Music Notes for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost — September 1, 2024

Prelude in E flat (BWV 552,1) – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

When, in 1739, Bach published his Clavierübung Part III, he flanked a miscellaneous collection of liturgical settings, chorale preludes and duos with a monumental prelude at the beginning of the volume and tripartite fugue at the end. In a volume that was essentially devoted to the Trinity, there could have been no clearer statement than this piece, with its reference to the number three.

The Prelude and Fugue in E flat major, BWV552 were not always connected to each other. Although in the same key, and indeed copied as separate works in the eighteenth century, it was only in the early nineteenth, and with the specific advocacy of Mendelssohn, that they were performed in sequence as a pair. The prelude, one of the two largest Bach wrote for organ, is a masterly mixture of stately French and concertante Italian elements. It is heard this Sunday morning in church as the organ postlude; the linked video includes the fugue.

Gerald Harder