Prelude and Fugue in C Minor

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! Today, I'm playing a "prelude and fugue" by Johann Sebastian Bach that he wrote in the key of C minor. Even though the piece has two contrasting parts, they are both regarded as the same song. Preludes are usually shorter and serve as an introduction, while fugues have a central melody that is played in different places and times throughout the song. I hope you will enjoy this one!

Listen to the song here
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You might think, if you read "Prelude and Fugue in C Minor," that the note C is always a C. After all, whoever decided to name notes had to come up with a consistent standard, didn't they? It also had to be a standard that every instrument in an orchestra or another type of ensemble could follow. You couldn't just go around changing the frequency of sound waves and still calling them Cs... or could you?

At the time that this song was written, you actually could because there were different systems of naming frequencies, which were known as temperaments. 

In order to understand those, we'll have to know about a little pattern that occurs with the sounds that we call notes.

If you were to count the white and black keys on this piano, you might notice that once you have counted 12, the pattern of keys repeats itself. That means that if you find a C on the piano and count 12 keys up, the key you find will be another C. Or, if you find an A and count 12 keys up, you'll reach another A.

Also, if you measure the frequency of an A (the number of times the sound vibrates per second) and multiply it by 2, that frequency is also an A.

Musicians had decided a long time beforehand that this was how they would set up notes, but a question still remained: If the lowest A we can play is a 1 and the next A is 2, then what do we do with the other 11 notes?

The systems for assigning numbers were often set up so that certain combinations of notes would sound good. However, this inevitably made other combinations sound worse, meaning that there were certain notes you just wouldn't want to start your songs on.

However, a system eventually arose so that groups of notes could be played in any key without sounding out of tune. This is similar to the method of tuning that we use today. Since Johann Sebastian Bach was known for capitalizing on the features of music during his time, he decided to write a song in all 12 keys on a harpsichord (the precursor to the piano, as I mentioned last week). 

Since there are both major and minor keys, his collection of music contained 24 songs, not just 12. He published the pieces in a book called the Well-Tempered Clavier (a clavier being a keyboard instrument), which was used for hundreds of years as a resource for musical students.

If one was listening to music in the 1700s, one might be tempted to think that there was only one way to determine what a C was. But, the standard for what a C is hasn't existed since the beginning of time. We just came up with it ourselves. In fact, where's the objective reason why we need to use 12 different notes instead of 14, 16, or 5?

The only reason we aren't using 14 notes is because that simply isn't the current standard. But sometimes, in order to provide opportunities for creativity, standards have to change, and the kind of change that provides the most opportunities is an equal standard. It provides everything with the same chance to be heard, instead of sticking to one just because that's how it's always been done. With an equal standard, we get to play songs in all of the different keys.

Keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya