Prelude and Fugue in E flat / D flat minor BWV 853 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

The Prelude in E flat minor and the fugue in D flat minor , BWV 853, 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 .

Sheet music is temporarily disabled.

Prelude

This prelude is one of Bach's most contradicting pieces. Even with the choice of tempo, opinions differ widely. Paul Badura-Skoda suggests 54-60 beats per minute (BPM) for half notes, which would mean a playing time of about two minutes. Carl Czerny prescribes a slightly slower tempo, with 100 BPM for the quarter notes. Hermann Keller notates 44 BPM for half notes. Keith Jarrett (piano) needs 3:25 minutes, Ton Koopman (harpsichord) 4:20 minutes.

The almost continuous chords with half notes seem to indicate a slow, saraband-like tempo. On the other hand, the hemioli in bars 18/19 and 27/28 speak against an all too slow measure of time. The middle of the piece is clearly marked with the two-part passage in bars 20-22.

The slow change in harmony is striking . In the first 13 bars the harmony only changes once per bar! The fallacy in measure 29 and the cadence in measure 36/37, which ends on a seventh chord , offer harmonious surprises .

H. Keller describes the E-flat minor prelude as "the first nocturne in piano music, a night piece with the clarity of the starry night."

Gap

The question arises as to why Bach followed a prelude in E flat minor with a fugue in D flat minor. Philipp Spitta points out that the fugue was originally in D minor and then moved up a semitone.

This fugue is one of the most "learned" of the entire well-tempered piano. Although it has been announced as three-part, after the exposition there is a superfluous use of themes in the lower part in bar 12, as if the fugue were to be four-part. The topic will be numerous contrapuntal used tricks: The first stretto of the subject occurs in measure 19, then the first reversal in cycle 30. A final increase takes place in the final implementation from bar 62. Here appears the enlarged topic - for the only time in 1st part of the Well-Tempered Clavier - in double note values, and is used at the same time in its normal size both in straight and in reverse movement as counterpoint.

About the rhythm: One of the attractions of the topic is its rhythmic ambiguity; it can also be easily notated in 3/4 time, with the first note as a prelude . In a rhythmically changed form, with dotted note values, the theme appears in bars 24-27, then in the reverse in bars 48-51.

When Richard Wagner heard Joseph Rubinstein (1847–1884) play the Prelude in 1878 , he is said to have said: “I play it even more like a moonlight, the twilight doesn't stop there for me.” And on the fugue, Cosima reports : “The fugue on it thinks Richard is the strangest; she is extremely artistic and at the same time so atmospheric; 'What are the narrowings, augmentations, and which accents'. For him she is the epitome of the fugue. "

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 853 (PDF)
• BWV 853. (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. 35
2. ↑ Hermann Keller : The Well-Tempered Clavier .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) p. 66  
3. ↑ Hermann Keller : The Well-Tempered Clavier .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) p. 68  
4. ↑ Hermann Keller : The Well-Tempered Clavier .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) p. 69  
5. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005, p. 38