Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV 865 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in A minor , BWV 865, 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 .

Sheet music is temporarily disabled.

Prelude

Peter Benary describes the piece as an invention and sees "two motifs in playful alternation". The first motif, introduced in the right hand, consists mainly of broken chords. In addition, there is an insistent motif in the left hand with alternating notes that play around a four-bar organ point on A. It gradually fades into the background, but returns in bar 22 with a reprisal effect . Another melodic motif with a descending seventh leap appears twice from bar 17, but has no consequences for the rest of the piece.

Gap

This fugue occupies a special position in Bach's work. On the one hand, it is disproportionately longer than the Prelude, and with its 87 ⁴ ⁄ ₄ measures it is even one of the longest of its kind in the Well-Tempered Clavier. On the other hand, it can be assumed that the work with his final pedal point, the text faithfully and manualiter is not playable, was composed for organ. That is why Hermann Keller is of the opinion that the piece does not belong in the Well-Tempered Clavier.

The work is generally not judged very favorably in the specialist literature. Many see it as a youthful work by Bach and describe it as immature. According to Hermann Keller, the fugue “with its well-considered, rational structure wants to be a test piece in which all the possibilities of narrowing, reversing and a combination of both are so thoroughly exercised that it is a prime example of the application of these techniques in every textbook on fugue composition could stand. ”Benary uses the expression the catalog fugue for this fact .

The fugue is characterized by a certain rhythmic monotony that is given in the two-part theme. Starting on the root key a, it rises up to the sixth on f, plunges down to the E with a jump of a seventh and a major third, continues after an eighth rest and ends again on the root note. Bach later adopted this theme in a slightly different form in the orchestral introduction to his cantata So far you have not asked for anything in my name . As I said, in the further course of the fugue there are numerous narrowings and reversals , but no sustained counter-subject and no longer interludes.

The final increase begins with two emphatic stops on dissonances in bars 80 and 82, similar to the conclusion in the Passacaglia in C minor and the organ fugue BWV 547. In bar 83, the organ point on A is reached, which, combined with a growing number of voices, over four and a half bars leads to the final chord in A major.

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 865. (PDF)
• BWV 865. (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. 68
2. ↑ Cecil Gray: The forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach . Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 67
3. ↑ 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. 100 
4. ^ Alfred Dürr: Johann Sebastian Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier . P. 216: "a linearity not yet fully developed"
5. ↑ ^{a b} 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. 101