Fugues, Form, and Fingering: Sonata Style in Bach’s Preludes and Fugues

Abstract

The conception of sonata form as expounded by Charles Rosen has proved enormously useful for understanding music of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this view, a sonata movement is a dramatization of fundamental tonal and motivic processes; to analyze sonata form is to uncover the expressive aspirations of a composer, even of an age. Neither a single formal structure nor a simple principle or device, Classical sonata form is central to the personal styles of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Hence it is almost a contradiction in terms to speak of the same form in music of other composers, particularly an earlier one such as Bach, whose preludes and fugues are in some ways the antithesis of a Classical sonata movement.