Das Wohltemperierte Clavier I, Fuga VIII in D-sharp minor, BWV 853
Description
The eighth pair in Book I is a curiosity of notation: the prelude is written in E-flat minor with six flats, while the fugue is written in D-sharp minor with six sharps. On the keyboard they are the same notes, but on the page they look like different worlds. It is the most pointed demonstration of what the whole collection sets out to argue — that with a near-equal tuning, every key is available to the player.
The fugue is in three voices. Its subject rises slowly in long note values, shadowed by a chromatic descent. As the piece unfolds the subject returns inverted, then in augmentation with its note values doubled, and finally in stretto, the voices overlapping as they enter. At close to five minutes it is one of the longer fugues in Book I, and it holds its grieving tone to the last bar.
The difficulty here is not speed but independence: keeping three lines audible as three lines. Bringing the subject out when it moves into the middle voice, letting the augmented entry register as an event, and holding long notes to their full value before handing them on are what the piece asks for. A steady tempo and voice-by-voice practice are the shortest route to it.
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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