🎼The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I

The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, BWV 846 to 869, dated 1722. Twenty-four preludes and fugues, one pair in every major and minor key, climbing by semitone from C major to B minor.

Music for 🔹 Statistics practice, 25 minutes. Put on for the first time on 2025-03-03-Monday, eight days before launch, when I needed something that would hold twenty-five minutes steady without having an opinion.

It suits the job for a slightly embarrassing reason: it is a problem set. Each pair states a small idea and works it through completely, then stops and starts another in the next key. Three or four pairs is one practice session. I stop at the end of a fugue, never in the middle, which gives the timer some manners.

• The first prelude is nothing but broken chords and is the calmest two minutes in the book.
• The fugues are the useful part. One voice sets out a subject, the others take it up in turn, and I cannot follow them and do a confidence interval at once, so the music loses and the interval wins.
• The title is about tuning: a keyboard tempered so that every key is playable. A whole book written to show that a compromise works.

Did not survive the midterm week, when I revised in silence and panic. Came back for the autumn module and was on for most of the revision before the final.