Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor BWV 849 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor , BWV 849, 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

The solemn, expressive, recitative character of the melodic line is reminiscent of Bach's Passion settings. It is difficult to establish a direct relationship between the prelude and the following fugue, but there are some hints: the descending semitone from C sharp to his appears at the beginning of the prelude in the bass part, and the tone sequence g sharp-f sharp-a-g sharp in the final Bar 39 could be understood as an anticipation of the fugue theme. The main motif of the prelude contains an ascending octave jump that runs through the entire piece, increasing to a ninth in bars 9/10 and even to a decime in bar 33 .

A copy of the prelude is preserved in the Clavier booklet for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach .

Gap

With 115 bars, this is one of Bach's longest and most and densely worked out fugues. It contains three topics; However, it is debatable whether it should be called a triple fugue or a fugue with two obbligato counterpoints . The five voices appear at the beginning of the fugue in ascending order, starting with the bass part. However, it is given up soon after the fifth theme start in the soprano part, reduced to a three-part part in the middle section and only reappears in the final section from bar 99, highlighted by a passage duriusculus (descending semitones) from c sharp ² to g sharp ¹ . The fugue shows numerous narrow passages , but does not contain any unrelated interludes.

The first theme cis-his-e-dis is a cross motif in half and whole notes, with pitch steps similar to BACH . The second theme appears as a lively, rhythmically contrasting eighth note movement, for the first time in the upper part from bar 36. From bar 49 it is combined with the third theme, a simple cadenza formula . As a final climax, an extended cadentation appears in the last twelve bars, with the surprising dissonance at the beginning of bar 112 increasing the tension again.

Ernst Kurth describes the contrast between the first and second themes of this fugue:

“If the first […] was the basic will of a heavy building, then these movements of the uniformity of a calm undulating line contain a kind of floating movement, which only appears as a contrast to the compact building and contains a kind of height sensation compared to that Imagination of clear height above an architectural structure of emerging form movement, e.g. B. a Gothic cathedral. "

- Ernst Kurth

See also music and architecture .

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.
• Ernst Kurth: Basics of linear counterpoint. Introduction to the style and technique of Bach's melodic polyphony. Drechsel, Bern 1917.

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 849. (PDF)
• BWV 849. (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. 26
2. ^ ^{A b} Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005. p. 27
3. ↑ Cecil Gray: The forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach . Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 26.
4. ^ Ernst Kurth: Basics of the linear counterpoint. Introduction to the style and technique of Bach's melodic polyphony . Drechsel, Bern 1917, p. 209