Prelude and Fugue in A Minor BWV 895 Comprised of two discreet movements, instead of one through-composed series of sections, BWV 895 superifcially resembles several preludes and fugues that Bach composed around the time of the Well-Tempered Clavier, probably near the end of his Weimar period. Yet it is significantly more archaic in style than those pieces, and its sources are unrelated.14 Instead, BWV 895 could be the only surviving pedagogic prelude and fugue from Bach’s early years at Weimar. The Yale manuscript preserves it as part of a “systematic collection” of small preludes and fugues used by Pachelbel and his pupils, suggesting that this is Bach’s contribution to a tradition that was being continued by his brother Johann Christoph and other Pachelbel students. Its dimensions suggest that Bach could have used it as a teaching piece, although some of his early organ praeludia (e.g., BWV 533) are not much bigger. Copied perhaps as early as 1710 or so by the Gehren cantor Johann Christoph Bach (a distant cousin of Sebastian, born in Erfurt), the Yale manuscript preserves it immediately ahead of instructions on how to tune and string harpsichords and clavichords. Although there is no reason to think that these instructions were copied from an exemplar in Sebastian’s possession, they do, together with them repertory of the manuscript as a whole, reveal a concern with the same musical issues that led to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. They also suggest that despite some organ-like writing, the repertory in the manuscript was played on stringed keyboard instruments, as the brisé textures of the present work imply. BWV 895 is more sophisticated than others in the manuscript, and it is distinguished from early Bach works like BWV 921 and 922 in its concision and the absence of extroverted virtuosity. But the prelude, reminiscent of the passaggio that opens the lute suite in E minor BWV 996, remains a free improvisation, lacking the more organized type of design found in later preludes (as in BWV 899–902). The fugue subject was perhaps a good one for a pedagogic piece, since it is short and distinctive, but it is too simple and rhythmically too dull (unbroken eighths) to inspire challenging harmony and counterpoint. On the other hand, the brisé texture of some passages is not a weakness but rather a successful effort to incorporate idiomatic keyboard textures into fugue. The fugue lacks episodes and closes with a free coda; the sole subject entry not on the tonic or dominant is a late entrance on the subdominant (tenor, m. 24). These are all signs of an early date, perhaps even as early as the “1707/08” youtube/watch?v=YDMJZ2s_drA
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 11:14:46 +0000
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