[65] Bach’s thankfulness has often this same emotional tenour. In the Mass it is made conspicuous by the identity of the music of the Dona nobis with that of the Gratias agimus. The subject is an old church one. Bach had used it before in the great chorus of his Rathswahl-Cantate of 1731, Wir danken dir, Gott (No. 29), where the similar, but different and less elaborate treatment of the same subject—the second subject also is all but identical—offers an instructive study.
[66] Forkel, p. 87.
[68] One good he got from it. The town having awoke to the advantage of hearing good music, it became more liberal in the arrangements, and especially the financial arrangements of the Thomaskirche. It had slept apparently through the S. Matthew Passion.
[69] The title is often given in French as the Clavecin bien tempéré; but this is confusing, for the works were never intended for the harpsichord (clavecin), but for the more expressive clavichord (clavier).
[70] “You will then,” he adds, “surely become an able musician.”
[71] An early form of the prelude and fugue in G (in the second part) will be found in No. 214, p. 42, and yet another prelude to the same fugue at p. 44. The relation of these essays to their inimitable successor is full of suggestion. Similarly the prelude and fugue in A flat (also in the second part) were at first written in F. See 214, p. [40].
[72] It is interesting to compare the great organ-fugues, as that in G which dates from 1724-5, or that in C from 1730.
[73] Pp. 57 f, cp. 68 f.
[74] The most scholarly edition of the Wohltemperirte Clavier was prepared by Franz Kroll for the Bach-Gesellschaft, and appears in the fourteenth volume. Kroll has also brought out a reprint of the text in Peters’ cheap series, by far the most convenient for students, since it is unencumbered by the additions of later pianoforte-music makers, marks of tempo, emphasis, &c.