Prelude and Fugue in C major BWV 870 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part II)

Prelude and Fugue in C major , BWV 870, open the second part of the Well-Tempered Clavier , a collection of preludes and fugues for keyboard instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach .

Prelude

The beginning of the second part of the Well-Tempered Clavier is a festive entrance portal that gives the impression of a prelude "pro organo pleno" - a powerful piece for the organ in which all the stops are pulled. There are indeed close connections to the organ prelude in C major BWV 545. An early version with only 17 bars is a copy by Johann Peter Kellner with the date “3. July 1726 ”. In a second version, which has been preserved in Bach's “London Autograph ”, it was initially doubled to 34 bars and finally revised again in a copy by Johann Christoph Altnikol by changing the figuration to thirty-second notes in many places . The piece is framed by organ points on C as well as by the subdominant , which is reached in the first and second to last measure by an intermediate dominant .

Gap

An early version of the fugue, titled "Fughetta", has come down to us in Kellner's copy as the first version of the prelude. It was in time and contained 33 measures. Bach later rewrote it to two-quarter time, which doubled the number of measures , and added a coda so that the three-part fugue now contains 83 measures.

The theme gets its peculiarity from the mordent, an ornament that is written out as gfg in bar 1, sharply emphasizes the melody peak in bar 2 and gradually disappears in the rolling sixteenth notes. Despite its high-spirited character, which increases towards the end, the fugue is clearly structured in its formal structure. In the coda from bar 68, the theme initially flows underground, as it were, and then rises to triumphant magnitude in the upper part. Wanda Landowska sees this place under the picture of a horse rearing up high; she warns against closing the fugue with a ritardando .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hermann Keller: The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach. Work and reproduction. P. 124 ( Memento of the original from July 14, 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. 
2. ↑ Hermann Keller: The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach. Work and reproduction. P. 125 ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

literature

• Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider AG. Aarau, 2005.
• Alfred Dürr : Johann Sebastian Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier . Bärenreiter factory introductions. ISBN 9783761812297 . 4th edition 2012
• Cecil Gray: The forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach . Oxford University Press, 1938.

Web links

• The Well-Tempered Clavier II, Johann Sebastian Bach : Sheet Music and Audio Files in the International Music Score Library Project
• Hermann Keller: BWV 870