This is a book of commentaries on selected Bach fugues-"essays in musical analysis and appreciation," one might call them, to enlarge on the title of Donald Francis Tovey's famous Essays in Musical Analysis. The fugues are keyboard fugues, written for clavichord, harpsichord, and organ. About half of them come from the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), the other half from a variety of other sources, some of them less familiar: Bach's comprehensive keyboard publication Clavierübung

more »

... eyboard Practice), Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue), the English Suites, and other manuscript sources. The music stems from all periods of Bach's career except for the earliest. The Chromatic Fantasy dates most probably from his Weimar years, around 1715, and the two contrapuncti from The Art of Fugue reached their definitive form when Bach revised the work just before his death in 1750. Annotations of any extent on Bach fugues are hard to find outside of the technical literature, and I have taken the time to do justice, as best I can, to these short but very rich pieces. The pr eface xvii xviii / Preface