The 'London autograph manuscript' of The Well-Tempered Clavier Book II shows that Bach limited each prelude and fugue pair to a specially prepared folded sheet of paper (four pages).
Composition History
Bach compiled the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier eighteen years after the first, revisiting his original compositional idea in a completely new form.
Composer Biography
The late 1730s, when Bach was in his fifties, marked a significant turning point in his creative evolution, ushering in his unique output of late works.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Bach aimed to traverse the entire tonal system in the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier without repeating solutions from the first book.
Critical Reception
Bach's first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, considered the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier to consist of "sheer masterpieces from beginning to end."
Instruments
Céline Frisch performs on a harpsichord made in 1998 by Andrea Restelli, which is modeled after a 1738 instrument by Christian Vater, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
Cultural Impact
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described listening to Bach's monumental cycle as if "the eternal harmony were conversing with itself, as may have befallen in God's bosom shortly before the creation of the world."
