
By Joseph Kerman
Fugue for J. S. Bach was once a average language; he wrote fugues in organ toccatas and voluntaries, in plenty and motets, in orchestral and chamber tune, or even in his sonatas for violin solo. The extra intimate fugues he wrote for keyboard are one of the maximum, so much influential, and best-loved works in all of Western track. they've got lengthy been the root of the keyboard repertory, performed by way of starting scholars and world-famous virtuosi alike. In a chain of elegantly written essays, eminent musicologist Joseph Kerman discusses his favourite Bach keyboard fugues—some of them one of the best-known fugues and others less customary. Kerman skillfully, from time to time playfully, unearths the internal workings of those items, linking the shape of the fugues with their many alternative characters and expressive traits, and illuminating what makes them really attractive, strong, and moving.
These witty, insightful items, addressed to musical amateurs in addition to to experts and scholars, are superbly augmented by means of a CD with new performances made specifically for this quantity. as well as the entire rankings for the entire track mentioned within the booklet, the CD positive aspects Karen Rosenak, piano, taking part in preludes and fugues from TheWell-Tempered Clavier—C significant, e-book 1; and B significant, booklet 2—and recordings via Davitt Moroney of the Fughetta in C significant, BWV 952, on clavichord; the Fugue on "Jesus Christus unser Heiland," BWV 689, on organ; and the delusion and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 904, on harpsichord.
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