Bach: Small Prelude in C Major

Piano Sheet Music to Download and Print or to View in Mobile Devices

ID:704

Johann Sebastian Bach : Small Prelude
Key: C Major	Year: -
Level: 3	Period: Baroque
Piano score: PS Instructive - all parts (226 kB)
Piano score: Scanned score (346 kB)

A small prelude that sounds big

This Prelude is one of 12 ‘small preludes’ written separately at different times in Bach’s life for pedagogical purposes. It gives an excellent opportunity to listen for dynamic effects in Baroque keyboard music.Dynamic marks are rare in Bach (those in the scanned score were added by the editor); Instead, dynamics are built into the music through changes of register and texture.

The first important change occurs when the left hand takes over the main broken chord motive in measure 4. Five measures later, the broken chords are back in the right hand and the sequence of the first three measures are repeated, but with greater intensity because the notes are transposed up to the dominant key of g major. They are also accompanied by quavers in the left hand instead of the held octave of the first four measures.

Near the end, Bach changes the texture almost at every bar-line, which adds to the sense of a long crescendo throughout the piece. After a measure where both hands play the broken chord motive, the right hand suddenly bursts into sixteenth-notes, before the piece ends like a chorale. All these perfectly balanced changes of rhythm, pitch and texture give Bach’s music all the contrast and variety it needs, whether performed on the harpsichord or the modern piano.  

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