Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Minor / D-sharp Minor, BWV 853 from the Well-Tempered Clavier

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is a monument not just in Baroque music—the period between 1600 and 1750—but in solo classical keyboard music generally. Published in two books, one in 1722 when Bach was working in Cöthen and probably composing his Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, the other in 1742 when he was in Leipzig, the collection consists of 48 preludes and fugues exploring each of the 12 major and minor keys. "Well-tempered" points the way to a tuning system that worked well in every key, a circumstance still unusual in developing keyboard instruments.

Given that Bach was exploring the possibilities of the future, it is fortuitous that the Borromeo Quartet’s Nicholas Kitchen took advantage of one of its inconveniences when arranging both volumes of the Well-Tempered Clavier for string quartet. As he wrote in his notes, the project began on a “bus in Romania, November 4, 2016,” and continued every time the quartet traveled.

Beijing traffic was what opened the door to further progress! Every time that we moved anywhere in the city to rehearse or play, we spent nearly an hour in traffic. Not having to drive myself, I decided to dive into the project that had been waiting so long— arranging Book One for string quartet. And indeed, after a few more traffic jams, I had a good start.

Although Kitchen’s arrangements may have occupied him during his journeys, Bach’s music is far from a diversion—it demands intensity, but not overwrought drama. As Kitchen explains the experience of performing the preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier,

You have to play the dialogue of the parts feeling and hearing the intrinsic character of every detail, creating the meaning of every interval as it forms, no more, and no less. This has a kinship with the kind of listening that benefits much great quartet music, and this is probably no accident, considering the depth of the way so many great quartet composers took the Well-Tempered Clavier into their musical work. But in the Well-Tempered Clavier, the combination of complex intensity and completely distilled musical and emotional content makes demands on your listening that are extreme. Responding to these demands makes us stronger in our control and more sensitive in our perception.