BWV 561 Fantasia and Fugue in A minor

Later eighteenth- or nineteenth-century copies only (P 318, P 1066), and Peters IX.

Two staves; headed in P 318 ‘Fantasia’, and by a later hand, ‘in A moll (Preludio e Fuga per il Cembalo)compost: da Giovanne Sebast: Bach’.

One view is that this is an early work ‘composed for pedal harpsichord’ (‘Pedalflügel’:BG 38 p. xxii), like the A major fugues BWV 949 and 950. Another is that whoever the composer was, he knew the Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV 543 (Keller1937); perhaps it was Kittel, of whom the changes of movement from semiquavers to demisemiquavers may be typical (Keller d 1948 p. 57). Why the work could also be accredited to W. F. Bach (Frotscher 1935 p. 856) is unclear.

The figures of bb. 1 and 29 can be found (in the same key) in Buxtehude's D minor Toccata, and others suggest a familiarity with diminutio conventions. Details reminiscent of BWV 543 include such figures as the broken chords above tonic pedal, the harmony at bb. 82–3 and the fugue-subject itself, which is the most Bach-like thing in the whole. Like BWV 543, it consists of an opening phrase followed by a sequence, a type known elsewhere amongst contemporaries (e.g. Böhm's C major Praeludium and BWV 948) or pupils (J. P. Kellner's Fugue Anh.III 180). A ‘style relationship’ with the Concerto BWV 594 has also been heard (EB 6583 p. xiii).