This beautiful animation uses neon lights to bring Bach’s ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ to life

19 May 2015, 11:58 | Updated: 21 May 2015, 15:42

Visual artist Alan Warburton has used CGI neon lights to create a haunting animation inspired by Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recording of Bach’s masterpiece. The result is mesmerising.

The animation took ten weeks to complete and involved creating 3D light models that responded to every note Aimard played.

Each frame took 15 minutes to create because of the thousands of calculations that had to be made to make the setting look life-like.

The video was commissioned by Sinfini Music to celebrate the launch of Aimard’s new recording of J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier on Deutsche Grammophon.

Speaking to the Sinfini website Warburton said: “I realised I needed to keep the animation simple so the viewer could focus on the music.”

Find out more about Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier

Bach's keyboard masterpiece, also called 'The 48' includes Preludes and Fugues in all 24 of the major and minor keys. Bach published Book I of the work in 1722 and Book II in 1742. The piece is one of the monoliths of the piano repertoire. 

The work was first recorded in the 1930s by Edwin Fischer and has since been released by composers ranging from Glenn Gould to Angela Hewitt.