Praeludium, Fuge und Ciacone BuxWV 137

This C-major praeludium is bold and virtuosic.

Its opening flourish takes place with an extravagant pedal solo, answered by sweeping descending scales in thirty-second notes in the manuals. The pedal solo provides the motivic material for the subject of a fugue and the three-measure ostinato bass of the closing ciaccona.

Both the similarity of their themes and the presence of a second free section between the fugue and the ciaccona make it clear that the ciaccona has taken the place of what might otherwise have been a second fugue.

Hints of imitation of the bass theme in the upper parts reinforce this idea.