Pjotr Anderszewski

For a long time, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was considered a purely educational piece. Indeed, the two volumes are an inexhaustible source of technical exercises requiring quick, independent finger movements. At the same time, they are textbooks on contrapuntal techniques. In forty-eight preludes and fugues, Bach demonstrates all the possible knowledge of complicated counterpoint, which he mastered like no other. The Well-Tempered Clavier assumed a central role in the debate on tuning methods that had already been going on for a century. It was the first systematic and exemplary use of the equal temperament, which had been introduced in Bach's time after a long experimental phase and which made it possible to use all the keys on a keyboard instrument. The Well-Tempered Clavier may well have had the greatest impact of any piece of music in history, across many generations of composers. Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) was the central figure in Polish music during the first few decades of the twentieth century. The triptych Métopes (1915) was inspired by metopes, reliefs on the friezes of Doric temples that he had visited during a stay in Sicily. Each of the three parts illustrates a scene from Homer's Odyssey.