- Das wohltemperirte Clavier, oder Praeludia, und Fugen durch alle Tone und Semitonia (The Well-Tempered Clavier: Or, Preludes and Fugues through all tones and semitones) is a two-volumes set of 48 preludes and fugues for keyboard instrument, in all major and minor keys.
- Bach composed Book I, with 24 preludes and fugues (one in each major and minor key) in 1722. He composed Book II, with 24 more preludes and fugues in each key, around 1740.1
- “Well temperament” is an early variety of equal temperament, in which the semitones of a keyboard are tuned to be roughly equal in size. This renders every major and minor key playable on a keyboard instrument.
- If you use a tuning system based on the natural harmonic series, you need to constantly adjust the size of semitones to fit the key and scale you’re using. Instruments that tune as they go, like vocalists and string players, do this naturally. Keyboard instruments cannot, so semitones need to be adjusted (or tempered) to an average size that will work in more than one key. Bach wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier in part to demonstrate what you could do with a keyboard that’s tuned to work in every key. This was pretty cutting-edge for Bach’s time.
- Read more here about tuning and temperament here.
Sources
- Christoph Wolff and Walter Emery, “Bach, Johann Sebastian,” Grove Music Online (2001), Accessed January 5, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278195.
Cut IDs
11152 20589 21347 21566