A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Vorspiel

VORSPIEL. (Germ.), a Prelude—a piece played before something else, as a piece played after is called a Nachspiel or Postlude. In the sense of an introduction or first movement to a fugue the terms Prelude and Vorspiel have been already examined. [See vol. iii. p. 28.] Bach's Choral- Vorspiele have not however been touched upon. There are organ pieces apparently intended as an introduction to the singing of the hymn in which the chorale is taken as the basis of the piece, the treatment being either by florid and imitative accompaniments to the air in the treble, or in some inner part, in canon or otherwise, or in the bass, or as a fughetta, or in any other way which occurred to the genius and knowledge of this mighty master. Peters's Thematic-Catalogue of Bach's works contains 126 of such Vorspiele, besides 32 'Choral- variationen' on 4 Chorales.

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