article 130: THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVER, BOOKS 0, III, IV and V In the discussion of “The Well-Tempered Clavier” to be found in his Bach biography*, Christoph Wolff quotes Johann Mattheson’s Das beschützte Orchestre (Hamburg, 1717): “Although by using temperament all keys can be set up such that they can be used diatonically, chromatically and enharmonically, a true demonstration is still lacking.” Wolff then writes that Bach, with his cycle of preludes and fugues through all 24 major and minor keys dated 1722, was the first to take up the challenge. According to Wolff, they “manifest his resolve to leave nothing untried, even if it meant exploring avenues where no one had gone before”. The author seems unaware that Mattheson himself already traveled those avenues in 1719 with his Exemplarische Organisten-Probe im Artikel vom General-Baß. This continuo treatise, which John Koster christened “WTC Book 0” in a recent email, actually contains two cycles of figured-bass test pieces through all the keys. The author reissued the work in expanded form in 1731 as his Große General-Baß-Schule. I always have to grit my teeth before reading Mattheson. His prolixity, pomposity and polemics are hard to digest. His 1731 expansion of the Organisten-Probe consists of nearly 200 pages of doggerel in praise of himself (including two poems by Telemann which are superior to the rest), venomous defenses against attacks recently suffered in print (especially those coming from his Nemesis, J. H. Buttstett), and promotional material for his planned Ehrenpforte (including Telemann’s autobiography). As a progressive, Mattheson is usually in the right, but that doesn’t make wading thought his prose, rightly called schwülstig by a modern condenser of the 1731 print, any easier. And as Gustav Leonhardt remarked to me regarding Mattheson, nothing has changed so much between 18th-century Germany and the present as the sense of humor. Reading through my facsimile of the Große General-Baß-Schule, I was struck by what a fan of equal temperament Mattheson was. He mentions all the pros and cons, but repeatedly comes back to what he thinks is the inevitable future, after all the stick-in-the-mud conservatives, stingy church consistories and know-it-all organ builders are eventually convinced. The concept “well-tempered” (wohltemperiert) continues to be controversial, in spite of the fact that the coiner of the term, Andreas Werckmeister, recommended equal temperament in his final book, and apologized for ever considering anything else (see articles 4 and 127). Here is Mattheson on equal temperament in 1731, including samples of Schwülstigkeit and heavy-handed humor: “As for myself, I was, and still am completely convinced that equal temperament [die gleiche Temperatur] is the best, and have never doubted it.” (p.144) “I mention [all these imperfections] not to discredit anyone, and even less in order to obstruct praiseworthy efforts on behalf of equal temperament, which is a thing I have consistently desired, since there is little hope of anything perfect in this patchwork world.” (p. 146) “If I now return to the delightful subject of temperament, it is only because I would like to enjoy seeing how the solmisation-folk, of which the world is still full, try to distinguish their modes, were this supposed badge [of mi and fa] not present merely at two points in the octave, but to be found in every single step of the same.” (p. 155) “Finally (and this is the essential point), every note, and therefore any which is chosen as the key of a piece of music, already has, as a note an sich, properties which utterly and thoroughly distinguish it from all others, giving it its very own style, shape, name, power and nature, such that, if the equal temperament which I demand should be introduced everywhere by royal and imperial decree, it absolutely need not be feared, as a learnèd musician once wrote, that were such a decree enforced, every key would sound like all others, and nothing be gained.” (p. 155) “There is one more caveat if the so famous equal temperament is ever to be employed by all instruments and singers. It is not enough to sit in a room on the other side of the mountain, researching, reckoning, writing down on paper what the interrelationship of the twelve tones of the octave be... I have a good opinion of equality. AEQUALIA NON FACIUNT BELLA. He who desires to make progress in this respect, must not only thoroughly understand the art of measurement: [mathematical] music theory, but the art of tones: the actual practice of music, as well. Such a person is, of a certainty, the rarest bird on earth, and a black swan.” (p. 163-4)** “That the twelve half-steps should all be of the same size — such is not music’s aim or highest object, but rather that they all, each in its own way, strike the ear pleasingly, with emphasis and sweetness, be they large or small. If the equally divided ones do this, so much the better; only let that goal be achieved.” (p. 164) *** There actually exists another Wohltemperierte Clavier. It was composed by Bernhard Christian Weber (1712-58) of Tennstedt in Thuringia – Bach country – and is kept at the Brussels Conservatory library. Weber’s Kantor from 1743 was Georg Heinrich Noah, who had studied theology in Leipzig and worked as a copyist for Bach around 1742. That was probably Weber’s source for a copy of Bach’s WTC, the title page of which Weber copied nearly verbatim for his own autograph. The work is organized pedagogically: six pairs in two parts, six in three, six in four and six in five. The last group has a pedal part, for organ, pedal clavichord or pedal harpsichord. This is a competent piece of work by a very minor composer, nothing more. Weber might have done well to choose a less impudent title. Breitkopf & Härtel published the book for the Neue Bachgesellschaft in the fateful year 1933***. The editor was Max Seiffert, a Nazi party member from 1935. *** Johann Andres Sorge was the next participant in the race to conquer distant keys. From 1739 to 1743 he printed a Clavier-Übung in four installments of six. They were engraved by Balthasar Schmidt in Nuremberg, who also did Bach’s Clavier-Übung IV and the Canonic Variations. The title pages announce “24 melodieusen, voll-stimmigen, und nach modernen Gustu durch den gantzen Circulum Modorum Musicorum gesetzten PRAELUDIIS welche sich so wohl auf der Orgel, als auch auf dem Clavycimbel u. Clavicordio mit Vergnügen hören lassen.” Nearly half of Sorge’s preludes have a fugal ending, and two are marked Fuga duplex. No. 24 employs the chromatic fourth, rectus and inversus. *** Johann Gottlieb Goldberg – he of Bach’s Variations – left us a Well-Tempered Clavier alla Polacca: 24 polonaises through all the keys. That was probably a better idea than a set of preludes and fugues. The polonaise became fashionable in Saxony when its elector purchased the Polish throne. Goldberg was himself from Danzig/Gdansk, and was employed by Count Heinrich von Brühl in Dresden, a native of Polish Kurland. Goldberg’s polonaises are very pretty, but are no match for those of his reported teacher, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (see YouTube, Glen Wilson Historical Performances I: Bach Family). Poor Friedemann, who had trouble finishing anything for understandable reasons, seems to have intended his set to go the full Monty as well, but got no further than the halfway point: G minor, having skipped C-sharp. Heiligen Drei Könige, 2024 * “Johann Sebastian Bach, the Learned Musician” (New York, 2000); German translation (“Johann Sebastian Bach”) by Bettina Olbrecht (Frankfurt am Main, 2000). **Nowadays we have the dubious blessing of organs where the push of a button can change their temperament, or others with certain registers tuned differently from others – as well as splendid instruments tuned in various degrees of meantone or circulating temperaments, dedicated to specific repertoires. ***Leipzig, 1933, Veröffentlichungen der Neuen Bachgesellschaft / Jahrgang XXXIV, Heft 1 - back -