Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903
composition for keyboard by J. S. Bach
The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903, is a keyboard work by Johann Sebastian Bach. It consists of a fantasia followed by a three-voice fugue. The work is often dated to Bach's Köthen period (1717–1723), although its surviving sources indicate that it circulated in more than one form and was probably revised after Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723.
The fantasia has a complex source history. It survives in three main versions: the early version BWV 903a or BWV 903.1, an intermediate version now numbered BWV 903.2, and the main version BWV 903 or BWV 903.3. The fugue has a simpler source history and differs only slightly among the surviving sources.
The fantasia is organized through passagework, arpeggiation, chromatic voice leading, and recitative-like writing. Its main sections include an opening passagework section, an arpeggiated and modulatory passage, a recitative, and a coda over a tonic pedal point. The fugue is in three voices and develops a chromatic subject through eleven entries. Although the two movements differ in form, commentators have described continuities between them, especially in chromatic procedure, tonal instability, and keyboard figuration.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1087598. The Library of Congress control number is n81104088. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1717 and 1723.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.