C major, 4/4 time.

This piece is fundamentally structured by flowing sixteenth-note stepwise motion, making it suitable for mastering the "cantabile style of playing" that Bach noted in his preface. This scalic theme appears in various keys and forms (inversion), combining and creating undulations. This avoids clear sectional divisions, and it has been pointed out as an "archaic compositional style with intricate development and structure."

If one were to describe the overall structure, it can be divided into four thematic exposition sections: the first exposition (from m. 1) and the second exposition (from m. 8) forming the first half, and the third exposition (from m. 12) and the fourth exposition (from m. 16) forming the second half.