Description
The fantasia half of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903. Dated to the Köthen years of about 1717–23, it is among the freest and most improvisatory of Bach's keyboard works. Manuscript copies circulated widely from early on, and it left a strong mark on later composers.
It opens with fast toccata-like runs sweeping up and down the keyboard, then moves into a section of broken chords whose harmony slides chromatically. It ends in recitative — writing that imitates the manner in which a singer speaks through song in opera — with a single melodic line proceeding as if questioning. The idea is to stage a scene of speech on one instrument.
Its advanced rating reflects the runs and, beyond them, the judgement of where to be free and where to stay strict. The tempo is not constant, and the recitative asks for the pauses of speech. Dividing those phrases as you would reading aloud makes their handling clear.
Piano works with a free, improvisatory character, ranging from Bach to Chopin and Beethoven, each shaped by imaginative, fantasy-like ideas.
Browse all songs in Fantasias →Sheet Music
Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
About the Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach was the towering figure of German Baroque music, serving for decades as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Renowned for his mastery of counterpoint, he laid the foundations of keyboard music with works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions. This site includes minuets and polonaises from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, the Inventions and Sinfonias, and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Notebook pieces are catalogued with BWV Anh. (appendix) numbers, but many are by other composers - Petzold's minuets among them - or by no one known, and most of their song pages give the current view of who wrote them.
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