These recordings are found automatically, and the machine still gets it wrong. One click from you — yes or no — fixes the catalogue for every musician who opens this page after you. Across our 10,000 works, your answer is our only real quality check.
An arrangement or transcription is fine: if you recognise the work, answer yes. Answer no if it is a different work, a different composer, or if the recording does not play.
-
Play — Bach - WTC II Prelude and fugue no. 21 in B-flat major BWV 890 | Netherlands Bach Society · Netherlands Bach Society (the player loads on click)
Is this the right work? -
Play — The Well-Tempered Clavier, 2ième Livre: Fugue No. 21 en Si Bémol Majeur, BWV 890 · Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard Egarr (the player loads on click)
Is this the right work?
No account is required and no personal data is collected.
Public-domain sheet music on IMSLP ↗
Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.
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.
The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.
Does this rating look right to you?
This rating is computed automatically from heterogeneous sources. It gets things wrong, sometimes badly. If you know this work, your answer is worth more than our computation: it tells us which ratings to review.
Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.
The safest next step.
A genuine step up, without a jolt.
A useful leap with guided practice.
This fugue unfolds with rhythmic clarity and contrapuntal brightness: its character is a responsive, overlapping discourse with frequent tight imitations that call for precise articulation and clear phrase direction. Technically, you will need to focus on Analysis harmonique (4.4/5) to anticipate modulations and harmonic inversions that govern the entrances and bass lines, which means identifying harmonic pivots ahead of execution and choosing fingerings that preserve line continuity; and on Polyphony of three voices or more (4.4/5), which here requires maintaining voice independence through refined finger control and dynamic shading to bring forward the intended voice without masking the others, planning fingerings to manage crossings and legato connections. The piece belongs to the Baroque period and occupies its place among Bach’s keyboard fugues where contrapuntal command is essential.