Prelude and Fugue in G sharp minor BWV 863 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I)

Prelude played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Fugue played by Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka

Prelude and Fugue in G sharp minor , BWV 863, 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.

Early versions

In the most important source for the earliest version of the first part of the Well-Tempered Clavier as well as in the autograph, an ♯ before ice is missing several times . This is interpreted as an indication of an original Dorian notation , in which one accidental sign is not noted enough in the general signature of ♭ keys. In a first version that has not been handed down, it was a composition in G minor, which Bach only converted into a composition in G sharp minor by changing the master signature and occasional corrections in the course of the musical text. In G minor notated in Doric, the often necessary increase in E flat does not have to be specifically notated; When converting to G sharp minor, on the other hand, a ♯ must be consistently noted when ice is required, which can easily be overlooked.

Furthermore, the latest version does not differ significantly from the earliest recorded version. There are individual melodic developments that do not affect the substance of the piece in the prelude, “which, in view of its brevity, leads to the question of whether or not Bach deliberately renounced an extension in the manner of the first preludes in view of the motivic density of the movement rather, he had broken off his revision work before he had gotten to this prelude ”.

Prelude

The prelude is a three-part symphonia in the style of Bach's Inventions and Symphonies , with the main motif being introduced over the whole bar in the upper part. It dominates the whole piece, is often reduced to the first half of the bar and also appears in reverse from bar 10 . The key of B major is already reached in bar 4. The next thematic entries in bars 5 and 6 mark the beginning of incessant and inconspicuous modulation . The expression is essentially characterized by the diminished seventh chord , which is often heard in a stressed position. The seven-bar line of the bass from bar 18 deserves just as much attention as the simultaneous dueting of the two upper voices.

Gap

The theme head is a quote from the beginning of the song Christ lay in death bands , whereby, similar to the c sharp minor fugue of the 1st part, the ambitus is initially limited to the diminished fourth between the leading tone and the third. As a result, the fundamental tone is left with an ascending tritone to the leading tone of the fifth degree, which is then confirmed as the new tonic with tone repetitions , so that the theme as a whole modulates into the dominant .

The four-part G sharp minor fugue contains 41 bars and completely dispenses with “learned” contrapuntal arts such as augmentations or inversions . It does, however, contain two obbligato counterpoints and a few interludes, the motif material of which consists, among other things, of the tone repetitions mentioned, which occur a total of 22 times and thus become, as it were, independent. There are different views on the character of the theme, Bach's only example with an ascending tritone. Hermann Keller considers the degree to be “somewhat complacent”, Peter Benary speaks of “imprinting in the sense of painful seriousness”.

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 863 (PDF)
• BWV 863. (Flash) Edward Parmentier

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. see the section on the sources in the article The Well-Tempered Clavier
2. ^ Alfred Dürr: Johann Sebastian Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier . Bärenreiter 2000, pp. 195, 197.
3. ^ Alfred Dürr: Johann Sebastian Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier . Bärenreiter 2000, p. 195.
4. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback. MN 718, H. & B. Schneider AG. Aarau, 2005. p. 62
5. ↑ Peter Benary: JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: Text - Analysis - Playback. MN 718, H. & B. Schneider AG. Aarau, 2005. p. 63