Prelude and Fugue in E flat major BWV 852 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in E flat major , BWV 852, 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 .

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Prelude

This is an example of a prelude that can certainly be considered a stand-alone piece: it is significantly longer than the following fugue and also much more weighty. The 70 bars contain three clearly distinguishable parts: bars 1 to 9 appear as a harmoniously stretched “prelude within the prelude”: only in the second half of bar 4 is E flat major confirmed as the tonic . After a virtuoso run in thirty-second notes , the second part is a four-part imitation section, which Hermann Keller describes as a double fugato . The theme of this section, from bars 10 to 24, is reminiscent of the first theme of the five-part fugue in E flat major for organ from the third part of the keyboard exercise .

In the third part, from bar 25, the motifs from the first two parts are combined in a rhythmically complementary sixteenth-note flow. A chordal condensation in the right hand in measure 45 climbs to the climax in measure 59, with the three-stroke c as the highest note. In the last three bars a passage from E- flat to B can be heard, divided between soprano and tenor.

Gap

The severe seriousness of the prelude is followed by the carefree cheerfulness of the fugue, which with 37 bars only reaches half the playing time of the prelude. Cecil Gray compares this three-part fugue with the third movement of Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony , in which the themes of the first movement are caricatured , but at the same time emphasizes its good-natured character. The fugue theme modulates to the dominant and back in only two bars , but the comes answers the theme exclusively in the tonic so that no distant keys are reached in the further course. What is also striking is the lack of “learned” contrapuntal artifacts . There is no augmentation , diminution , reversal or narrowing . The passage duriusculus in the upper part from g ¹ to d ¹ in bars 15-17, the surprising gb ¹ instead of the expected g ¹ at the last appearance of the theme in the middle part in bar 34, as well as the final harmonic twist in the last bar do not cause any clouding the cheerful mood, but can be interpreted as a humorous wink.

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 852. (PDF)
• BWV 852. (Flash) David Korevaar

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005, p. 23
2. ↑ Cecil Gray: The forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach . Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 34.