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Notes
J. S. Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. His
music is famous for its technical command, artistic beauty and intellectual depth.
This Prelude and Fugue in D Minor is the sixth set of pieces from The WellTempered Clavier I, a collection of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor
keys.
The prelude is a toccata-like piece with a continuous arpeggiated right-hand part
which moves in triplets, while the left hand is played with steady detached notes.
At the beginning, the bass line serves as a tonic pedal point. Later on, the bass
line has hidden melodic elements and weaves together with the broken chords
above. The first cadence can be detected at the end of the lower D. The more
encompassing first section of the prelude modulates to the relative key, F major.
The fugue is more complex with three voices. It begins with the soprano in the
tonic key of D minor and the other voices join in, gradually building up the
polyphonic texture. It is of typical fugue style, with contrapuntal characteristics
and clear entries. The harmonic background to the subject is that of a simple
cadential progression; the tonic gives way to the subdominant followed by the
dominant seventh and resolving onto the tonic.
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