Section II · Bach · BWV 875 · the fugue
A three-voice fugue of only 27 bars: the whole score, line by line, with the questions an examiner asks at each place. Look, answer out loud in English, then check.
Play from this score · big, page by page, for iPadThe notes were typed in from photographs of one edition, and drawn by computer. Every page was transcribed twice, independently (neither reader saw the other's work), every disagreement was settled against the photograph, and the last three bars of page 3, where the left hand is crowded, were read a third time. The statements below were found by searching the typed notes, not by eye. Not typed in: fingering. If anything here disagrees with your own score, your score is right.
The numbers under each line are the ones printed in that edition (the circled numbers at the start of each line). Another edition may number differently, so in the exam point to the music, or name the edition, before you say a number.
Press a part to see its bars lit up on the score below.
Each question sits under the line where its bars begin. Answer out loud first, then open the answer.
Look at the first bar. What does the title say, what is the key signature, and what is the time signature?
The title is Fuga VI a 3 voci: the sixth fugue of this book, in three voices. The C is common time, 4/4. One flat (B♭): D minor.
The two staves carry three voices, so the right hand plays two of them at times (RH 1 and 2 in the notes) and the left hand one or two.
Where is the subject? Describe it: where does it start, how long is it, what does it do?
The subject starts alone in bar 1, in the right hand, on D4 (the tonic). It is two bars long.
The first half is twelve steady triplet semiquavers that zig-zag upward and back (D E F G, F E, F G A B♭, A G): not a plain scale. The second half jumps from A up to a high D and then falls by semitones in quavers: D, C♯, C, B, B♭, A, the chromatic descent (passus duriusculus).
Bar 3: what comes in, and how does it relate to the subject? Is it a real or a tonal answer?
The second entry, in the right hand, starts on A4: the dominant, a fifth above the subject. Every one of the first twelve notes is the subject's note moved up exactly a fifth (checked note by note), so it is a real answer: A, B♮, C, D, C, B♮, C, D, E, F, E, D.
Under the tail of the answer, from the end of bar 3, the lower right-hand voice moves in steady duple semiquavers, a different rhythm from the subject's triplets.
Bar 5 is not just filler before the next entry. What is in the right hand on beats 3 and 4?
The head of the subject upside down (inversus): from A4, A G F E F G F E D C♯ D E, on beats 3 and 4. The lower right-hand voice has another inverted statement, a step lower, from G4, in the first half of the bar.
So the link already works with the subject's material, before the bass enters in bar 6.
Where does the third voice enter, and on which note?
In bar 6, in the left hand, on D3: the subject in the bass, back on the tonic. By now all three voices have entered: where you say the exposition ends is where the books differ, so say that all three voices have entered by bar 6.
Look through the middle of the fugue. On which notes does the opening of the subject start, and where does it appear upside down?
Searching the notes for the subject's opening twelve notes, right way up: on D in bars 6, 10 and 25 (and the first in bar 1), on A in bars 3 and 14, and on G in bar 18 (G2 in the left hand and G4 in the right).
Upside down: from A in bars 5 and 10, from D in bar 17, and in the left hand in bar 21. So the fugue visits D, A and G, as well as the F major episodes in between.
Bar 10 is a first combination: the bass has the subject right way up on beat 1, the right hand has it upside down on beat 2 and right way up again on beat 4.
This is the climax. What is happening in bar 25?
A stretto in the tonic: three statements of the subject's head inside one bar, a crotchet apart: the left hand has it right way up on D3 on beat 1 (rectus), a lower left-hand voice has it upside down on A2 on beat 2 (inversus), and the right hand has it right way up again on D4 on beat 3 (rectus).
The two right-way-up entries are half a bar apart; the inverted one comes between them, a crotchet later.
How does the fugue end? Is there a tierce de Picardie? Is there a Neapolitan sixth?
In the last half of the last bar there is just D2 in the left hand and D4 in the right, two octaves apart, both under a fermata: a bare D, no third, so it is neither major nor minor and there is no tierce de Picardie in the fugue. The Picardy third is at the end of the prelude.
I have not found a Neapolitan sixth that I can point to in the fugue, so I would not claim one.
The words to use are on the Answer Cards (Bach, Q3). To practise speaking, use the voice examiner and ask for Bach, question 3.