Prelude & Fugue in B Flat minor - The Well-Tempered Clavier - Johann Sebastian Bach | Piano Tutorial

The Prelude and Fugue in B Flat minor, BWV 867, is a keyboard composition by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is the twenty-second prelude and fugue in the first book of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, a series of 48 preludes and fugues. The Prelude weaves independent melodic lines into a dense, expressive fabric. Its darkly veiled warmth is intensified by the choice of B-flat minor, a key colored by five flats and long associated with introspection. Harmonic exploration drives the piece forward: Bach moves deftly through shifting tonal centers, building waves of tension with dissonances before resolving them into moments of clarity. The emotional trajectory rises toward a dramatic climax before settling back into the home key, where resolution is achieved without losing the sense of longing and melancholy that permeates the whole. The Fugue is a tour de force of contrapuntal invention. Its subject, marked by a leap of a minor ninth and a rhetorical pause, is distinctive both for its dramatic contour and its inherent tension. The exposition unfolds as each of the five voices takes up the theme, creating a dense web of counterpoint. Rather than relying on extended episodes, Bach connects entries through canonic bridges, maintaining constant momentum. The drama intensifies through the use of stretto, as subject entries overlap more closely, compressing the texture and heightening the sense of urgency. This process culminates in a breathtaking five-voice hyperstretto, where the subject is packed into the texture at near-simultaneous entries, producing an overwhelming climax. From this density, the music resolves into a surprising and poignant close with a Picardy third: a radiant major chord that emerges from the surrounding darkness. Together, the Prelude and Fugue form one of the most monumental statements of Book I. The Prelude’s contrapuntal depth and harmonic searching prepare the way for a Fugue of rare intensity, whose final turn to the major stands as a moment of release after profound struggle.