This massive work, requiring a good 15 minutes in
performance, is one of Bach's most important and
flamboyant organ compositions. Unlike most of his other
preludes and fugues, this one seems to be a mature work
written after Bach settled in Leipzig in 1723.
Unexpectedly, it's the prelude that displays the most
severe musical architecture, while the fugue is
comparatively freewheeling (and harder to play). The
grand prelude is cast in a verse and refrain structure,
but employs three related thema...(+)
This massive work, requiring a good 15 minutes in
performance, is one of Bach's most important and
flamboyant organ compositions. Unlike most of his other
preludes and fugues, this one seems to be a mature work
written after Bach settled in Leipzig in 1723.
Unexpectedly, it's the prelude that displays the most
severe musical architecture, while the fugue is
comparatively freewheeling (and harder to play). The
grand prelude is cast in a verse and refrain structure,
but employs three related thematic elements -- two for
the verses. The refrain initially arches across 18 bars
of the score; after the first verse, it returns in the
dominant, establishing the tonality for the second
verse. Here, Bach introduces the third theme, a dotted
figure linked to the themes of both the refrain and the
first verse. After this second verse, the refrain
returns, modulating into the subdominant, where the
third verse develops the themes presented in the first
two. The refrain returns one last time; under the
influence of the dominant pedal note that introduces
it, the refrain avoids returning to the tonic until its
very last chord. Despite its strict melodic structure,
the prelude is a great harmonic adventure.
Now comes the fugue, which manages to fall into ternary
form while following the usual fugal conventions. The
first of the three sections is a self-contained fugue,
complete with its own exposition, modulations, and
episodes. The fugue theme is something of a chromatic
wedge expanding around a tonic point, this wedge giving
the work its nickname. The theme picks up two chromatic
countersubjects during the first exposition. After the
harmonic tension and surprise of this first section,
the fugue's second section settles into the principal
key. This portion is a 100-measure toccata, full of
extremely virtuosic runs. The fugue theme pops up now
and then and is also echoed in the pedal material, but
doesn't fully reassert itself until the third panel of
this triptych, which until near the end is a
note-for-note repetition of the first section. The work
ends, however, in a resplendent Picardy third,
concluding this otherwise minor-mode fugue in a blaze
of E major.
SHEET MUSIC