J.S. Bach may have left the city of Weimar disappointed
in 1717 -- he moved to Cöthen after being passed over
for Kapellmeister at the Duke of Weimar's court -- but
he certainly had no reason to be disappointed in his
musical product of the years spent there. The bulk and
quality of his organ music from Weimar alone would be
enough to please even the most exacting
self-critic.
The Prelude and Fugue for organ in F minor, BWV 534 is
one of those many Weimar organ works; it boasts one of
...(+)
J.S. Bach may have left the city of Weimar disappointed
in 1717 -- he moved to Cöthen after being passed over
for Kapellmeister at the Duke of Weimar's court -- but
he certainly had no reason to be disappointed in his
musical product of the years spent there. The bulk and
quality of his organ music from Weimar alone would be
enough to please even the most exacting
self-critic.
The Prelude and Fugue for organ in F minor, BWV 534 is
one of those many Weimar organ works; it boasts one of
the most splendid fugues in all of Bach's organ catalog
-- a dense and intricate piece of polyphony, of
flash-and-dazzle virtuosic episodes like those found in
so many of his earlier organ fugues. It is not a very
user-friendly fugue (for performer or listener), but
one whose plentiful treasures are slowly revealed as
time and familiarity unfold them.
The Prelude of BWV 534 follows a form found in many
such preludes: an opening paragraph of music finds its
way to the dominant key (in this case C, or really C
minor); that paragraph is repeated in that new key
(freshly developed, however), and finds its way to a
cadenza-like passage which thrusts towards the final
cadence (and with it the beginning of the Fugue). A
stern ostinato figure in the pedals announces the
beginning of the common musical paragraph on both its
appearances. The Fugue employs a subject with a very
dramatic and prominent downward leap of a diminished
seventh, and it is in five voices. One of Bach's
much-loved mathematical structural delineations is to
be found in the piece, as the pedal enters after a long
absence, with a statement of the subject in the tonic
key at the precise midpoint of the fugue (bars 64-69 of
138).
PARTITION