Johann Sebastian Bach (21 March 1685 ? 28 July 1750) was a German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity.[1] Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation in composition for diverse instrumentation, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.
Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, the St. Matthew Passion, the St. John Passion, the Magnificat, The Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English Suites, the French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
While Bach's abilities as an organist were recognized and highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, he was not particularly well-known as a composer. His adherence to Baroque forms and contrapuntal style was considered "old-fashioned" by his contemporaries, especially late in his career when the musical fashion tended towards Rococo and later Classical styles. A revival of interest and performances of his music began early in the 19th century, and he is now widely considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition. (Collapse)...(Read more)
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 Arnst...
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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