The Well-Tempered Clavier

The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846–893, consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach.

In the composer's time clavier referred to a variety of keyboard instruments, namely the harpsichord, the clavichord and the organ (which operates using air instead of strings), but not excluding the regal and the then newly-invented fortepiano.

Bach gave the title Das Wohltemperirte Clavier to a book of preludes and fugues in all 24 keys, major and minor, dated 1722, composed "for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study".

Some 20 years later, Bach compiled a second book of the same kind (24 pairs of preludes and fugues), which became known as The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part Two (in German: Zweyter Theil, modern spelling: Zweiter Teil).

30 L'alphabet de la musique (circa 1735) contained 24 sonatas in all keys for flute or violin and basso continuo, and included a transposition scheme for alto recorder.

[4] Although the Well-Tempered Clavier was the first collection of fully worked keyboard pieces in all 24 keys, similar ideas had occurred earlier.

Furthermore, some two hundred years before Bach's time, equal temperament was realized on plucked string instruments, such as the lute and the theorbo, resulting in several collections of pieces in all keys (although the music was not yet tonal in the modern sense of the word): One of the earliest keyboard composers to realize a collection of organ pieces in successive keys was Daniel Croner (1656–1740), who compiled one such cycle of preludes in 1682.

Fischer's Ariadne musica neo-organoedum (published in 1702 and reissued 1715) is a set of 20 prelude and fugue pairs in ten major and nine minor keys, and the Phrygian mode, plus five chorale-based ricercars.

[13][15] Finally, a lost collection by Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), Fugen und Praeambuln über die gewöhnlichsten Tonos figuratos (announced 1704), may have included prelude-fugue pairs in all keys or modes.

[16] It was long believed that Bach had taken the title The Well-Tempered Clavier from a similarly named set of 24 Preludes and Fugues in all the keys, for which a manuscript dated 1689 was found in the library of the Brussels Conservatoire.

One of the opposing systems in Bach's day was meantone temperament in which keys with many accidentals sound out of tune on keyboards limited to 12 pitches per octave.

Despite the presumption of equal temperament, research has continued into various unequal systems contemporary with Bach's career; there is debate whether Bach might have meant a range of similar temperaments, perhaps altered slightly in practice from piece to piece, or possibly some single, specific, "well-tempered" solution for all purposes.

In the course of a heated debate, Marpurg and Kirnberger appear to agree that Bach required all the major thirds to be sharper than pure – which is not very informative, since it is essentially a prerequisite for any temperament to sound tolerable in all keys.

Since 1950 there have been many other proposals and many performances of the work in different and unequal tunings, some derived from historical sources, some by modern authors.

However, they disagree as to which key receives which character: More recently there has been a series of proposals of temperaments derived from the handwritten doodle of loops on the title page of Bach's personal 1722 manuscript.

It would be a too bit cryptic for Bach's spirit, but seems to the hopeful to represent the purpose for which the masterpiece was written, and at the same time, a clue to its decipherment.

[32] The title page of the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier reads: An early version of the prelude, BWV 846a, is found in Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (No.

The fugues employ a full range of contrapuntal devices (fugal exposition, thematic inversion, stretto, etc.

Several attempts have been made to analyse the motivic connections between each prelude and fugue[36] – most notably Wilhelm Werker[37] and Johann Nepomuk David.

[38] The most direct motivic reference appears in the B major set from Book 1, in which the fugue subject uses the first four notes of the prelude, in the same metric position but at half speed.

[39] Both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier were widely circulated in manuscript, but printed copies were not made until 1801, by three publishers almost simultaneously in Bonn, Leipzig and Zurich.

[40] Bach's style went out of favour in the time around his death, and most music in the early Classical period had neither contrapuntal complexity nor a great variety of keys.

But, with the maturing of the Classical style in the 1770s, the Well-Tempered Clavier began to influence the course of musical history, with Haydn and Mozart studying the work closely.

[43][44] Beethoven played the entire Well-Tempered Clavier by the time he was eleven, and produced an arrangement of BWV 867, for string quintet.

[51] In the liner notes to the Clair de Lune compilation of piano encores issued by CBS Masterworks, Philippe Entremont relates an anecdote in which von Bülow, having a distaste for the endless clamor for encores, was facing a thunderously applauding house and raised his hand, saying "Ladies and Gentlemen!

[54] The accessibility of this prelude, the "easy" key of C major, and its use of arpeggiated chords, have made it one of the most commonly studied pieces for piano students.

[citation needed] The first complete recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier was made on the piano by Edwin Fischer for EMI between 1933 and 1936.

[58] Daniel Chorzempa made the first recording using multiple instruments (harpsichord, clavichord, organ, and fortepiano) for Philips in 1982.

Visit https://maplelab.net/bach/ to listen and visualize performances of Book 1 by Fisher, Landowska, Walcha, and 10 other renowned pianists.

1 in C major (BWV 846): Interactive media Sheet music Recordings On tuning systems Descriptions and analyses