300 years of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavi­er

Torino, 21.-22.06.2022

Deadline: 31.03.2022

The beautifully handwritten title-page of Johann Sebastian Bach’s autograph manuscript of the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier closes with the date “1722”. Three centuries after the composer’s completion of the first twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, this Conference invites the international scholarly community to reflect on the multifaceted aspects of this foundational work.

The Conference will take place in Turin, in the splendid “Villa della Tesoriera”. It is a magnificent Baroque villa surrounded by a green park. It was built just a few years before Bach started writing the Well-Tempered Clavier. Today it is the home of the town’s Music Library, named after musicologist Andrea Della Corte.

At the Conference’s core will be the keynote speech given by Prof. Yo Tomita (Queen’s University Belfast). Professor Tomita is one of the leading Bach scholars internationally. For over thirty years the “Forty-Eight” have been one of the primary focuses of his research.

As an ideal continuation of the International Conference “Bach and Italy” (2020), JSBach.it - Italian Bach Society, together with the University of Turin and the Biblioteca civica musicale “Andrea Della Corte”, invite proposals for papers (15 mins.), panels and lecture-recitals (25 mins.) on subjects regarding the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Possible subjects include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Well-Tempered What? Issues of organology and performance practice
  • How Well-Tempered? Temperament, tuning etc.
  • Compositional and analytical perspectives
  • The WTC and its models - The WTC as a model
  • Performance history
  • Creative reception: arrangements, transcriptions, works inspired by the WTC
  • The WTC between arts and media
  • Role of the WTC in pedagogy, education
  • Textual bbiliography: critical, Urtext, instructive editions
  • Philology: sources, transmission etc.

A special focus on the first volume of the WTC will be appreciated, but proposals considering
the Forty-Eight as a whole are equally welcome. The official languages of the conference are
Italian and English.

Proposal should include:

  • Title of paper/lecture-recital
  • Name of speaker(s) an institutional affiliation(s)
  • Instrument, if needed
  • A proposal consisting of an abstract (200 words max)
  • Bio of speaker(s) (100 words max)

Please send the proposal by 31st March 2021 through the following link https://bit.ly/3qKhkwz. For information, please write to ricerca@jsbach.it

We wish to inform our guests that admission to the Conference will be granted only to those provided with a “Super GreenPass” or an equivalent document, as will be prescribed by the Italian Government at the time of the Conference, in order to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Programme Committee:
Chiara Bertoglio (Facoltà Teologica dell’Italia Settentrionale), Maria Borghesi (Conservatory of Pavia), Raffaele Mellace (University of Genoa), Matteo Messori (Conservatorio of Genoa and Bergamo), Alberto Rizzuti (University of Turin).

Further information: