Well-Tempered Clavier: Galling(cemb)

Johann Sebastian Bach:
THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
The 48 Preludes and Fugues BWV 846-893

Martin Galling, cembaro

Stereo Recording: 1964

J. S. Bach used the forty-eight indvidual pieces that make up his Wohltemperierte Klavier as study material for his advanced keyboard students. The term -wohltemperiert" describes a -well-tempered" or evenly-tuned keyboard; in the figurative sense this refers to pleasant sounding, delicately balanced works. The exact date of composition remains a mystery - it can be presumed that Bach started on the compositions in 1720 and completed them around 1740.

The Well-Tempered Clavier is a collection of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, that was first released under the original title "The Well-Tempered Clavier. Or Praeludia and Fugues by all Tone and Semitonia ... ". The pieces 846 - 869 from the Bach works are today known as part 1 of the Well-tempered Clavier. The so-called Part 2 with the works 870 - 893 was not entitled like this by Bach.

With his Well-tempered Clavier, Bach belonged to the first composers to use all twenty-four keys: thanks to a new keyboard tuning technique it had become possible to change intervals and divide octaves into twelve equal parts. Each of the forty-eight studies is made up of a prelude and fugue, starting out on C major and C minor and progressing through all the keys in a chromatic major / minor alternation to B major and B minor. No other collection of works had anything approaching such a formative influence on the development of music in the centuries that followed.

The recordings were made in 1964 by harpsichord virtuoso Martin Galling, who made harpsichord recordings of all of Bach‘s keyboard works during the 1960s.