Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903
An early version of the fantasy dates back to Bach's Weimar years. Its flamboyance and freedom, pathos and furor recommended it to the age of sensibility in the late eighteenth century as well as to several ages of Romanticism in the nineteenth, resonating in the soundscapes of both the perfected clavichord and the fully developed modern piano. In 1910, Heinrich Schenker put out an edition of the Chromatic Fantasy and fugue accompanied by a fifty-page monograph, still one of the most comprehensive discussions of any Bach fugue to be found in the musicological literature. This work owes its fame principally to the fantasy, and of course this is only right. This chapter deals with a very different genre from The Well-Tempered Clavier—music for display rather than study, for spontaneous effect rather than learning or subtlety or refined detail.
Keywords: Chromatic Fantasy, Bach fugue, music, Romanticism, musicological literature
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