J.S. Bach - Prelude, Fugue & Allegro, BWV 998 (c. 1735)

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations as well as for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Please support my channel:
https://ko-fi.com/bartjebartmans

Uploaded with special permission by performer Peter Watchorn
https://www.musicaomnia.org

Prelude, Fugue & Allegro in E-flat major, BWV 998 (c. 1735)

1. Prelude (0:00)
2. Fugue (2:44)
3. Allegro (9:22)

PETER WATCHORN, harpsichord
Hubbard & Broekman after Ruckers/Blanchet/Taskin, 1990

This is a work for lute – or, perhaps, lute-keyboard, it became familiar to modern audiences once again when Wanda Landowska included the work (mostly played on her Pleyel harpsichord’s buff stop, presumably to imitate the sound of a gut-strung instrument) in her 1946 RCA recording,
A Treasury of Harpsichord Music. This work survives in just one source, in Bach’s own autograph, written out for keyboard. In the inventory drawn up after Bach’s death in 1750 we find two Lautenclaviere listed – hybrid instruments that were designed by Bach in conjunction with the Leipzig organ builder, Zacharias Hildebrandt (1688 – 1757), built around 1739. Here is the principal reference to them – neither instrument has survived:

"The author of these notes remembers, about the year 1740, in Leipzig, having seen and heard a “lute-harpsichord” (Lautenclavicymbel) designed by Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach and executed by Mr. Zacharias Hildebrand(t), which was of smaller size than the ordinary harpsichord, but in all other respects was like any other harpsichord. It had two sets of gut strings, and a so-called little octave of brass strings. It is true that in its regular setting (that is when only one stop was drawn) it sounded more like a theorbo than like the lute. But when that stop that on harpsichords is
called the Lute stop (i.e. buff a set of leather pads pressed against the string to damp the upper partials) was drawn with the Cornet stop, it was possible to deceive even professional lute players. Mr. Christian Ernst Friederici also made similar instruments, but with some changes.

The Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, BWV 998 is perhaps the most elaborate and most directly appealing of the works for lute/keyboard. The prelude is in a similar vein to that in the same key from WTC, Book 2: a flowing pastorale in compound time. The movement that follows it, also a da
capo fugue (as in BWV 997) remains comparatively simple contrapuntally, but its rather austere subject is effectively contrasted with a French arpeggiated figure (stile brisé – broken style), as in other works for the same medium, confining itself largely to the lower regions of the
keyboard. The concluding Allegro is a binary dance – perhaps a passepied – providing an effective and lively conclusion to one of Bach’s most beautiful and mysterious mature works.