Am I the only one to hear Cb instead of B here?
This comes from BWV 847 (the C minor fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier).
Look at the third beat from measure 28.
I can't help but hear an A flat minor chord here, that is Eb, Cb, Ab. Especially when playing with an "organ" sound on a synthesizer or something rich (because of the harmonics of the Eb at the bass, I suppose). Try to add the Eb above middle C to the chord to see what I mean.
I know that the harmony is supposed to be a G dominant over the Eb (that is a vanilla V/I movement over the Eb), and you can suppress any tentative to think otherwise by adding the D to the chord (I even have an edition at home which suggest that there is at least one manuscript where the copier added this D).
Am I the only one to hear this "C flat" ? Is there any actual example of chromatic mediant movement in Bach by the way ? Would you add the D to the chord ?
EDIT: here I can hear it a lot :
(at 3:28)
(3)3 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
Sure, if you listen to this chord out of context, it sounds like a 2nd inversion Ab minor chord. But in context, at least to me, the chord and its resolution on the second eighth note seem to be a perfectly straightforward, and typical for Bach, dominant to tonic motion, where the dominant is a dimished seventh chord (missing its third and fifth), and the tonic is in the first inversion and anticipated in the bass.
And there's no room for a D in the chord- this is a three voice fugue.
There is no c-flat in the key of c minor, and that’s what key we’re in here.
The b-natural has a scale-degree function to move to c, and that’s what it does here. C-flat doesn’t have that role.
There is no harmonic function of a-flat minor in this spot. B and a-flat are non-harmonic tones resolving to c and g in the c minor triad in first inversion.
For those reasons, I’d say Bach notated this correctly.
The way you've phrased your question is a little strange, since the only possible answer would be "no, you are undoubtedly not the only one."
I hear it a little differently from Scott, but it doesn't really make sense as a full chord. I hear the B and the Ab as simple accented non-chord tones, with a chromatic rise (B-C) and descent (Ab-G) to the expected i6 chord.
That seems fairly clear to me on reading it, and is also how I hear it when performed:
Terms of Use Privacy policy Contact About Cancellation policy © freshhoot.com2025 All Rights reserved.