Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544 is a piece of organ music written by Johann Sebastian Bach sometime between 1727 and 1731, during his tenure in Leipzig. [1] Unlike most other organ preludes and fugues of Bach, the autograph fair copy of the score survives. [2]
The autograph manuscript shares the same watermark and style of handwriting as the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548, which points to a composition period of 1727-1731. [2]
Bach's B minor cantata Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl, BWV 198 was performed on 17 October 1727 at the University Church in Leipzig as a funeral ode for Christiane Eberhardine, wife of August II the Strong, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. [3] Contemporary accounts of the funeral note that there was an organ prelude and postlude played. In 1998, Gilles Cantagrel was the first to propose that BWV 544 was that organ work, pointing to the shared B minor affekt, stylistic similarities, and noting the tuning of the Scheibe organ at the church. [4]
For nearly one hundred years the work circulated in manuscript copy form. In 1812 an anonymous editor for the Vienna firm Kunst- Und Industrie Comptoir published BWV 544 for the first time in the first printed collection of Bach's free organ works Six Preludes and Six Fugues for Organ or Piano with Pedal by Johann Sebastian Bach. The rights and plates for this work were sold around 1817 to Johann Riedl who continued to print the work. In the 1820s the rights were transferred to Steiner Verlag and then to Tobias Haslinger, both of whom re-engraved and printed new editions.
The work is central in Felix Mendelssohn's Bach revival; he learned BWV 544 from the leading early 19th century organist Johann Gottlob Schneider, the son of a pupil of Bach, and later owned the Riedl edition and edited his own publication in the 1850s. [5] Schneider is recorded having played the work from a "shabby old book" for Henry Chorley in 1840, also likely the Riedl edition. [4] Herbert Stanley Oakeley, who was a student of Schneider's in Saxony, heard Mendelssohn play the work in London, and would later own the manuscript. [4] The work was in Clara Schumann's repertoire. [6]
The existence of the manuscript was first mentioned in F. K. Griepenkerl's 1844 publication of the 2nd volume of Bach's Organ Works. This edition was later revised by F. A. Roitzsch at Peters Edition in Leipzig, and is the likely path the manuscript took to having been purchased in 1850 by a principal manager at Peters. [7] [8]
The manuscript's provenance is: [7] [9]
Like Bach's C Minor Passacaglia BWV 582 and the D Major Allabreve BWV 589, the manuscript is marked "pro Organo pleno", typically translated as "with the full organ" or more technically plenum registration. This corresponds with a Baroque tradition of playing "free" pieces such as preludes, fugues, fantasias, toccatas, etc (as opposed to chorales) at key periods of Protestant or Catholic church services, or for organ demonstrations and recitals. [13]
Tightly woven 32nd note scales, suspensions, dramatic octave pedal effects, tension-building through repetition, and appoggiatura harmonies characterize this movement. The opening theme is followed by contrasting fugal episodes. The complex ritornello structure of this prelude makes the work structurally similar to that of other mature organ works, such as the BWV 548 and BWV 546 preludes. [14]
The 4/4 fugue is more restrained compared to the 6/8 prelude, containing a relatively straightforward subject that moves stepwise up and down the B minor scale.
The piece has been transcribed multiple times for piano and small ensembles, most notably included in Franz Liszt's transcriptions of Bach's six "Great" organ Preludes and Fugues, BWV 543 - 548, for solo piano (S. 462). Where Bach's six free organ preludes and fugues are normally published in alphabetical order by key (with BWV coming second), Liszt rearranged the order, finishing with BWV544. Liszt's arrangement reverently preserves and transcribes Bach's music, without adding any new or original material or embellishments. Reger, a prolific Bach arranger himself, would dismiss Liszt's arrangement as "hackwork". [15]
BWV 544 has been used in several movie and television soundtracks. A notable inclusion is in the 1968 film The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach , where Gustav Leonhardt, playing Bach, plays the opening ritornello. [16]
