Overview
Editorial notes from Trinity Grade 6.
The C-minor pair from Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722) is one of the canonical entry points into Bach's mature keyboard counterpoint. The Prelude is a continuous study in driving sixteenth-note motion that breaks into a brief adagio and a presto coda; the Fugue is a tight three-voice essay built on a wiry, leaping subject. The pair has been a working pianist's piece for three centuries.
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Technically the Prelude tests sustained even sixteenth-note motion at a brisk tempo with the harmonic shifts clearly articulated through the figuration. The Fugue tests three-voice playing — students must distribute the three lines between the two hands and voice each one as an independent melody, with the subject entries always audible above the surrounding texture. Both pieces ask for clean finger-legato with deliberate, sparing pedalling.
Two pitfalls. First, the Prelude's sixteenth-note pattern can become mechanical; practise it slowly with attention to the harmonic shifts that the figuration outlines, and the piece will breathe rather than tick. Second, the Fugue's three-voice texture often collapses into a thicket — the student must know which voice has the subject at every moment and voice it accordingly. Hand-distribution decisions must be planned, not improvised.