For almost fifty years, since 1973, you can hear live music every day in the Bachhaus in Eisenach: a small concert every hour, sometimes two.

Five historical keyboard instruments from the eighteenth century are currently being played, and in addition to dedicated musicians for this small sound treasure chest, you also need pieces that can say a lot in a few minutes: about Johann Sebastian Bach, about the sound and emotional world of his time and maybe even a little bit about ourselves. But because JSB has composed suitable music for almost all the demands that one can encounter in life, this can also be found quickly, for example in the 48 preludes and fugues of the two parts of his "Well-Tempered Clavier". who deliver everything

what one could only wish for on such occasions - polyphonic artistry and depth of expression, laconic conciseness and epic breadth.

Accordingly, they are gladly taken under the fingers at this lively memorial site.

Of course not only there.

The encyclopedic double marathon through all major and minor keys - Hans von Bülow called it "the Old Testament" of piano playing - is one of the few Bach works that have always remained present in the consciousness of the musical public.

This applied, even more than to the increase submitted in the last decade of Bach's life, to the first part of the "WK", which, according to its autograph title page, was completed in Köthen in 1722 and is therefore currently celebrating its three hundredth anniversary - for the Eisenacher Haus the starting point for a special exhibition , which is able to provide both Bach beginners and those familiar with the subject with inspiration and knowledge in a relaxed manner.

This begins with the word "well-tempered", first used in 1681 by the organist Andreas Werckmeister and soon followed by a series of suggestions that make it possible to modulate in and through all 24 keys.

You may just remember that the term has something to do with instrument tuning.

But seldom has the tricky subject been presented in such an amusing and compact manner as in the happy cartoon presentation of the "letterenschubser", where both "well-tempered" full baths and the angry howling "wolves" of older vocal techniques play a role.

The Potsdam short film animators have often worked for the Bachhaus, where the relaxed handling of such media is no longer an extra, if necessary, but a substantial part of the whole.

Further effect in head-and-ear cinema

In the new exhibition, you can not only find out that Johann Sebastian was the most influential composer of his time, but by no means the only one who dealt with Werckmeister's ideas, but then tried out different types of tuning himself on an experimental keyboard - whereby the most modern variant, which distributes the fatal impurity of the circle of fifths in inconspicuous tiny portions evenly over all intervals of the scale, almost trying to appear a little bland.

Since the very own emotional coloring of the individual keys has become a kind of emotional pattern book of all compositions since Bach's epochal double cycle - one can only actually hear them on a modern, equal-tuned grand piano only imaginarily.

Nevertheless, they continue to have an effect in the head-and-ear cinema and are associated with mental states or color ideas, which the exhibition also demonstrates - among other things in the way such associations have an effect right up to commercial exploitation: A first edition from 1801 is also presented animating chrome-green cover, and the sleeves of old recordings like to use rainbow spectra.

Unscheduled escape impossible

It was probably not that colorful for the artist when creating the pieces.

The music lexicographer Ernst Ludwig Gerber reports that Bach began his Well-Tempered Clavier “in a place where displeasure, boredom and a lack of any kind of musical instruments made this pastime compulsory for him”.

Possibly in that sparse land judge's room in the Bastille at the Weimar Palace, where the insubordinate composer was interned for a few weeks in the late autumn of 1717 because he had flirted with his next employer in Köthen without the permission of the sovereign.

In the Eisenach show, this is symbolized by a lattice bar arrangement with headphones hanging from it – with some of those many later Bach colleagues, from Mozart to Loussier, who adapted the cycle for their own work, looking over your shoulder.

The Weimar jail room itself - without bars, but high enough to make an unscheduled escape impossible - is also still there, about twenty square meters in size and currently quite dilapidated, but after the upcoming renovation of the building it may be accessible to the general public in the future.

The window view towards the city center first meets the opposite, popular "Resi" café, and Bach probably also had a lively crowd under his cell at times.

Did some of this later find its way into the first C sharp major prelude?