[Smt-talk] Bach Quiz

[Olli Väisälä]

After considering Eytan's interpretation, I tend to agree with it.  
Thanks for this comment. The C# before B is thus not so much a root  
of V in F# minor but a passing tone.

However, I would like to remark that my original quiz/query or the  
answer to it had nothing to do with what *I* perceive or do not  
perceive, but with an objectively definable thing. Can we find 5–5  
successions in WTC?

There are, of course, several ways to define "parallel fifths," but I  
think I made clear what I meant: surface 5–5 successions. Is this a  
relevant concept for Bach's writing? I think it is, since so far no  
one has mentioned any other instances of them in WTC (except the one  
I mentioned in WTC II, D-minor Prelude), which suggests that Bach  
strongly tended to avoid them, whatever the role of the tones in  
terms of harmony and figuration.

In chorales, there is, of course, one fairly common exception, the  
combination of V8-7 with ^2–^1 anticipation.

Olli Väisälä
Sibelius Academy
ovaisala at siba.fi



> Olli Väisälä wrote, concerning what he perceives as parallel fifths  
> in the
> second half of bar. 22 of the B minor fugue, WTCI:
>
> "Is there something to mitigate the effect of these fifths? First,  
> there is
> voice crossing. The listener may be likely to hear the F# as coming  
> from E#
> (even though the quarter-note countersubject should be quite  
> familiar to
> him/her by this point). Second, since the main harmonies in the  
> latter half
> of m. 22 are, locally speaking, the V and I of F# minor, the bass B  
> is a
> non-harmonic tone: an appoggiatura, or a "misplaced" (delayed)  
> accented
> passing seventh."
>
> I rather hear the harmonies as VIIdim7-I in F# minor, with no parallel
> fifths. The sixteenth-note C# in the bass is passing from D to B.  
> The D is
> then transferred to the upper voice, where it resolves to C#. The B  
> in the
> bass is an implied suspension. Although absent from the diminished- 
> seventh
> chord of beat 3, it was present on the downbeat of this measure, as  
> well as
> the second half of the second beat (in both cases as a root). It is  
> thus
> implicitly connected to the B on the fourth beat. Note the registrally
> shifted chromatic line that begins in the inner-voice: E-D#-D-C#.
>
> Eytan Agmon
> Bar-Ilan University
>
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