The Well-Tempered Clavier

1722, at Köthen

In 1722, while serving as Kapellmeister at Köthen, Johann Sebastian Bach completed and compiled an autograph fair copy titled Das Wohltemperierte Clavier.

The manuscript organized a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key, proceeding through the chromatic sequence from C major and C minor to B major and B minor — 24 paired key-settings, 48 individual pieces, now catalogued as BWV 846–869.

On the title page Bach identified himself as Kapellmeister and director of chamber music to Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen.

Made for learners and for the already skilled

The title page says the collection was made for the use of musical young people eager to learn and for the diversion of players already skilled in the subject. That is a declaration of intended use, not a dedication to a named person.

The 1722 manuscript was a teaching and copying source rather than a printed publication. Bach revised it afterwards, and his pupils transmitted it through hand-copied scores.

What the year on the page fixes

No month or day is known; 1722 is what the autograph title page carries. It dates the completed fair copy and compilation of what is now called Book I, not the first composition of every prelude and fugue.

"Well-tempered" does not establish that Bach intended modern equal temperament; the particular tuning remains debated.

The surviving title page carries an elaborate row of loops that has generated modern tuning reconstructions, though scholars dispute whether it encodes a temperament at all.