Talk:Well-Tempered Clavier

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This page sounds authorative:

 http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/miker/tuning/tuning.html

on the issue of meantone temperament, well temperament, and equal temperament. Bill 14:09, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

404s these days. Sorry! 87.115.228.253 17:34, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

archive.org still has it - see http://web.archive.org/web/20040405232702/http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/miker/tuning/tuning.html. Nick8325 17:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

---

I've removed:

One of the best-known and highly regarded is that performed on the piano by Glenn Gould as his eye-opening debut recording.

Gould's recording is fairly highly regarded, but not to such a degree that it deserves special mention, I think. It would be worth mentioning if it were indeed his debut, but it isn't: his first recording, as our article on him says, is of the Goldberg Variations.

--Camembert

Yeah, sorry about that - I was thinking of the Goldberg's but got them confused in my mind with the Well-Tempered. Gald you caught it.

Noel 23:21, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contents 1 German translation 2 Removed weird sentence at the end 3 Individual fugues 4 Tuning section - inappropriate to comment on ongoing controversy 5 Cleanup 6 Noise in the Recording

[edit] German translation

quote:

The Well-Tempered Clavier (Das wohltemperierte Klavier in German -- "Klavier" means "keyboard", as "clavier" does in English)

This is slightly wrong. "Klavier" in German means "piano". It may have had the more general meaning of "keyboard" in the past, but I am not so sure about that. There are two words in German to mean "keyboard", namely "Tastatur" ("Taste" means "key"), and "Klaviatur", which obviously is very similar to "Klavier", yet not the same thing.

I wanted to post this here before editing (I've never done that before).

In Bach's day "Klavier" simply signified a keyboard instrument (it wouldn't have meant "piano", since the piano wasn't yet in wide use). --Camembert

From what I have read, a domestic keyboard instrument - ie not a church organ. Edited to reflect this. I also restored Bach's spelling. (I believe that it commonly had a 'C' due to the derivation from Latin 'clavis'.) I don't think the word 'clavier' actually means anything in English, it is only used when talking about Bach. --Tdent 17:24, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

For this reason, I actually think that this article should be called "Well-Tempered Keyboard", which is what it means, not "Well-Tempered Clavier". In other contexts I always refer to it as "Well-Tempered Keyboard." "Well-Tempered Clavier" is really a kind of weird construction, with the adjective translated but the noun left in German. In Ralph Kirkpatrick's book he says quite specifically, "There is no evidence whatever to permit interpreting Bach's use of the word as indicating anything other than the general term keyboard, in other words any keyboard instrument". Jeremy J. Shapiro 01:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I would agree with this - "Keyboard" is a much better translation. Tompw 14:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

"Clavier" definitely includes organ: Bach's "Clavier-Ubung" book 3, 1739!

Yes. Kirkpatrick's book on the WTK says this as well, and that the WTK could as well be played on the organ. Jeremy J. Shapiro 22:42, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Definately - I have done so. Tompw 14:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I moved the discussion about the meaning of Clavier to a footnote and also corrected the spelling of woh(l)temperiert to wohltemperirt, which is what appears on the facsimile of the front page. On keyboard vs. clavier, this seems to have been corrected, clearly clavier is the more common term, and is defined by Merriam-Webster as "an early keyboard instrument". ~ trialsanderrors 08:22, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed weird sentence at the end

I've removed an awkward and alarming sentence at the very end of the article below the external links which said that there were "24 pieces in each book, 12 each major key preludes and minor key fugues". You could think of it that there were 24 pieces in each book: 24 "prelude and fugue"s, but I think that's just confusing, and that's not what the sentence seemed to convey anyway.

[edit] Individual fugues

I wonder if each individual fugue is worthy of its own article? I really really like the F major fugue and I want to know more about it. Jaberwocky6669 June 28, 2005 04:58 (UTC)

Absolutely. Each individual piece is certainly worthy of its own article. For example, many fugues were inspired by subjects borrowed from other composers (such as E major, book 2, from JCF Fischer), which invites comparison to the differences in treatment. None of the external links provided seem to touch upon this. --bleh fu talk fu June 28, 2005 14:31 (UTC)

[edit] Tuning section - inappropriate to comment on ongoing controversy

Recent anonymous changes go (IMO) too far in the direction of drawing attention to, or repeating the content of, Lehman's website. This is not the job of an encyclopedia. It is also (IMO) not appropriate for Wiki to provide a running commentary on the state of an ongoing academic debate, or to provide a forum for anonymous contributions to that debate (e.g. "those whose epistemology requires a more positivistic treatment of the source material"). If someone wants to know what is on Lehman's website, no doubt including the latest news on recordings and scholarly opinions, they would be best served by following the external link to it.

--Tdent 16:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

This makes sense to me and I took out the paragraph giving commentary and expansion of Lehman's idea. Jeremy J. Shapiro 17:02, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I made a few changes to the same section with the intention of covering more aspects of the question (eg transposition of some pieces, pitch standard) without greatly lenghtening it. --Tdent 18:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me like you've done excellent work -- plus this was fascinating to me personally. Jeremy J. Shapiro 18:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

The section on tuning is in desperate need of formatting from someone who knows the topic. The wikisyntax leaves something to be desired, and the writing needs to be converted into more coherent, paragraph-based explanation. —thames 17:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Since I wrote it I would like to know what is wrong with its current format and 'wikisyntax', and how making it 'paragraph-based' would improve it relative to the present form. Is there a guide to good/mediocre/bad syntax? Whoops - sig missing - here: --Tdent 17:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Noise in the Recording

The audio file for the a minor Prelude and Fugue has lots of weird noises in it. Is it just me? weixifan 12:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)