PreludePrelude in C minor · BWV 871 · I

The C minor prelude from Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Its 28 bars in common time fall into two halves, bars 1 to 12 and 13 to 28, each repeated. The writing is largely in two parts: one hand runs in sixteenth notes while the other moves in eighths, and the hands trade these roles. Mordents in bars 7 and 8 and trills in bars 14 and 16 ornament the line, and the piece closes on a held C minor chord. This edition follows Franz Kroll's Bach-Gesellschaft edition of 1866.