Place and date: Leipzig, early to mid-1740s.
Sole source: Tokyo, Ueno‑Gakuen Music Academy (autograph).
Editions: BG 45, NBA V/10.
Movements: Prelude – Fugue – Allegro
The title Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro, for BWV 998, was not left by Bach himself, he merely labeled the first movement Prelude pour la Luth. o Cembal. Like BWV 997 the work could be viewed as a sort of church sonata, although lacking a slow movement after the fugue.
The prelude is similar in meter, form, and texture to the prelude in the same key in WTC2. The fugue is in Da Capo form; as in BWV 997, only the B section contains free figuration. The allegro, a large binary form, opens with the same gesture as the gigue of the earlier lute suite BWV 996. It shares that piece’s perpetual motion in sixteenths but instead of chromaticism and counterpoint offers galant fluidity and simplicity of texture.