Le clavier bien tempéré I - Prélude 06 BWV 851

About this work

The Prelude in D minor passes a continuous stream of semiquavers between the two hands. The hand taking over must continue the phrase without accenting the join. Beneath this flow, the bass notes change the colour of the harmony and give the 26 bars their direction.

First practise each hand alone while naming the handover points. Then combine them very slowly, with a touch close to the keys. If all the semiquavers carry the same weight, the music becomes mechanical; instead, give direction to changes in the bass and arrivals in the phrase.

What this prelude develops

The principal challenge is to maintain a steady pulse through changes of position and crossings of the voices. Play the bass alone, then add the rapid pattern without pedal. A light pedal may later support a few harmonies, provided it does not blur the changes.

Practical details


Layout: the music is presented on two keyboard staves.
Content: the two US Letter pages cover 26 bars. The MIDI playback reproduces the 784 attacks found in the engraving.
Provenance: Bach is in the public domain; Knute Snortum shares his LilyPond work under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. After comparing the pitches, LesPartitions.info prepared the useful formats and placed its address on both pages.