Fuga Prima (version Lynar B3)

Two or three scores left before the holidays.

Simon Lohet's Fuga prima appears in Johann Woltz’s "Nova musices organicae tabulatura" (Basel, 1617) and in manuscript Ms Lynar B3.

The Fuga prima as it appears in Woltz's publication is undeniably a keyboard-only composition and not meant to be played with the pedals as well. The version of this fugue in Ms Lynar B3 differs in lots of places from the version in Woltz's publication. Particularly in the second section of the fugue. In the Woltz's version the fugue has some runs over the entire keyboard. These runs are absent in the Lynar B3 version. It is my guess that this was done to make it possible to play this fugue with pedals. The places in Woltz's original that would be difficult, awkward or impossible to play with pedals, are replaced with new material that is playable with pedals. The overal structure is maintained (two sections, with repeats), though the resulting adaptation is a few bars longer.

Some of the preludes from the first half of this manuscript feel like compositional or inprovisational exercises. In line with that impression is the supposition that this adaptation was an compositional exercise as well. As far as I am concerned, the exercise was carried out very succesfully. The resulting composition is stronger than the original. Where the original is idiomatically more a Renaissance work than a Baroque work, for the adaptation it is the other way around: it is more a Baroque work than a Renaissance work.

Score available here: http://partitura.org/index.php/simon-lohet-fuga-prima-version-lynar-b3