The introduction, part 2 (link), added to the list those compositions analyzed by others and only mentioned in the main text of the article. Among those was one composition that merited further discussion: J. S. Bach, Prelude in C Major, BWV 924. In the same post, I reproduced the score and collated it with its variant BWV 924a. Both versions appear in the Clavier-büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and scholars seem to agree that the latter was probably written by Friedemann.
In two subsequent posts -- JMT Series, part 3a (link) and part 3b (link) -- I focused first (in part 3a) on a comparison of the two versions, assuming that BWV 924 was a pedagogical model that Friedemann was expected to use as the basis of a compositional exercise. In part 3b, I discussed several Schenkerian analyses of BWV 924: Schenker himself in Tonwille, William Drabkin, Nicolas Meeùs, and my own reading from ^5 (from sometime in the 1980s).
In this post (3c), I add another pedagogical note. In a subsequent post (3d), I will offer some additional notes on Schenker's reading.
After that the reader may wish to return to part 4a, which begins discussion of pieces from the notes (as promised in the introduction to this series!): link.
In part 3a, I noted that the ascending fifths series that begins BWV 924 (but Friedemann short circuits and turns into the Romanesca bass) appears only rarely in the documents of the partimento tradition. It can be found, however, in Johann Friedrich Niedt's Musical Guide, a work now generally considered to have been the basis of J. S. Bach's pedagogy (Hiemke). In Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema (190-94), I detailed Bach's adoption of one of Niedt's basses -- which he provides with multiple variations -- in the WTC, C Major Prelude. BWV 924 has an obvious source in another of Niedt's basses for variation:
From this it would seem clear enough that the bass is a foundation, a given, and the upper voice(s) are variable. It also becomes clearer that BWV 924 was indeed intended as a demonstration of "variation" -- or compositional development out of the incipit offered by Niedt's brief model.
If so, then the idea of BWV 924 as an "assignment" and BWV 924a as arising out of that assignment is rendered even more plausible.
And we should also mention that the play with register by both Bach father and son in the cadenza passages follows a recommendation by Niedt: "Such [arpeggio figuration] can be varied in many ways, and one can go through the entire keyboard up to the highest C with arpeggiated chords." Niedt then makes a comparison to the organ: "Those who find this strange in the thorough-bass (for arpeggiated chords are not forbidden in playing Preludes) should consider the function of a four-foot stop on the organ."
References:
Hiemke, Sven. 2005. "'Die beste Methode.' Zur Funktion des Generalbasses in Johann Sebastian Bachs Unterricht in Anlehnung an die Musicalische Handleitung von Friedrich Erhardt Niedt." In Musik zwischen Spätbarock und Wiener Klassik: Festschrift für Gisela Vogel-Beckmann zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Gisela Vogel-Beckmann, Hanns-Werner Heister, and Wolfgang Hochstein, 29-45. Berlin: Weidler.
Neumeyer, David. 2015. Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Niedt, Friedrich Erhardt. 1989. Translated by Pamela L. Poulin and Irmgard C. Taylor. The Musical Guide. [Musicalische Handleitung] New York: Oxford University Press.
