Bach was the first composer to fully explore the entire range of the key system, making the cosmos of tonality accessible in unique masterpieces like The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Compositional Technique
For Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach challenged himself to limit each prelude and fugue pair to a single folded sheet of paper (four pages) and to include only three- or four-voice fugues.
Composer Biography
Around 1740, Johann Sebastian Bach entered a unique late creative phase, marked by a return to and revision of his earlier works.
Compositional Technique
In The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach perfected the 'prelude and fugue' pairing, transforming simpler forms into subtly drawn character pieces and contrapuntal masterpieces.
Critical Reception
Bach's biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, considered Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier to consist of "sheer masterpieces from beginning to end."
Composition History
Bach revised his first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier in the late 1730s, eighteen years after its initial completion, before embarking on the second book.
Cultural Impact
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described listening to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as akin to "eternal harmony conversing with itself, as may have befallen in God's bosom shortly before the creation of the world."
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Bach, J.S.: Well-Tempered Clavier (The), Book 1, Bwv 846-869
J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2
Bach, J.S.: Inventions and Sinfonias, Bwv 772-801
BACH - Kunst der Fuge - The Art of the Fuge - L' Art de la Fuge
Bach, JS: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier
J.S. Bach: Musikalisches Opfer, BWV 1079: Ricercar a 3
