Prelude & Fugue No. 13 in F-Sharp Major

The opening Prelude in F-Sharp Major is a teaser. It’s a carefully calibrated lesson for the performer in maintaining a strong sense of rhythmic stability—when the composer is doing everything he can to throw them off balance. Written in a deceptively simple two parts—like Bach’s instructional Inventions—most of the time the two hands are fighting against each other with offbeats (syncopations) which then suddenly disappear as normality is momentarily restored. Bach has a lot of creative fun with the opening six-note figure first played by the right hand at the outset, and then imitated by the left. It’s a guessing game: we just never know what interval he’ll strike between the fifth and sixth note. The Fugue is nicely matched in length and its light, airy mood. The most memorable theme isn’t actually the fugal subject itself, but a rocking, repeated-note countermelody which appears briefly early on (bar 7) and then in longer, more lyrical phrases, finally ending the piece with a dash of wit. About J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book I If we had to choose the most influential of Bach’s works in the centuries since his death, the biggest votes would probably go to the St Matthew Passion and The Well-Tempered Clavier. The epithet “well-tempered” refers to “equal temperament”—a new method of tuning keyboard instruments, which made a wide range of keys available. Bach showed off these possibilities in two books of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, which is why the collection is sometimes known as the “48”. Partly drawing on earlier works, Bach completed Book 1 around 1722, and Book 2 20 years later, constantly revising both. He intended the pieces to be useful to players of all types of keyboard instrument.