Over het album

Our knowledge of the history behind the composing of one of the most emblematic works in the œuvre of Johann Sebastian Bach, his Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (Book I, BWV 846–869; Book II, BWV 870–893), remains remarkably modest. Ernst Ludwig Gerber (1746–1819), author of Tonkünstlerlexicon, a lexicon of musical artists that was highly popular in his day, noted there in 1790: ‘according to a certain tradition, he wrote his Tempered Clavier (consisting of fugues and preludes, some of them very intricate, in all the 24 keys) in a place where ennui, boredom, and the absence of any kind of musical instrument forced him to resort to this pastime.’