About this work
The Fantasia BWV 562 unfolds like a broad improvisation anchored by a firm bass. Five-part writing allows the voices to answer one another, with suspensions rubbing just enough to give the music its gravity. The associated fugue survives only as a fragment: the manuscript breaks off after some twenty bars, at precisely the point where we would like to know where Bach intended to take us.
In the Fantasia, the challenge is to let a dense texture breathe. Locate the motif entries and dissonances before choosing the registration; they must remain audible without turning every suspension into a spotlight. The pedal carries the architecture, but the inner voices provide the colour. In the fugue, the chromatic subject needs clear articulation if its outline is not to dissolve.
Practise slowly with two voices at a time, then add the bass. A restrained registration is more useful than piling up stops: the acoustic will gladly supply the extra majesty. Keep the inner pulse moving through the suspensions. If the tempo stops at every beautiful harmony, we admire the stained glass but never reach the far end of the nave.
What the document contains
the Fantasia and fragmentary Fugue for organ;
a 4-page PDF;
no separate MIDI file.
The document is short in part because the fugue transmitted under the catalogue number BWV 562 is unfinished.