And then, of course, there is the question of how C-sharp major could anyway sound ‘well-tempered’. C-sharp major did indeed remain extremely rare for many years after Bach’s day. They were keys that existed ‘on the borders of the musical world”. And years later, in 1795, another writer thought that these keys were suitable for ‘the horror of secret Persian sultans or demons’. In 1728, Johann David Heinichen wrote that it was ‘completely unorthodox’ to compose in F-sharp major and C-sharp major. Here, Bach is deliberately toying with the mind of the keyboard player, as the instinctive correspondence between the black noteheads on the paper and the fingers on the keys no longer works. In 1728, the music theorist Johann David Heinichen therefore classified C-sharp major as one of the ‘superfluous keys’. Furthermore, it is an unnecessarily complicated key, as instead of seven sharps you could use five flats to write exactly the same pitch – as D-flat major. No fewer than seven sharps adorn the beginning of each staff. It is the most impossible key in the whole of the Wohltemperirte Clavier: C-sharp major.
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