Description
A bright F major prelude, BWV 928, in which flowing sixteenth notes are handed back and forth between the hands. It comes from the Clavier-Büchlein Bach started for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, in 1720, and later became one of the pieces known together as the little preludes. It is still widely played as a step before the inventions.
In F major and 4/4, the harmony shifts within a bright major-key sound. With 656 notes in 86 seconds, about 7.6 per second, it is one of the busier little preludes. Its range, E2 to C6, fits on a 61-key keyboard.
Rated intermediate. The task is to keep the sixteenth notes moving between the hands unbroken and even. Check with the hand colours where a figure moves to the other hand, and practise passages isolated with the A-B loop at a reduced playback speed. Raise the tempo only once the beat no longer slips at those handovers.
A collection of preludes not tied to a specific set, featuring short, evocative works by composers from Bach to more modern voices.
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Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
What this piece teaches
Another of the little preludes, in F major and 4/4 (BWV 928). A stream of sixteenth notes passes between the hands - practice, before the Inventions, in keeping one unbroken line going across two hands.
How to practise it
- Where the colour of the falling notes changes, the figure has moved to the other hand. Loop just those handovers with A-B.
- Stay at 0.5x until the beat no longer slips at the handovers. Speed comes last.
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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