Bach: Complete WTC I. Prelude & Fugue 24 in B Minor, BWV 869 | Daniel Martyn Lewis

Complete Well-Tempered Clavier Book One
Daniel Martyn Lewis, piano
The complete 24 Preludes and Fugues, released in reverse order

Prelude and Fugue 24 in B minor, BWV 869
This final Prelude and Fugue, in B minor, is one of the most bizarre, chromatic works in all of Bach, and it can be seen to have a very strong correlation to the composer’s Passion music. Experiencing this work as a listener demands the utmost intellectual concentration and total immersion in the emotional journey. This work is a masterpiece, and it crowns the end of the cycle. Performing it in concert is an extremely demanding, albeit euphoric, experience!

Bach, who inscribed the letters SDG (‘Soli Deo Gloria’) at the end of this volume, can be seen to choose as his last Prelude and Fugue a further purely instrumental illustration of the Passion of Christ. The key itself provides a clue to this concept. The Prelude’s walking bass steps could be conceived as the inexorable and painful journey to the cross. The presence of striking dissonances, such as clashing minor 2nds, is not unlike the opening of the 1724 St John Passion. The opening soprano notes also quote the famous ‘Passion chorale’—O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (O head so bloodied with wounds’)—so intrinsic to the St Matthew Passion.

This fugue is unique in its chromatic subject containing all twelve semitones of the octave. Throughout the work, this often seems to create an illusion of harmonic chaos and even moments of atonality. The subject itself also forms, by its shapes, a series of crosses and the work itself is Bach’s most extensive elaboration of cross shapes (chiasmus). The fugue presents a painful and protracted struggle, punctuated nevertheless by several warm, consolatory episodes. The powerful conclusion is entirely inevitable. ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ (1 Corinthians 15:55). This is one of the most glorious moments in all of Bach.

Credit:
Daniel Martyn Lewis – https://www.youtube.com/@BachPianist