Fugue in G minor, BWV 578, (popularly known as the
Little Fugue), is a piece of organ music written by
Johann Sebastian Bach during his years at Arnstadt
(1703–1707). It is one of Bach's best known fugues
and has been arranged for other voices, including an
orchestral version by Leopold Stokowski. Early editors
of Bach's work attached this title to distinguish it
from the later Great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV
542, which is longer in duration.
The "Little" G minor's four-and-a...(+)
Fugue in G minor, BWV 578, (popularly known as the
Little Fugue), is a piece of organ music written by
Johann Sebastian Bach during his years at Arnstadt
(1703–1707). It is one of Bach's best known fugues
and has been arranged for other voices, including an
orchestral version by Leopold Stokowski. Early editors
of Bach's work attached this title to distinguish it
from the later Great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV
542, which is longer in duration.
The "Little" G minor's four-and-a-half-measure subject
is one of Bach's most widely recognized tunes. It is
worked out in four voices, the pedal voice being
honored as the full equal of the three manual voices --
even to the extent that the feet are required, in one
electrifying passage late in the Fugue, to have a go at
a sixteenth note figuration of the countersubject.
During the episodes, Bach employs one of Corelli's most
beloved sequential gestures: imitation between two
voices on an eighth note upbeat figure that first leaps
up a fourth and then falls back down one step at a
time. And those who love to find precise, mathematical
structural divisions and markers in Bach's music will
enjoy noting that it is in the 33rd measure -- one
measure shy of the exact midpoint of BWV 578 -- that
Bach first introduces the subject in a key outside the
tonic-dominant loop of the exposition.
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