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Play — J.S. Bach - Prelude and Fugue in D major, BWV 874, WTC Book 2 · Listen to musical notes (the player loads on click)
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Play — The Well-Tempered Clavier, 2ième Livre: Fugue No. 5 en Ré Majeur, BWV 874 · Johann Sebastian Bach, Christophe Rousset (the player loads on click)
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Public-domain sheet music on IMSLP ↗
Official level, taken from the exam syllabus.
Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.
Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.
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This fugue has a bright, relentless character: the D major subject circulates persistently and creates a tightly woven contrapuntal motion that reads like an intense conversation among voices. Technically, you will face specifically Analysis harmonique (4.4/5), which here requires quickly identifying modulatory progressions to shape breaths and harmonic shading, and Polyphonie à trois voix ou plus (4.4/5), which forces you to separate subject, answer and bass through careful fingering and balance so each line remains audible and articulated. The piece belongs to the Baroque period and is part of the composer's central contrapuntal output, characteristic of his work on keyboard fugues. I do not give a recommended recording here because I am not fully certain of a single widely recognized interpretation for this specific fugue.