dance piece, without any learned tricks such as inversions or narrowing . In the second bar the rhythm accelerates and in the third and fourth bars it becomes a swirling gyroscopic motion. The two obbligato counterpoints add to the graceful, high-spirited character. The first occurs when you use the Comes and strikes after a description of the subject as a tambourine to the beat. The second counterpoint is introduced during the third topic and is content with short, impertinent objections. Although the joint is in three parts, but contains in the first implementation in clock 13, a surplus fourth subject entry in the upper part. In the further course the theme sounds four more times at a longer time interval, whereby the insert in measure 35 in the middle voice turns out to be an incomplete dummy insert.

There are opposing views on the articulation of the topic. Czerny prescribes staccato for the first four eighth notes and legato for the two following notes , while other editors tie the first four notes together and separate the two following notes. Alfred Kreutz, on the other hand, rejects both variants as not in the Bach style and suggests removing all eighth notes and playing the sixteenth notes “sparkling”.

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 866. (PDF)
• BWV 866. (Flash) Edward Parmentier

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider AG. Aarau, 2005. p. 70.
2. ↑ Hermann Keller : The Well-Tempered Clavier I and II . Cotta, Stuttgart 1948, p. 104.
3. ↑ Hermann Keller: The Well-Tempered Clavier I and II . Cotta, Stuttgart 1948, p. 105.
4. ↑ Hermann Keller: The Well-Tempered Clavier I and II . Cotta, Stuttgart 1948, p. 106.