About this Piece

One of the most sparkling organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the Prelude and Fugue in G major, BWV 541, was probably originally written  around the middle of Bach’s formative period in Weimar, 1708-1717, but revised in Leipzig sometime after 1740. The Prelude is anebullient affair, a joyful stream of 16th-notes punctuated by repeated chords. The Fugue is a somewhat sterner companion, in darker, arresting harmonies as well as its contrapuntal intensity and the driving repeated notes of the fugal subject.