St Paul’s Grammar School – Y11IB Music HL/SL & HSC Music 2

A little project to keep you going in the holidays…

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier, a

series of keyboard pieces in all 24 keys (12 major, 12
minor).

On the back of this page are copied the first few bars of
Prelude no 1 from the Well-Tempered Clavier. This piece also
formed part of Bach’s The Anna Magdelena Notebook.

Your assignment (should you choose to accept it…) is as follows:

1. Track down the complete score to this piece – Prelude no 1 from the Well-
Tempered Clavier BWV 846 (it is only two pages long).

2. Learn to play it in some fashion on a keyboard (using the ‘crab method’ if

you are a non-keyboard player)

It is not hard to find. Most people who’ve learned piano will have played
this piece at some stage and are likely to have a copy. So check out your
parents’, grandparents’, extended family’s, neighbours’, teachers’ or
fellow students’ piano music collections, or look in a library. You will find
several free pdf transcriptions on the Internet.

3. Answer the following questions (a little browsing in any music history

textbook or website is all you need):
a. When was the Well-Tempered Clavier written?

b. What exactly is ‘well-tempered’ and what is a ‘clavier’ anyway?

What did this music demonstrate?

c. Who was Anna Magdalena and what is the ‘Anna Magdalena

Notebook’?

4. Going further…
a. Once you feel comfortable playing this piece a bit, identify all the
chords that it uses (label them in pencil on your copy, as best you
can).

b. What famous melody was written to go with this chord progression?

Who wrote it? Can you track down a copy?

c. Compose your own melody to go with this progression.

5. In your listening (radio, TV, recordings, concerts, your own playing) over
the next couple of months, listen out for current performances and
recordings of Bach’s music, and especially listen for performances in
authentic Baroque style, and contemporary adaptations of his music. Jot
down your response to this music.
5. (cont’d)
Once you’ve labeled the chords in the first four bars and can play this, keep
going… Play the whole piece and label harmony in every bar.

6. Then find that famous melody (from 4b). In the melodic line label chord tones
(CT), passing notes (PN), neighbour notes (NN) and suspensions (sus). Label PN
NN and sus in the original Bach part as well. (Some CT could be considered PN,
NN, sus too depending on your viewpoint.)