Well-Tempered Clavier Book II, BWV 870-893
General Discussions - Part 1

WTC 2 - Discography, facts and questions

Aryeh Oron wrote (February 5, 2007):
Following previous discographies of Bach's keyboard works (Inventions & Sinfonias BWV 772-801, Duets BWV 802-805, English Suites BWV 806-811, French Suites BWV 812-817, Neglected Suites BWV 818-824, Partitas BWV 825-830, French Overture BWV 831, Various Keyboard Works 832-845, WTC 1 BWV 846-869, Goldberg Variations BWV 988), I have added now a comprehensive discography of the Well-Tempered Clavier Book II, BWV 870-893 (WTC 2).

As previously, I have used every possible source I could find, including web-catalogues, web-stores, web-magazines, artists' websites, labels' websites and other websites, as well as various printed catalogues and my personal collection. The only web discography of WTC 2 I found was at the University of Albany and it is actually only a list with many items missing. I believe that this is the first time such an attempt to present a comprehensive discography of WTC 2 is made, at least on the web.

You can find the list of recordings of the WTC 2 split into several pages, a page for a decade, through the main page of BWV 870-893 at the BCW: http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV870-893.htm

All in all, 83 complete (or near complete) recordings of WTC 2 are listed. As in previous discographies in the BCW, each recording is listed only once. All the issues of each recording are presented together. If a performer has recorded WTC 2 more than once, the info includes also the recording number.

This page above includes also internal links to reviews and to other websites. I have not yet compiled the discussions of WTC (some hundreds messages of this work in my archive). It would take some time, and there are other projects of higher priority.

If you are aware of a recording of WTC 2 not listed in the discography, or if you find an error or missing information, please inform me, either through the BRML or to my personal e-mail address.

Some interesting facts (and questions):

A. The youngest player to record the complete WTC 2 is the 10 years old Albert Wong. See: http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV870-893-Rec7.htm [74]
I have not heard this recording. Have any of you? He should be 17 today. I wonder how his career has developed since.

B. Several players have recorded WTC 2 twice, most of them pianists: Rosalyn Tureck (1952-1953, 1976), Robert Riefling (Mid 1950's, 1985), Helmut Walcha (1961, 1974), Joao Carlos Martins (1964, 1983), Zuzana Ruzickova (1971, 1995), Tatiana Nikolayeva (1973, 1984), Takahiro Sonoda (1973, 1992), Angela Hewitt (1998-1990, 2000 - 2^nd part on DVD).
I heard 2 recordings only by Hewitt, who is in a class of her own in relation to the other 3 pianists who took part in the DVD. Have any of you heard 2 recordings by the same player?

C. There are several recordings of WTC 2 on organ: Louis Thiry (1975), Daniel Chorzempa (1994 - part), Bernard Lagacé (1996), John Wells (1998 & 2002), Christoph Bossert (1999), Robert Levin (2000 - part), Frédéric Desenclos (2001).
Except of Chorzempa's, which is a mixed bag, I have not heard any of these recordings. Have you?

D. Edwin Fischer was the first to record WTC 2 (1933-1934). In the 15 something years following this historic recording, no other player dared to record it. Do you think that this recording should hold its place at the top in comparison with the other 82 renditions that have been recorded since?

E. What are your favourite recordings of WTC 2 on piano and on harpsichord?

BCW: WTC 1 BWV 846-869 & WTC 2 BWV 870-893 - Revised & Updated Discographies

Aryeh Oron wrote (July 10, 2011):
The discography pages of both Books of Well-Tempered Clavier BWV 846-893 on the BCW have been revised & updated:
WTC 1 (137 recordings): http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV846-869.htm
WTC 2 (111 recordings): http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV870-893.htm
The two discographies are arranged chronologically by recording date, a page per a decade, and include all known complete (or near complete) recordings of either Book.
If you have any correction, addition or completion of missing details, please inform me.

BCW: WTC Discographies

Aryeh Oron wrote (June 1, 2013):
The discography pages of both Books of Well-Tempered-Clavier (WTC) on the BCW have been updated. The discographies are arranged chronologically by recording date, a page per a decade. All the discography pages are inter-linked. You can start, for example, at the last decade page (2010-2019) and go backward to pages of previous decades.
Book 1 BWV 846-869 (163 complete recordings): http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV846-869-Rec8.htm
Book II BWV 870-893 (124 complete recordings): http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV870-893-Rec8.htm
If you have any correction, addition or completion of missing details, please inform me.

Phil [BRML] wrote (June 5, 2013):
[To Aryeh Oron] Thanks for doing this and calling our attention to it. I had not realized there was a Keith Jarrett recording, now winging its way to me courtesy of Amazon.

Well-Tempered Clavier Book II, Yo Tomita Insights

William L. Hoffman wrote (June 23, 2019):
While Bach's the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), BWV 846-893 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier), his keyboard masterpiece and a treasure among keyboard compositions of 48 preludes and fugues for keyboard, was conceived as a pedagogical work, its actual conception, genesis, and realization occurred over long periods in the two books of settings of all 24 keys. Book I of the WTC, BWV 846-869, exists in a fair copy of 1722, part of a collection of keyboard pedagogy forged in Cöthen and utilized in Leipzig. In contrast, WTC Book II, BWV 870-893, dating to about 1740-1746, is lacking a definite version and purpose, being somewhat of an enigma which seems to have entailed more complex changes and provenance than Book I. Bach in his later years had the luxury of taking his time as he pursued both an accounting of his compositional legacy and a refinement and restatement of the Art of Fugue, which would secured his reputation as a composer. Given its complexity of design and development, Book II of the WTC is still being researched with the findings of new source-critical evidence as well as considerable peripheral, contextual, collaborative evidence. Leading these studies of WTC II is Yo Tomita (https://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/yo-tomita(383c094f-3320-4704-b615-9f12aa60d96b).html), renowned teacher, a senior fellow at the Bach Archiv Leipzig, and founder of the on-line Bach Bibliography (https://www.qub.ac.uk/~tomita/bachbib/).

Tomita has rigorously researched Bach's keyboard music¹ as well as conducting symposia and publications on topics such as Bach's Mass in B Minor. He also has explored, beyond the textual-musical sources, the more complex, illusive underlying motivations — or attitudes — for Bach's composition of one of his final keyboard compositions, in effect, seeking possible sources of his inspiration for the WTC Book II. As the music's conception, development, and revision have been rigorously pursued, more ephemeral, less exacting evidence may suggest such external factors as actual external musical influences and sources of inspiration, possibly enabling a better understanding of his approaches to the music as well as some dating of individual pieces.

Bach's Final Decade

About 1740, Bach seems to have focused his efforts on fugues, particularly on the early version of Art of Fugue, BWV 1080. as well as W II, while also finding time to compose the performing Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, with much emphasis on gallant modern style. Bach took a leisurely pace. It was in contrast to the Cöthen period (1718-1722) when he composed and compiled three teaching collections, the 30 Invention and Sinfonias, BWV 772-801, known as Aufrichtige Anleitung (Upright Instruction), the unfinished 46 chorale preludes in the Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book), BWV 599-644, and the WTC I, as examples of his teaching abilities for the Leipzig cantor's post, and began the English and French Suites, BWV 806-817. In 1725 in Leipzig, Bach began to publish his keyboard works as generic Clavierübung (keyboard exercises) with the initial Six Partitas, BWV 825-830) as Clavierübung I, completely published in 1731 as his Opus 1; the Clavierübung II: Italian Concerto, BWV 971, and French Overture, BWV 831, published in 1735; the Clavierübung III, German Organ Mass and Catechism, BWV 669-689; and the Goldberg Variations, subsequently known as Clavierübung IV, in 1742. Bach also began but did not finished his revision of the "Great Eighteen" extended, liturgical organ chorale preludes. After each publication, Bach had paced himself with the next keyboard project. The use of gallant style is particularly noticeable in Clavierübung III, as Bach seemed under the influence in particular of progressive Saxe-Merseburg cantor Georg Friedrich Kauffmann (1679-1735, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Kauffmann-Georg-Friedrich.htm), who in 1735 had published his serial collection of organ preludes, Harmonische Seelenlust.² "This encyclopedic tendency [in Kauffmann] may thereby have provided an impetus not only for Clavier-Übung III but also for much of Bach's activity during the last decade of his life," says John Butt (Ibid.: 49).

"Few of Bach's keyboard works have histories as well documents as that of the WTC 1" (1722), says David Schulenberg in his exemplary of survey of Bach's keyboard music.³ Because of the lack of a single fair copy autograph source, however, as well as a multitude of Bach sketches and various student/copyists versions, the genesis and chronology of the WTC II is obscured. In the actual music, however, despite "the apparent lack of a unified structure of WTC II, we find a significant advance of formative power and rich imagination in the individual pieces," observes Tomita is his most recent study of the music.⁴ Bach in particular was exploring "new contrapuntal techniques and procedures," as well as responding to "ideas emanating from his colleagues." While the WTC I fugues "make abundant use of chromatic notes and are written in strict counterpoint to create serious and pensive moods, those of WTC II use modern compositional idioms of the day," observes Tomita (Ibid.: 230), specifically dance rhythms and free counterpoint.

Bach also worked less systematically on WTC II than with WTC 1, so that his "revisions appear varied, as they are introduced and conditioned by specific occasions and opportunities," says Tomita (Ibid.: 229). Every new copy was "motivated by fresh aims and purposes responding to circumstances." The same is evident in the preludes where Bach's binary form is more pronounced, with 10 such preludes contrasted to one in Book I, observes David Ledbetter in his WTC monograph.⁵ The binary preludes "are the most notable surface feature of Book II, pointing to the influence of the sonata, less remarkable in itself than as a symptom of a radical new integration of elements," he says (Ibid.: 68). Where the preludes in Book I were particularly influenced by the binary French dance, the influence of Domenico's Scarlatti's more objective and contrasting sonata form developed after 1730 when he moved to Spain. Then, Scarlatti's "sonata principles of a succession of different ideas and contrasts were taken on by Bach ands worked into his existing formal principles in very fruitful ways," with "opportunity for further moulding and developing material in which Bach excelled as much as the Viennese masters," Ledbetter says (Ibid.: 70). In contrast, the WTC I preludes were composed during the period when Bach also began composing his sets of the so-called 12 English and French Suites, BWV 806-817, with their distinctively idiomatic French preludes.

Contextual Bach Studies

Having spent much of his career researching the sources of the WTC II, Tomita has joined other New Musicologists in another important, emerging facet of this discipline: contextual studies to determine "the circumstances that conditioned the composer to engage with his work, including, at times, where he obtained the ideas or inspirations for the pieces," he says (Ibid.: 225f) in his recently-published monograph in the Contextual Bach Studies festschrift for scholar Don O Franklin. Tomita has examined six selected WTC II movements "that may be considered as having been inspired from specific movements" in Bach's St. Matthew Passion (definitive version 1736) and the incomplete 1739 version of the St. John Passion as well as his "Great Eighteen" revision undertaken about 1739. "When he began compiling this new set of WTC, Bach had all the freedom to explore and to choose topics within self imposed limits," says Tomita (Ibid.: 236). He had his compositional databank that was so vast and packed with ideas that it is a formidable task to try to identify the origins of every musical idea Bach had access to or reused." Whether "consciously seeking inspiration from his compositions or simply genuine coincidence," these similarities in key, motif, harmonic progression, and affect in Passion choruses are found in similar preludes and fugues, possibly "motivated by fresh aims and purposes corresponding to circumstances" and by enjoying a fresh creative experience and interaction with his previously composed work," suggests Tomita (Ibid.: 229).

On a personal note, Tomita begins his article with a reference to Don O. Franklin's 1989 essay⁶ which identifies a set of working procedures for reconstructing a detailed chronology of Bach's copying-out process found in the incomplete London autograph of WTC II, the primary source autograph, as well as the other major sources from "some of Bach's most talented private pupils" in the 1740s, says Tomita (Ibid.: 227): Johann Friedrich Agricola, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, and Johann Christoph Altnikol. This new WTC collection "may have become desirable as a pedagogical tool. "To gain new insights into the origin of WTC II from a teacher-pupil perspective, a thorough and systematic study of Bach's pupils and their copies is necessary," says Tomita.

Tomita Today: Talk, Book

Currently, Tomita will give a talk on "The Latest on Well-Tempered Clavier II," July 12 at the Bach Network Dialogue Meeting in Cambridge (https://www.bachnetwork.org/dialogue/DM9Programme.pdf). His latest publication, "The Genesis and Early History of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier, Book II: a composer and his editions, c.1738-1850," with Richard Rastall will be published by Ashgate in October this year. Here is the publisher's abstract: <<Despite the well-known fact that some pieces of Bach's WTC II existed in early forms, there has been no thorough discussion to date as to how the work evolved over the years. Based on an in-depth study of source materials, this book discusses how these sources were produced and how we can use them to evaluate more firmly the origin of the pieces. Tomita and Rastall reveal that the early versions of WTCII appear in two distinct phases, reflecting various factors that surrounded the composer's life. Through a close examination of the most famous Bach manuscript in Britain, the 'London Autograph', the authors gather evidence which enables them to reconstruct Bach's working strategy, as well as the stages of revision of the manuscript and how the work is left 'incomplete'. Many attempts were made by later generations to present WTCII as a finished product, but their limited knowledge of both the composer's style compositions and the primary sources of the work made this an impossible task. Nevertheless, the close examination here of their attempts reveal fascinating aspects of their idealised views of Bach and his work, which in turn reflect the changing tide of the history of Western music.>>

FOOTNOTES

¹ Tomita has an impressive track record with the WTC II, having initially published the following: J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: A Study of its Aim, Historical Significance and Compiling Process, PhD diss. (Leeds University 1990); J. S. Bach's 'Das Wohltemperierte Clavier II': A Critical Commentary, Vol. 1: Autograph Manuscripts (Leeds: Household World, 1993); and J. S. Bach's 'Das Wohltemperierte Clavier II': A Critical Commentary, Vol. II, All the Extant Manuscripts (Leeds: Household World, 1995); for Tomita's extensive writing, see his Bach Bibliography, http://homepages.bw.edu/bachbib/script/bach1ct.pl?0=Tomita,%20Yo&maxlimit=300&fullshow=ON&sorting=chronologically%20(table)&reviews=&nohtml=%20author:%20jones,%20richard%20d.%20p.
² For Kauffmann's influence on Bach, see John Butt, "J. S. Bach and G. F. Kauffmann: Reflections on Bach's Later Style," in Bach Studies, 2, ed. Daniel.R. Melamed (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 47–61.
³ David Schulenberg, The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach, 1st ed. (New York: Schirmer, 1992, 278).
⁴ Yo Tomita, "The Passions as a Source of Inspiration? A Hypothesis on the Origin and Musical Aim of Well-Tempered Clavier II," Part III: Bach's Self-Modeling: Parody as Compositional Impetus, in Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach, ed. Mark A Peters & Reginald L. Saunders, in Contextual Bach Studies (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2018: 228).
⁵ David Ledbetter, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: The 48 Preludes and Fugues (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002: II: 67).
⁶ Don O. Franklin "Reconstructing the Urpartitur for WTC II: a study of the "London Autograph," in Bach Studies (1), ed. Don O. Franklin (Cambridge University Press, 1989),(https://books.google.com/books/about/Bach_Studies.html?id=lT09AAAAIAAJ; his writing is listed in Bach Bibliography, http://swb.bsz-bw.de/DB=2.355/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=1016&SRT=YOP&TRM=Franklin%2C+Don+O&MATCFILTER=N&MATCSET=N&NOABS=Y, where his emphasis is on keyboard music as well as certain vocal works.