Das Wohltemperierte Clavier I, Fuga XVI
Description
A short, striking subject pushes this four-voice G minor fugue forward from start to finish. In Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier it is No. 16, following the lightness of the G major No. 15 with close-knit counterpoint in the minor on the same tonic. Within that 1722 cycle of twenty-four keys, it is a manageable size for a first four-voice fugue.
It is a four-voice fugue in G minor and 4/4. A short, striking subject appears in the four voices one after another, building a close-knit sound as they overlap. Though in the minor it never stalls; the motion of the subject drives the whole piece forward. It has a balanced 747 notes in 123 seconds, with a range from C2 to B-flat 5 that fits on a 61-key keyboard.
It is rated intermediate. As four-voice fugues go its scale is manageable, which makes it good for learning how to divide four voices between two hands. The challenge is to lift each voice slightly as the subject enters and hold the others back. Lower the playback speed to check the entries of all four voices in the score view, and use the hand colours to decide which hand takes each of the two inner voices. Repeating the places where entries overlap with an A-B loop makes the layers easier to sort out.
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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