Bach composed most of his organ works in Weimar, where
he worked between 1708 and 1717; after he left that
city, his duties did not involve the composition of
works for the organ. His years as organist there
witnessed important stylistic developments in his
freely composed preludes and fugues. Bach had not yet
codified the clear two-section prelude and fugue of the
type we find in the Well-Tempered Clavier. Instead, the
D major prelude and fugue, BWV 532, features a lengthy,
complex, self-contai...(+)
Bach composed most of his organ works in Weimar, where
he worked between 1708 and 1717; after he left that
city, his duties did not involve the composition of
works for the organ. His years as organist there
witnessed important stylistic developments in his
freely composed preludes and fugues. Bach had not yet
codified the clear two-section prelude and fugue of the
type we find in the Well-Tempered Clavier. Instead, the
D major prelude and fugue, BWV 532, features a lengthy,
complex, self-contained fugue preceded by a
multisectional prelude. The prelude opens with a
rhapsodic passage initiated by a rising scale in the
pedals. Busy figurations for the manuals proceed over
sustained pedal tones as the passage moves away from D
major and comes to a stop. When the ensuing Alla breve
section begins, we realize that all that has come
before is introductory, and the prelude continues in D
major. Harmonic sequences and block chords dominate the
texture of this, the most substantial part of the
prelude, which closes with new material in an adagio
tempo that emphasizes E major before a final cadence on
the tonic.
After seven complete entries of the subject that remain
in the tonic and dominant, the Fugue in D major becomes
one of the most interesting of Bach's fugues in terms
of harmony. Bach takes his subject, eight measures long
and consisting of tight figurations that encompass an
entire octave, through first the relative minor and
mediant minor (not unusual) and then, at about the
middle of the piece, the minor harmony built on the
leading tone (C sharp) and the major harmony on the
supertonic (very unusual). After these adventurous
excursions we hear an extended episode with a flurry of
figures on the dominant and then a welcome, full entry
of the subject on the tonic that is so powerful in its
resolution of the preceding tension that the coda has
the nature of an afterthought. As in the prelude, block
chords are prominent in this unusual fugue.
PARTITION