J.S. BACH: Prelude & Fugue in D Minor, WTC 2 [BachScholar]

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Découvrez la vidéo J.S. BACH: Prelude & Fugue in D Minor, WTC 2 de BachScholar sur Le Fil YouTube de Piano Partage.

ESSAY ON BACH'S TEMPOS: I am the only scholar in the world who knows Bach's planned tempos (tempi), which I demonstrate in this Prelude & Fugue. Notice how both this Prelude and Fugue both last almost two minutes almost exactly. This is what I call a "1:1 duration ratio" which was Bach's most common technique of unification. The tempos are totally different, yet they both result in the same durations. The Prelude has Bach's "faster" allegro speed of 96 bpm (his more common allegro was 84 bpm) while the Fugue is at an andante of 56 bpm (for works without predominant triplet sixteenths like in this Fugue, this andante is 54 bpm).

I deciphered Bach's ingeniously clever and secret system of tempo and duration way back in 1992 but my theory has been pretty much "in hiding" for 20 years due to other obligations. Basically in a nutshell, Bach almost always sought "duration ratios" between preludes and fugues or arias and choruses in cantatas or movements in chamber works. The "duration ratio" in this Prelude & Fugue is one of Bach's most common, which is two minutes even. That is, when the Prelude is played at Bach's allegro of 96 bpm and the Fugue is played at Bach's andante of 56 bpm this results in durations very close to two minutes each, and considering ritardandos they last two minutes exactly!

Thus, my analyses of Bach's complete works over about a 10-year period reveals that Bach knew all of his standard tempos in beats per minute (there were about a dozen of them) and planned his works with particular tempos in mind, which then allowed him to calculate how many measures to aim for when composing the work. For example, Bach's "target" number of measures for this Prelude was most likely 64 measures and for the Fugue was most likely 28 measures, since at 96 and 56 bpm with these numbers of measures result in mathematically perfect two minutes each. Bach didn't always hit these target number of measures exactly, such as in this Prelude & Fugue (61 instead of 64, and 27 instead of 28); however, many times he did and when he was off it was usually only up to three measures at the most.

To summarize, Bach was a great "musical architect" who knew his standard tempos and planned his tempos and numbers of measures in order to achieve his most common "duration ratios" of 1:1, 1:2, and 2:3. I am the only scholar in the world who has figured out Bach's secret system, which I plan to publish sometime in the near future!