Description
In 1747 Bach visited Frederick the Great at Potsdam and improvised on a theme the king gave him. The Musical Offering is what he wrote on that theme afterwards and dedicated to the king the same year. The three-part ricercar stands at its head and is thought to reflect the three-part fugue he improvised at court.
In C minor and 2/2, the royal theme has a striking chromatic descent, and it unfolds as a fugue in which the theme enters in each of three voices in turn. Triplet figures and chromatic, ornamental passages appear along the way, so that strictness and an improvisatory freedom sit side by side. It is long, with 2,310 notes in 371 seconds, and its range, C2 to D6, fits on a 61-key keyboard.
Rated advanced. There are three voices, but it takes sustained concentration to keep the theme's entries audible over a long span. Isolate the entries with the A-B loop and check the chromatic lines at a reduced playback speed. Following in the score view and with the hand colours how the three voices are shared between the hands brings the design into view.
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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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