Noctave
Born in Eisenach in 1685, Bach worked as an organist and court musician in Weimar and then Köthen, before becoming cantor of St Thomas in Leipzig in 1723, a post he held until his death. For the keyboard he wrote the inventions, suites and partitas, the Goldberg Variations and the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier; the first, completed in 1722, opens with the Prelude in C major, BWV 846. Many of these pieces were first meant for teaching.
The easy version of the Prelude in C takes bars 1 to 11 and 32 to 35 of the original: it teaches you the broken-chord progressions the whole prelude rests on. The Little Prelude in C major, BWV 939, shorter, adds six mordents to fit in without delaying the beat. The full Prelude BWV 846 comes next: a single figure, played twice in each bar, but harmonies that change with every bar. Read each bar as a block chord before you spread it out.