Bach - Prelude and Fugue in e-flat/d# minor, BWV853 (WTC I)

[andhow04]

the grand prelude and fugue from the first book - the prelude a melancholy exercise in harmonic stasis notated in e-flat, and the very scholarly but conceptually huge fugue in d# minor.
the prelude is perhaps similar in style to that of b-flat minor from the first book, but more sparse and austere. a captivating piece, suspended in time...

the fugue is a very large fugue, maybe one of the longest in the 48, and very complex. the theme apparently harkens back to renaissance modal themes, shaped as an "M" as i read in a book, and there are a lot of modal elements - compare to the d# minor fugue from book II, which is all restless chromatics. this only has one or two bars of real chromatic unease.

the attraction, and also difficulty, lies in the weaving of the counterpoint - bach  uses so many different combinations of theme: stretto in the original and tonal answers; inversion; stretto in the inversions; two kinds of augmentations (one true to the original, one modified); stretto between the augmentation and the original; triple stretto in the original, triple stretto in the inversion; and stretto between the augmentation, original, and modified augmentation . !!  it's fun just to think about isn't it.

anyways, i had recorded this last week and threw it all away because listening later it seemed boring. i hope you find this version itneresting; it was hard to shape this overall as a fugue, because the way he keeps intensifying the strettos, the temptation is to just get louder and louder, and the fugue is so long that would never work.  so i had to put more thought into, what's the overall story?

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d# minor from book II:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=47427.0