Well Tempered Clavier I Prelude Fugue 8 E flat Min BWV 853
Channel: David Ezra Okonsar
Date: 2022-09-23

The Complete Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846-893, by Johann Sebastian Bach performed on a superb Italian harpsichord by the award-winning concert pianist David-Ezra Okonsar.

Well-Tempered Keyboard: What It Is And What It Isn't

"The Well-Tempered Clavier, or Preludes and Fugues in all tones and semitones, in major as well as minor, for the benefit and use of musical youth desirous of knowledge as well as those who are already advanced in this study. For their especial diversion composed and prepared by Johann Sebastian Bach currently ducal Chapelmaster in Anhalt-Cöthen and director of chamber music in 1722.”
 
This text appeared as a preface to the First Edition of the First Book of the Well-Tempered Keyboard and has been a source of vehement discussions among scholars for many centuries.
 
The above paragraph is the most accurate and concise description of the Well-Tempered Keyboard, and I would like to comment shortly on it here.
 
"Well Tempered" refers to the tuning system developed by Andreas Werckmeister in 1691. In short, that tuning system, by shifting down the pure fifth intervals, thus modifying the pure harmonic ratios between sounds, permits one to compose and perform on all keys. A facility previously unavailable, only a range from all naturals (C major) up to keys with some three or four accidentals, was practically usable. "Clavier" means nothing else, but keyboard. Those pieces are then intended for keyboard without any specification.
 
That keyboard may be a Clavichord, Harpsichord, pipe organ, and from today"s point of view: piano and electronic keyboards. In other words, Well-Tempered Keyboard is to be played (if it is to be played at all) on any keyboard. Which keyboard with what sort of sounds is left to the performer"s discretion.
 
After that come a few interesting phrases: for the benefit and use of musical youth desirous of knowledge ("Lehrbegierigen Musicalischen Jugend”).
 
Here Bach points out, as in many of his published works, the pedagogical aspect of the Well-Tempered Keyboard. Here, as is expected at that time, musical education comprises performance and composition. He mentions those already advanced in this study ("in diesem studio schon habil seyenden”).
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