In 2012, the Japan­ese-Ger­man clas­si­cal musi­cian Kimiko Ishiza­ka made avail­able to the world an open ver­sion of J.S. Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions per­formed on a Bösendor­fer 290 Impe­r­i­al piano in Berlin. Fund­ed by a Kick­starter cam­paign, the record­ing was released under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, which essen­tial­ly put the music straight into the pub­lic domain.

Yes­ter­day we dis­cov­ered, thanks to one of our read­ers, Ishiza­ka’s fol­low-up to The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions — The Open Well-Tem­pered Clavier, Book 1.  Also Kick­starter-fund­ed and released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, her new pro­duc­tion puts 48 Pre­ludes and Fugues into the com­mons. Explain­ing the impor­tance of The Well-Tem­pered Clavier, Alexan­dre Prok­ou­dine writes over at Libre Graph­ics World:

Among clas­si­cal music con­nois­seurs, the Well-Tem­pered Clavier Book 1 (WTC, or “the 48” for short) is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most influ­en­tial works by J.S. Bach. Here is why.

For a long time instru­ments used to be tuned in such inter­vals between notes that trans­po­si­tion (play­ing a melody in a key dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed one) usu­al­ly pro­duced a melody that was clear­ly out of tune. Find­ing the right inter­vals was an inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lem to solve, and it was done in the 17th cen­tu­ry by Andreas Wer­ck­meis­ter.

So while J.S. Bach did­n’t invent well-tem­pered tun­ing, the 48 was his major, if not defin­ing con­tri­bu­tion to mak­ing it pop­u­lar, as the 48 was pret­ty much The Music The­o­ry Bible for gen­er­a­tions of com­posers…

His­tor­i­cal val­ue aside, the 48 is sim­ply beau­ti­ful and ele­gant­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed music (with score laid out in up to four voic­es, yet played by a sin­gle musi­cian). If this is the first time you are lis­ten­ing to WTC, I offi­cial­ly envy you, because are about to dis­cov­er some­thing very spe­cial.

You can get the Open Well-Tem­pered Clavier as a free down­load here (please read the instruc­tions on the page), or stream it above. You can also sup­port the artist and pur­chase the down­load for a fee of your choice, or buy a CD ver­sion over on Ama­zon.

As for what you can expect from Kimiko Ishiza­ka next, look out for a record­ing of the Chopin Préludes on a Pleyel piano — the same piano Chopin played him­self all those years ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

JS Bach’s The Well-Tem­pered Clavier Artis­ti­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed with Puls­ing Neon Lights

Yes­ter­day, Blank on Blank dropped its lat­est ani­mat­ed video — this one fea­tur­ing Joni Mitchell in con­ver­sa­tion with record exec­u­tive Joe Smith. In the inter­view orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in 1986, Mitchell declares her­self a reluc­tant star — some­one who loved mak­ing music, but nev­er want­ed fame, and all the lost pri­va­cy and nor­mal­cy that comes along with it. Smith talked with Joni and count­less oth­er musi­cians while research­ing and writ­ing his book Off the Record. You can still stream many of those inter­views (for free) on iTunes and the Library of Con­gress web­site. We have more on that here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Video of Joni Mitchell Per­form­ing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

You don’t know avant-garde music unless you know John Cage. And now we have anoth­er rich, eas­i­ly acces­si­ble online resource that can help us get to know John Cage bet­ter. The new site is called Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion, and it has its ori­gins in the cel­e­bra­tion of Cage’s 100th birth­day put on by con­duc­tor Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny in Feb­ru­ary 2013.

This Cage-devot­ed, Knight Foun­da­tion-fund­ed site, in the words of Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alli­son Meier, “presents a com­pre­hen­sive overview of his career, from a water­ing can poured on nation­al tele­vi­sion to a rhyth­mic solo piano per­for­mance inspired by lost love,” mate­r­i­al from Cage’s life and career as well as mate­r­i­al inspired by it, and of course “video and audio from the 2013 per­for­mances in Mia­mi Beach, includ­ing some famil­iar and some obscure pieces from [Cage’s] influ­en­tial and exper­i­men­tal career of both music and staged silence.”

You may remem­ber when we fea­tured Cage’s 1960 per­for­mance of Water Walk on I’ve Got a Secret. The site does­n’t fail to include that clas­sic tele­vi­sion clip, but it also offers videos on the stag­ing of Water Walk today, from its direc­tion and back­ground to its rehearsal to the the­atri­cal­i­ty of its per­for­mance to the place­ment of the cam­eras film­ing it. You can find these and many oth­er audio­vi­su­al explo­rations of the nuts and bolts of Cage’s work at Mak­ing the Right Choic­es’ cat­a­log of videos.

“John Cage gen­uine­ly want­ed to open up the beau­teous expe­ri­ence of sound for every­one,” writes Tilson Thomas in a piece on the com­pos­er. “Much of his work could be described as kits to be used in the cre­ation of a per­for­mance that relies on the per­cep­tions, imag­i­na­tions and choic­es of the musi­cians. It was a spir­i­tu­al mis­sion for him to cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the per­for­mance to exist while at the same time to inter­fere with it as lit­tle or as sub­tly as pos­si­ble.” That chal­lenge Cage set for him­self keeps his work fas­ci­nat­ing to us to this day — and as Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny sure­ly found out, it remains as much of a chal­lenge as ever for those who pick it up today.

Vis­it Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion .

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.