While the interval between the composition of the
Prelude and of the Fugue from J.S. Bach's Prelude and
Fugue for organ in C minor, BWV 546 may not be as great
as the interval between the composition of the Prelude
and the Fugue from BWV 562 (the Prelude of that work
having likely been written sometime during the 1710s
but the Fugue possibly as late as 1745), they are
nevertheless hardly temporal bedfellows. The Fugue of
BWV 546 seems to be the earlier of the two halves (it
is a work from Bach's...(+)
While the interval between the composition of the
Prelude and of the Fugue from J.S. Bach's Prelude and
Fugue for organ in C minor, BWV 546 may not be as great
as the interval between the composition of the Prelude
and the Fugue from BWV 562 (the Prelude of that work
having likely been written sometime during the 1710s
but the Fugue possibly as late as 1745), they are
nevertheless hardly temporal bedfellows. The Fugue of
BWV 546 seems to be the earlier of the two halves (it
is a work from Bach's Weimar days [1708 - 1717]), while
the Prelude came later (from his Leipzig days, 1723 and
following). Bach's reasons for choosing to return to a
finished, self-standing composition like the Fugue of
BWV 546 so many years after and then to add to it may
well have been ones of a purely internal nature, though
one can't omit the possibility that some practical
requirement, a pressing need for a fresh prelude and
fugue during a particularly busy time, induced him to
take up an old fugue and provide it with a new
introductory piece. After so long, it can never be
known; but one can safely proclaim that the Prelude is
easily one of Bach's most imposing organ preludes.
The Prelude of BWV 546 spans a full 144 bars. It
presses forth with great urgency after a stoic
hand-against-hand incipit gesture and is soon filled
with running triplets, here scalar, there arpeggiated.
The opening gesture returns twice, once in the minor
dominant after about 40 bars and again in the tonic C
minor to usher in the final bars of the piece. The
fugue is a five-voice one (though the five voices are
heard all together only in the exposition of the fugue
and at the very end, where, as per tradition, the
texture blossoms even further, in this case to a final
eight-voice cadence) and is built from a subject that
can hardly restrain its urge to leap up by the interval
of a third; it is all Bach can do to ensure that a few
stepwise motions find their way into this otherwise
leap-infested thought.
PARTITION