# Bach, "Little" Fugue in G minor



## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

For the talkclassical best videogame soundtrack award we are voting the second track, if you want to partecipate: https://www.talkclassical.com/75003-mario-draco-opera-final.html

Today I'll drop a bomb over talkclassical. If you don't like this piece you are Putin.

I'm joking: feel free to share your opinion with the poll.

The original organ version.






The piano version.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

Just in contrapuntal terms, Bach wrote far more adventurous fugues in the Well-Tempered Clavier. It has a great subject but I wouldn't even say it's my favorite of Bach's G minor organ fugues! Basically my thoughts are that it's good, but it doesn't beat out the fierce competition from some of Bach's other works.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Excellent, and I much prefer the work on the king of instruments.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

HansZimmer said:


> For the talkclassical best videogame soundtrack award we are voting the second track, if you want to partecipate: Mario and Draco: opera from Final Fantasy VI
> 
> Today I'll drop a bomb over talkclassical. If you don't like this piece you are Putin.
> 
> ...


Here's an organ one which I prefer


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

I can't listen to the little g-minor fugue without being aware, that its subject is an embellished variety of the main subject of the Art of Fugue.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Monsalvat said:


> Just in contrapuntal terms, Bach wrote far more adventurous fugues in the Well-Tempered Clavier. It has a great subject but I wouldn't even say it's my favorite of Bach's G minor organ fugues! Basically my thoughts are that it's good, but it doesn't beat out the fierce competition from some of Bach's other works.


I think it's an early piece.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

It's a lovely little piece, especially the stretto, which begins around 1:25 in the above organ performance (which I didn't like for several reasons.) Perfectly satisfying and well constructed, straightforward and not too complicated.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I think it's an early piece.


Yes, probably. The authograph has been lost, but it exists in copies by J L Krebs and J C Vogler from about 1730. Bach may have recalled it while he was thinking about a subject for the Art of Fugue and found a simplified version well suited for the purpose.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I like the almost scherzando subject. Didn't Stokowski or Elgar also make an orchestral version (a bit of an overkill...)?
The idea I had read wrt AoF was that its theme was a simplified version of the Thema regium


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Kreisler jr said:


> The idea I had read wrt AoF was that its theme was a simplified version of the Thema regium


This theory is too speculative. Bach began working on The Art of Fugue several years before he composed the Musical Offering and therefore didn't know the Thema Regium at that time. And if you compare the main subject of The Art of Fugue with the little g-minor fugue the relationship is obvious both as to intervals and as to harmonic progression.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I think it was an East German popular book on Bach from the 70s or so; not sure how seriously they meant this (they should have known the chronology ~50 years ago?), or I might even have misunderstood as a teenager. 
The AoF theme is about as simple as it gets while remaining somewhat catchy and interesting and optimised to be combined with its inversion. There is probably not that much leeway considering such constraints.
Edit: I don't deny the similarity with the "little fugue" but I think the AoF theme is "general" enough to have been found/constructed without reference to the earlier piece.


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## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

Kreisler jr said:


> I like the almost scherzando subject. Didn't Stokowski or Elgar also make an orchestral version (a bit of an overkill...)?
> The idea I had read wrt AoF was that its theme was a simplified version of the Thema regium


Yes.






And why not to add this other piano version?






And this string version.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I voted it's okay.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> Didn't Stokowski or Elgar also make an orchestral version


Ormandy made a recording of it too, orchestrated by his assistant conductor William Smith or so the album says and yet it sounds like the Stokowski orchestration. I call shenanigans!


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