Dietrich Buxtehude › BuxWV 142
Prelude in E minor
Scores
To import into forScore on iPad/iPhone: open a score, then tap Safari’s Share button → Copy to forScore. The score arrives tagged with its title and composer.
![Prelude in E minor, BuxWV 142 [#924904].pdf](/files/_pending_vlm/Organ/Buxtehude%2C%20Dietrich/Prelude%20in%20E%20minor%2C%20BuxWV%20142/Prelude%20in%20E%20minor%2C%20BuxWV%20142%20%5B%23924904%5D.p10.png)
How to play
- Registration
- Principal 8'+4' plus a colour stop (Sesquialtera or Cornet) for the fugue subject's character; full plenum for the closing flourish.
- Tempo
- Stately opening; the fugue moves at a walking pulse — its long, sighing subject loses character if pushed.
- Articulation
- Legato within the fugue subject's stepwise descents; articulated turns where the line moves by leap.
- Ornamentation
- Cadential trills only; over-ornamenting the lyrical fugue subject smothers its rhetoric.
Historical context
A smaller-scale praeludium than the famous E major. The E-minor fugue subject falls in long sighing intervals — closer in character to a chorale fantasia than to the brilliant style of BuxWV 141.
Structure
4 sections: Prelude Fugue 1 Fugue 2 Fugue 3