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 stringed keyboard instruments, most typically the harpsichord or clavichord, but not excluding the organ, although it is not a stringed keyboard.
For the Westworld episode, see The Well-Tempered Clavier (Westworld).
The modern German spelling for the collection is Das wohltemperierte Klavier (WTK; German pronunciation: [das ˌvoːlˌtɛmpəˈʁiːɐ̯tə klaˈviːɐ̯]). 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).
Modern editions usually refer to both parts as The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (WTC 1) and The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 (WTC 2), respectively.[1] The collection is generally regarded as one of the most important works in the history of classical music.[2]
Style[edit]
Musically, the structural regularities of the Well-Tempered Clavier encompass an extraordinarily wide range of styles, more so than most pieces in the literature. The preludes are formally free, although many of them exhibit typical Baroque melodic forms, often coupled to an extended free coda (e.g. Book 1 preludes in C minor, D major, and B♭ major). The preludes are also notable for their odd or irregular numbers of measures, in terms of both the phrases and the total number of measures in a given prelude.
Each fugue is marked with the number of voices, from two to five. Most are three- and four-voiced fugues, but two are five-voiced (the fugues in C♯ minor and B♭ minor from Book 1) and one is two-voiced (the fugue in E minor from Book 1). The fugues employ a full range of contrapuntal devices (fugal exposition, thematic inversion, stretto, etc.), but are generally more compact than Bach's fugues for organ.
Several attempts have been made to analyse the motivic connections between each prelude and fugue[34] – most notably Wilhelm Werker[35] and Johann Nepomuk David.[36] 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.[37]
Interactive media
Sheet music
Recordings
On tuning systems
Descriptions and analyses