page_title: Music written in all major and/or minor keys
section_title: Composers who wrote multiple sets
hierarchical_section_title: Music written in all major and/or minor keys / Sets that cover all 24 keys / Composers who wrote multiple sets
caption_attribution_description: English: Niels Viggo Bentzon
context_page_description: There is a long tradition in classical music of writing music in sets of pieces that cover all the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. These sets typically consist of 24 pieces, one for each of the major and minor keys.
  Well-known examples include Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier and Frédéric Chopin's 24 Preludes, Op. 28. Such sets are often organized as preludes and fugues or designated as preludes or études. Some composers have restricted their sets to cover only the 12 major keys or the 12 minor keys; or only the flat keys or the sharp keys. In yet another type, a single piece may progressively modulate through a set of tonalities, as occurs in Ludwig van Beethoven's Two Preludes through all twelve major keys, Op. 39.
  The bulk of works of this type have been written for piano solo, but there also exist sets for piano 4-hands; two pianos; organ; guitar; two guitars; flute; recorder; oboe; violin solo; violin and piano; cello solo; cello and piano; voice and piano; and string quartet. There are examples of attempts to write full sets that, for one reason or another, were never completed.
context_section_description: A number of composers have not been content with just one set of works covering all the keys of the scale. For instance, Niels Viggo Bentzon wrote no fewer than 14 complete sets of 24 Preludes and Fugues, a total of 336 pieces in this genre alone. Others who have written more than one set include:
  Charles-Valentin Alkan: 25 Preludes; Esquisses; 24 Études (published as separate sets of major-key and minor-key études) – Alkan seems to have also started a fourth set: the 11 grands préludes et un transcription du Messie de Hændel, Op. 66, are a set of 12 pieces that cover all the keys that have one to six flats (although Alkan replaces G♭ major with its enharmonic equivalent using sharps, F♯ major). However, this set was never completed.
  Lera Auerbach: 24 Preludes (piano); 24 Preludes (violin and piano); 24 Preludes (cello and piano)
  Johann Sebastian Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II (1722 and 1742) – Though separated by 20 years, they are usually considered a single work and referred to as "the 48".
  David Cope: 48 Preludes and Fugues
  Carl Czerny: At least three sets, piano exercises (Opp. 152, 380) and 24 preludes and fugues ("Der Pianist im klassischen Style: 48 Präludien und Fugen in allen 24 Dur- und Moll-Tonarten als Vorstudien des volkommenen Vortrags aller klassischen Tonwerke", Op. 856)
  Johann Nepomuk Hummel: 24 Preludes; 24 Études
  Friedrich Kalkbrenner: 24 Études; 24 Preludes
  Nikolai Kapustin: 24 Preludes in Jazz Style; 24 Preludes and Fugues
  Joseph Christoph Kessler: 24 Études; 24 Preludes
  Craig Sellar Lang: Two books of 24 preludes and fugues
  Trygve Madsen: 24 Preludes Op. 20; 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 101
  Jaan Rääts: 24 Marginalia; 24 Estonian Preludes
  Igor Rekhin (b. 1941 in Tambov, Russia): 24 Preludes and Fugues for guitar; 24 Caprices for solo cello
  Josef Rheinberger: 24 Fughettas, Op. 123 – He also intended to compose 24 organ sonatas, but died having completed only 20.
  Christian Heinrich Rinck: 30 Preludes; Exercises in all the keys
  Dmitri Shostakovich: 24 Preludes, Op. 34; 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 – He also set out to write 24 string quartets all in different keys, but completed only 15 of them.
  Sir Charles Villiers Stanford: 2 sets of 24 Preludes, Opp. 163, 179
  Louis Vierne: 24 Pièces en style libre; 24 Pièces de fantaisie
  Vsevolod Zaderatsky: 24 Preludes; 24 Preludes and Fugues (written in prison, without a piano, on telegraph forms)
caption: Picture of Niels Viggo Bentzon, who wrote 14 complete sets of 24 Preludes and Fugues.
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