It is rare indeed to hear J.S. Bach's Prelude in C minor for solo lute, BWV 999, played as anything but an introduction to the Fugue in G minor, BWV 1000, a work probably composed many years after the prelude. The marriage of the two is one of musical convenience: neither stands especially well on its own in the modern concert hall (a venue hardly in Bach's mind when he wrote them). The prelude was probably written during the late 1710s or early 1720s when Bach lived in Cöthen and spent most of his energies on instrumental music.

As with most of Bach's other lute works, the idea that the prelude was actually composed for Lautenwerk (a modified, lute-emulating harpsichord) rather than for actual lute has to be considered (the point becomes an unimportant one when one considers that Bach's lute works are almost never played on either harpsichord or lute today, the guitar long having absorbed them into its repertoire). Arpeggiation, of much the same kind that characterizes many of the preludes in the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier (which dates from around the same time), is constant over the prelude's minute-and-a-half span. The piece really does seem to be a prelude to some other musical item; why else would Bach end it on the dominant?

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