Johann Sebastian Bach was a member of a family that had
for generations been occupied in music. His sons were
to continue the tradition, providing the foundation of
a new style of music that prevailed in the later part
of the eighteenth century. Johann Sebastian Bach
himself represented the end of an age, the culmination
of the Baroque in a magnificent synthesis of Italian
melodic invention, French rhythmic dance forms and
German contrapuntal mastery.
Born in Eisenach in 1685, Bach was ...(+)
Johann Sebastian Bach was a member of a family that had
for generations been occupied in music. His sons were
to continue the tradition, providing the foundation of
a new style of music that prevailed in the later part
of the eighteenth century. Johann Sebastian Bach
himself represented the end of an age, the culmination
of the Baroque in a magnificent synthesis of Italian
melodic invention, French rhythmic dance forms and
German contrapuntal mastery.
Born in Eisenach in 1685, Bach was educated largely by
his eldest brother, after the early death of his
parents. At the age of eighteen he embarked on his
career as a musician, serving first as a court musician
at Weimar, before appointment as organist at Arnstadt.
Four years later he moved to Mühlhausen as organist
and the following year became organist and chamber
musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. Securing his
release with difficulty, in 1717 he was appointed
Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen and
remained at Cöthen until 1723, when he moved to
Leipzig as Cantor at the School of St.Thomas, with
responsibility for the music of the five principal city
churches. Bach was to remain in Leipzig until his death
in 1750.
J.S. Bach was one of the most renowned keyboardists of
his day, and he left a rich legacy of music for
harpsichord originally intended for instruction and
‘spiritual refreshment’. This recording of mostly
lesser-known works includes several early examples
which afford fascinating insights into the young
composer’s experimentation with counterpoint, harmony
and form. They are all compelling, emotionally powerful
works in their own right, with virtuoso content and an
expressive range that easily matches that of Bach’s
more famous keyboard pieces.
The early fugues show that Bach posed difficult
compositional challenges for himself and on the whole,
met those challenges successfully. The Prelude & Fugue
in A Major (BWV 896) exists as a short prelude (likely
copied by Bach's older brother however lacking in the
later copy from which the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe
[BGA] edition was made) and the two movements did not
appear together in print until John Walter Hill's 1991
edition. Neither movement calls for pedals although I
have added them in this arrangement. The fugue is one
of Bach's strongest early efforts in a strictly
contrapuntal idiom, and this might account for its
having been furnished with a prelude. The inspiration
for this type of fugue might have come from Reinken's
fugal gigues, which offered a model for the strict
contrapuntal writing outside the 'stile antico'. But
unlike Reinken's guigues, BWV 896 offsets rigorous
expository passages with episodes. The latter, although
short and restrained, are just sufficiently distinct in
style to set the expository sections in relief. The
episodes suggest another possible model, the dance
movements in Kuhnau's Biblical Sonatas, which the fugue
seems to quote at several points.
Doubtful that this is the original work of Bach, this
Prelude comes from the concerto for solo harpsichord by
C. H. Dretzel.
Source: The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach by By David
Schulenberg.
Although originally written for Harpsichord. I created
this Arrangement of the Prelude in A Minor (BWV 897)
Transposed to Ab Minor for Concert (Pedal) Harp.
PARTITION