Das Wohltemperierte Clavier I, Praeludium XX
Description
Short and taut, this A minor prelude is followed by one of the longest fugues in Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier; it is the twentieth piece of the book.
In 9/8 and written mainly in two voices, it proceeds by imitation: a motif stated by one hand is taken up by the other. Within a flow of three broad beats to the bar, the hands share the motion as equals and press onward without a break. Its range runs from C2 to B5, within a 61-key keyboard. The fugue that follows is a long four-voice piece, a good contrast to the two-voice concision of the prelude.
Rated intermediate, it packs 608 notes into about 1 minute 13 seconds in this data. The tasks are to feel the three beats of the 9/8 bar while playing the motif with equal clarity in both hands, and to make hand shifts quickly. With its two-voice texture, the hand colours make the passing of the motif easy to see. Slow the playback to hear the imitation, then work back towards tempo with an A-B loop on the hardest spots.
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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