Prelude & Fugue in C Major BWV 870

Bach opens Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier with a majestic prelude. C Major was clearly a key he preferred for pieces of a grand, confident character, as we see in organ works such as BWV 545. In fact this prelude has the feeling of an organ praeludium, with its sweeping washes of sound. Other composers might have limited such a piece to a succession of broken or struck chords, perhaps with short runs of notes between them and a short contrapuntal section at the end. But Bach, as ever, takes things much further, by using four-voice counterpoint to develop his arpeggio theme, and introducing some of the enharmonic notes (C sharp - D flat, G sharp - A flat) which his ‘well-temperament’ will exploit through Book II, as he did in Book I. The fugue is far lighter, with only three voices and an unassuming, perhaps slightly nervous, theme. But at the very end, Bach evokes majesty again, with the repeated low C’s in the bass and diminished chords on the off-beats in the right hand. JS Bach assemble