bach well tempered clavier book 1 prelude in e flat minor

There was the matter addressed in the title, that of finding a temperament (and we cannot be sure exactly what he had in mind) in which it would be possible to play the entire contents without retuning the instrument. His purposes were manifold – fugal, one might say. Two years later he reinscribed some items from that teaching material into a new volume of preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys, and called it The Well-Tempered Clavier.

We are listening to a compendium, or pair of compendia, whose origins go back to 1720, when Bach notated pieces into a little book he was using in training his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, then a boy of ten. And we are listening to a performer who has spent his life here. We are listening to a collection that was studied by Mozart and Beethoven, and by virtually every composer since – to a collection that surely will have more to offer to composers yet to come. In the presence of this consistently contrapuntal music, we may find ourselves listening contrapuntally, the music’s lines carrying us effortlessly forward while also referring us back, the succession of preludes and fugues rising step by step to present us with new things and remind us of old ones.

Bach well tempered clavier book 1 prelude in e flat minor