Das Wohltemperierte Clavier I, Fuga V
Description
A rapid rising flourish and crisp dotted rhythms give this D major fugue the stately gesture of a French overture. It is No. 5 in Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and it shows how dances, overtures and the other styles of the day find their way into the fugues of the 1722 set, part of what keeps a cycle through every major and minor key so varied.
It is a four-voice fugue in D major and 4/4. Stated at the outset and then handed from voice to voice in turn, the subject builds a brilliant, ceremonial sound. It has 772 notes in 93 seconds, with a range from D2 to B5 that fits on a 61-key keyboard.
It is an intermediate piece whose subject is clear and easy to follow by ear, but the challenge is to match the sharpness of the dotted rhythm and the speed of the quick figures across four voices. Lower the playback speed to check the shape of the subject's rhythm in the score view, and learn to hear the moment it enters each voice. Sort out the four voices with the hand colours, and repeat the places where entries overlap with an A-B loop so that you can play it through with its stately character intact.
Bach's collection of preludes and fugues for keyboard, covering all 24 keys and regarded as the summit of contrapuntal writing.
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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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