J.S. Bach's Fantasia and Fugue for organ in C minor,
BWV 537 is not a particularly long piece, but it is a
dense and involved one in which a very un-flashy and
serious-minded approach to prelude and fugue-type
composition can be heard and seen. This is a departure
begun by Bach more or less during his Weimar years
(1708 - 1717), toward the end of which period the
present work was probably composed, as were, with
similar electrifyingly virtuosic style, such early
works as the famous Toccata and F...(+)
J.S. Bach's Fantasia and Fugue for organ in C minor,
BWV 537 is not a particularly long piece, but it is a
dense and involved one in which a very un-flashy and
serious-minded approach to prelude and fugue-type
composition can be heard and seen. This is a departure
begun by Bach more or less during his Weimar years
(1708 - 1717), toward the end of which period the
present work was probably composed, as were, with
similar electrifyingly virtuosic style, such early
works as the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV
565 and the Prelude and Fugue in E major, BWV 566.
The music of the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV
537, especially that of the fantasia, is still very
lush and ornate, but there is not a single cadenza-like
passage in the entire work; not once does a virtuoso
passage interrupt the high-minded musical essay, as it
does innumerable times in BWV 565 (the toccata of which
is entirely composed in such a manner). The fantasia is
in 6/4 meter and falls into two unequal halves, each of
which takes up the same two basic musical ideas, a
dotted-rhythm tune, in imitation, and then, a little
later (also in imitation, initiated by the pedals), a
leaping eighth-note idea. The fugue's steady subject
insists, four times in a row, on the pitch G (or C in
the tonal answer form) and is thus easily recognized
each time it appears during the 130 contrapuntal
bars.
Source: Almusic.com
(http://www.allmusic.com/composition/fantasia-and-fugue
-for-organ-in-c-mi...).
Although originally composed for Organ, I created this
modern intrepretation for Brass Quartet (Piccolo
Trumpet, Bb Trumpet, French Horn & F Tuba).