Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor BWV 859 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor , BWV 859, 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

While the Prelude is described by Peter Benary as “relatively weak” and by Hermann Keller as “cool, yes factual”, Cecil Gray speaks of a “poetic little piece” with a “emphatically autumnal mood”; He compares the sixteenth note movement in the first measure with falling leaves and the dropped eighth notes that are simultaneously sounding in the left hand with timidly falling raindrops. The piece is largely , but not completely, laid out as a two-part invention , the second part contains short but full-fingered chords in several bars. The cadenza in C sharp minor in bar 12, the middle of the piece, provides a clear structure .

Gap

The power of this work lies mainly in the theme itself, which combines melodic, expressive beauty with suitability for contrapuntal. The melody reaches the fifth key c sharp in three attempts from the root key f sharp through a and b, whereby the increasing tension is achieved by shortening the rhythmic values. The prescribed 6/4 time only becomes clear at the climax of the theme line at the beginning of bar 3; the previous part could also be interpreted as 3/2 time. The fourth subject entry of the four-part fugue occurs not only unusually late one, but against the school rule on the fundamental place on the fifth, so that the first implementation to bar 18 ranges (out of 40). Here, too, the middle of the piece is musically marked by the first reversal of the theme in the alto part in bar 20. A second and last reversal takes place in the bass in bar 32. As a result of the chromaticism of the theme and the numerous accusations of the obbligatory counterpoint the modulation frame is kept very narrow, it is limited - as in the prelude - to F sharp minor and C sharp minor.

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 859. (PDF)
• BWV 859. (Flash) Philip Goeth

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cecil Gray: The forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of JS Bach . Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 53
2. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback . MN 718, H. & B. Schneider, Aarau 2005, p. 52