Distant Prelude. A prelude to a journey.
I’ve started something. Something exciting, maybe somewhat ambitious. This is a journey through Bach’s Das Wohltemperirte Clavier book 2. (engl.: The Well-Tempered Clavier)
Bach composed two books of 24 sets of preludes and fugues each. “Clavier” was basically any keyboard instrument of Bach’s times e.g. harpsichord, clavichord as well as organ and others.
What is Clavier that is well-tempered? Firstly, it is kind and well mannered, not like those that are bad-tempered. Secondly well-tempered clavier has been tampered with it’s tuning to make certain harmonies and chords have certain “flavor” and in the case of Das Wohltemperirte Clavier to make it certain that no flavor is terrible. There are many different temperaments that harpsichord players can choose to make certain harmonies sound sweeter, always at a risk of getting a chord or two that will sound horrible. However, if you want to perform 24 pieces of music, each in a different key, then some of those pieces are guarantied to be really sounding at certain temperaments (tunings).
Then enters Bach! To write a prelude and fugue for each and every major and minor must have been a statement: “Here! I’ve solved the temperament conundrum!” Many think that Bach must have used the “equal temperament” (the temperament that most music is performed in nowadays) But there are also researchers that believe that Bach figured out another temperament and left a clue on the cover of his manuscript in a form of squiggles, that for most people look like some doodling, however harpsichord enthusiasts believe that those are instructions on how to tune your harpsichord for performing this.
Now…. having spent 2 paragraphs or 200 words on introducing the mysteries of temperaments, I will now go ahead to disappoint anyone wanting to hear some fancy temperaments in my project. I’m using the good old boring equal temperament. Having said that – I might experiment with some temperaments at some point and if you want to see/hear me going down that rabbit hole – you can subscribe to my website Barocker.com to hear me brag about it – when I’ll have something to show.
Distant Prelude is the first in the series of works based on Das Wohltemperirte Clavier 2nd book and is inspired by the Prelude #1 in C major. It’s named Prelude as it starts off the series and Distant – because I don’t yet know where all this will lead. All that I know now is – there will be at least 24 tracks for this journey.
The name – Distant Prelude – also signifies the first letter of Das Wohltemperirte Clavier. I am sure that Bach didn’t name his tome by accident – using only 24 letters! These old guys loved mysteries, encoding tuning instructions as squiggles, playing with cryptic codes throughout.
So, I invite you to come with me on this adventure! You can sign-up on my website Barocker.com , follow me on Facebook, Instagram or other social network, follow me on Bandcamp, Spotify or drop me a line!
