Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
The
Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor (
BWV 582) is the name of a piece of
music by
Johann Sebastian Bach for the
organ. It is his most large-scale work for the organ, described by the noted organist and Bach player
E. Power Biggs as "a work of reasoned and convincing musical logic". It has been dated to the period
1716-
1717, when Bach was invited to
Dresden for a musical contest.
The opening
passacaglia (a kind of
ground bass) has an eight-
bar bass theme, the first half of which is from a
mass by the French composer
André Raison. This theme is then repeated twenty times, during which it is used as the framework for a series of
variations, described by
Robert Schumann as "intertwined so ingeniously that one can never cease to be amazed".
The following
fugue is based on the first half of the same theme, to which Bach adds several
counter-melodies; G. Hoffman described it as "reduc[ing] even this passacaglia of passacaglias to the function of an overture".
|
The first page of the Passacaglia |
This re-use of the same melodic material in both the
prelude and the following fugue is rare in Bach's work; (Another work by him with a similar prelude-fugue thematic connection is the
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.)
*
List of compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach
