"This book, one of a series sponsored by the American Bach Society, presents J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as it is currently understood by the scholarly community. Because a primary goal of the series is to reach out to non-specialists, both musical notation and footnotes are avoided. The book situates Bach's collection in its historical context, summarizes what is known about the different origins of Books I and II, describes at length what a fugue is and how it works, and explains Bach's use of the word well-tempered and how it relates to the physics of music. The central chapter offers in-depth verbal analyses (with bar graphs to illustrate the fugues' structure) of three preludes and fugues followed by brief summaries of all ninety-six component pieces. Concluding the work are two chapters detailing the collection's enormous influence, up to the present day, on composers and teachers of counterpoint, as well as its performance and recording history"--