Case Study:bach The Well-tempered Clavier

The Well-Tempered Clavier is a masterpiece of J.S.Bach.It represents the integration and innovation of Bach's creation on music,which contains the profound cultural connotation and the spirit of The Times in the Baroque period.By doing research about nowadays national music study and performance,a situation appears that people don't have a clear understanding of Bach's music as well as a comprehensive acknowledge of the culture background and the history.As a result,a gap between theoretical study and practice emerges.How to understand Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier?How to interpret Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier? What standard shall we use to appraise those interpretations of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier? This paper aims solve those questions and have a deeper discussion about how to understand and interpret music works in aesthetic domain.This paper will use The Well-Tempered Clavier as a text object,citing Roman Ingarden's opinion from Phenomenological Aesthetics to analyze the relationship between music,sheet music and performance.We will use Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophy of the “Fusion of Horizons”from his Philosophical Hermeneutics as a reference to discuss questions relating to the understanding of music.We will discuss The Well-Tempered Clavier by using the Doctrine of musical-rhetorical figures of “historical horizon” and Musical Analysis of “contemporary horizon”so that we may understand this work under a “Fusion of Horizons” perspective.This paper will also research,compare and analyze different performers' interpretations under different opinions and comprehension of this work.I will also provide my own view point regarding this topic.By doing research and analyzation,author will provide her point of view about how to understand and interpret music,and the standard to appraise the interpretations of a music work,so that to provide theoretical support for national Bach music study and performance.