Description
Two voices chase each other at the octave in this D minor canon in 9/16: the following voice traces the leading voice's melody an octave away, both running through a transformed version of the subject in rapid notes. It belongs to The Art of Fugue, the late collection in which Bach drew fugues and canons from one subject, published in 1751. This site lists it as Contrapunctus XII, though in the usual numbering the canons are counted separately from the fugues.
With only two voices but 2,304 notes in 269 seconds, about 8.5 per second, it is dense, and its range, D2 to B-flat 5, fits on a 61-key keyboard.
Rated advanced. There are only two voices, but because the same melody overlaps itself out of step, both have to be equally clear. Tell the leading and following voices apart with the hand colours, and practise passages isolated with the A-B loop at a reduced playback speed. The score view shows the melody being repeated an octave away.
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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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