Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor BWV 867 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor , BWV 867, 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 .

Sheet music is temporarily disabled.

Prelude

Organ points , freely starting dissonances , ostinat rhythm and full-part movement culminate in the third to last bar on a fermata with a nine-part reduced seventh chord . All this adds up to the affect of weighty seriousness and pathetic dignity. The prelude is usually played at a very slow pace, piano and with a softly contoured rhythm. A performance in a quiet quarter-pulse and in the forte , combined with rhythmic rigor , is also possible and justifiable, especially on the piano .

The piece contains 24 bars; the middle is clearly emphasized by the thinly set bars 13 to 15. After the first eighth note in bar 20, an intentional crescendo sets in , which Bach realizes primarily through an increasing number of voices.

Gap

This fugue and the one in C sharp minor from Part 1 are the only five-part examples from the Well-Tempered Clavier. The notation suggests a closeness to the stile antico , which, however, is relativized by the nons' jump within the topic after a break . The theme does not end when using the Comes , but goes beyond these away, until the beginning of clock. 4

In the exposition, the theme is introduced in five voices from top (soprano) to bottom (bass) up to bar 18. After the parallel key in D flat major has been reached in bar 25 , there follows a development with four closely spaced themes; the fifth thematic entry occurs in the cadenza after A flat major in bar 37, in the middle of the fugue. Bars 50 to 53 again suggest a multiple narrowing ; but this is also only faked, since only the beginning of the topic is repeated. It is only from bar 67 that the climax is actually a five-fold narrowing - probably unique in Bach's entire joint work.

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 867 (PDF)
• BWV 867. (Flash) Edward Parmentier

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005, pp. 72/73
2. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005, p. 74