J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier is essential for the study and development of aspiring pianists around the world. As such, Bartók dedicated a lot of time to these pieces and gave a lot of thought to how they can be used most effectively to educate young musicians.

The four-volume The Well-Tempered Clavier was the first of Bartók's instructive editions. Bartók's editing reflects contemporary ideas about performance, and his primary goal was to create an instructive edition that was more detailed than any other which existed during his time.

This publication has been renewed as a two-volume edition (I-II and III-IV, respectively), and it includes suggestions, commentaries and fingerings by Bartók for the performer. In addition to correcting several editorial errors, this version also contains English and Japanese translations of Bartók's original Hungarian and German annotations.