Prelude and Fugue in E major BWV 854 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in E major , BWV 854, form a pair of works in Part 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier , a collection of preludes and fugues for keyboard instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach .

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Prelude

While Hermann Keller , the Prelude as Pastorale in ¹² / ₈ referred -Stroke, Peter Benary raises the question of whether the piece "an Invention or embossed motif variable record, a Siciliano , a pastoral or an early form of sonata form " was, and is on the Answer: “None of this may be wrong, but it only paraphrases the self-imprint without doing justice to it.” Cecil Gray, for his part, is first reminded of Chopin in this prelude , but above all of Bellini's melodies , especially in his opera La sonnambula . Hugo Riemann finally describes the prelude with poetic exuberance: "Like twigs in young foliage, the light arpeggiotrioles sway with their tip movement (as if curled by the breeze) ..."

Unexpected expressiveness is the result of the nun's jump and the subsequent chromaticism in bars 7 and 8, which is repeated in bars 21 and 22 and leads back to the tonic . The prelude is also structured internally by the recapitulation in the subdominant A major in bar 15, which is prepared by runs in both hands. Benary mentions the double final cadenza in bars 23/24: first from the bass plagal , from the fourth to the first level ; then authentic in the upper parts .

The prelude in E major has come down to us in the piano booklet for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach . It appears in a copy of the Bach student Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber at the beginning of the 6th  French Suite .

Gap

The theme of the three-part fugue consists of two contrasting elements, such as the theme of the C major fugue in the 2nd part of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Here, however, the contrast is even more pronounced. Philipp Spitta already emphasized the boldness of the opening, jumping second step , and it is also brought up in numerous later descriptions of the work. After a short pause, there is a sixteenth-note movement, the end of which cannot be precisely determined and which immediately changes into the first counterpoint after the second voice has entered .

In bar 27, three bars before the end, the bass was originally notated as a falling E major scale. Bach then changed this bass line later to avoid parallel fifths with the upper part. Some performers and musicologists, including Hermann Keller and Peter Benary, still prefer the first version.

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 854. (PDF)
• BWV 854. (Flash) Philip Goeth

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005. p. 40
2. ↑ Cecil Gray: The forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach . Oxford University Press, 1938. p. 40
3. ↑ Hermann Keller: The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach . (PDF) p. 71