The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books 1 & 2

Hans von Bulow called Bach's Well Tempered Clavier 'The Old Testament' of music - Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas being the so called 'New Testament. Bach's set of 48 preludes and matching fugues is the ultimate in keyboard instruction. Intended for his son Wilhelm Friedemann, they consist of one prelude and fugue in each of the twelve major and minor keys, arranged in chromatic order. Bach used not only the '48' for teaching purposes, but also his French and English Suites as well. According to one of his pupils, Bach would set them to work on the Inventions first, followed by the Suites, and if the great man didn't feel like teaching, he'd sit at the keyboard and play from the preludes and fugues 'and thus turned these hours into minutes' according to pupil Heinrich Nikolaus Gerber. These works became the essential study for all the great pianists - starting with Bach's sons, through Mozart, Beethoven, Hummel, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and all the pupils of these great composer pianists.

Daniel Barenboim has said of the '48' 'The chromatiscism in the C sharp minor prelude from Book 1 brings Wagner's Tristan und Isolde to mind. Or the fugue in E flat, which could be straight out of a symphony by Bruckner. In other words, The Well Tempered Clavier is not only the sum of everything that has preceded it, but it also points the way ahead. In European music there are very few composers whose work that applies. This is one of the main reasons for the towering stature of Bach's music.'