Ariadne musica

Ariadne musica is a collection of organ music by Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, first published in 1702. The main part of the collection is a cycle of 20 preludes and fugues in different keys, so Ariadne musica is considered an important precursor to Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, which has a similar structure.

The title refers to the Greek myth in which Theseus finds his way out of Minotaur's labyrinth using a ball of thread that Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, gave him. Similarly, the music in the collection can be said to guide the listener through a labyrinth of keys. Fischer also used Greek mythology to name the pieces in another large scale music collection of his, Musikalischer Parnassus.

The first edition of Ariadne musica was made in 1702 in Schlackenwerth. The work was reprinted several times during Fischer's life. The original print mentioned by Johann Gottfried Walther in Musicalisches Lexicon is now lost, but a manuscript copy survives.

20 preludes and fugues:

5 ricercars on chorale melodies, each connected with a specific Catholic event:

All pieces are quite short, including a few really brief fugues (the seven bar A minor fugue being the shortest). Most are in common time, with a few exceptions (most notably the E Dorian fugue which is in 12/8). The preludes vary from pieces based on short simplistic -like passages over long sustained chords (as in, for example, the C major and G major ones) to slightly more complex works with brief imitative passages like this one, from the end of the E-flat major prelude:

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