On this most mournful anniversary, I offer the final Prelude & Fugue of Book One in the lachrymosal key of destiny and lamentation, b minor.
The Prelude’s sepulchral procession, skeletal in its honed essence, is one of the few works in Book One in two repeated sections, inviting, I feel, a personal commentary, one’s own synthesis of the given discourse, illuminative ornamental elaboration.
The symbolism of Bach’s other b minor magnum opus, The Mass, is rife through the Fugue subject, chromatic descent as lamentation, the perpetual sighing minor 2nd falls, through the 12-tone row that is the b minor Fugue theme.
My 96-episode series of explorations into each of the Preludes & Fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier available by subscription only, at
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