Bach on the Uke

I'm trying to teach myself the Prelude BWV 846 from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier book.  That sounds really impressive, except that Bach wrote it in 1722 as practice music for his pre-school children. But as John points out, even the Bach kids didn't know how to play it on the ukulele.  Of course they easily could have, but the ukulele wasn't invented until the 19th century.  That's the advantage of having a musical genius for a dad.  The rest of us have to slog along, learning note by painful note. 

Many of Bach's compositions don't have a time signature or a hint (andante, presto etc.) as to how fast they should be played.  For that matter, sometimes Bach doesn't even specify what instrument it was written for. Either he didn't care, or you can just assume the keyboard.  But any good musician can pick out the notes on their instrument, from bassoon to guitar.

There's lots of repetition in Bach with the same notes played over and over in different patterns. This should make it easier but it doesn't, because of subtle and complicated changes in the sequence. Being a mathematician would help with learning Bach.  Personally, I think Bach sounds especially beautiful on acoustic stringed instruments.

I have a CD of Chris Thile showing off with the Bach sonatas and partitas on his mandolin.  Then there's the incomparable (late) John King, the star of classical ukulele.  His book, The Classical Ukulele, came with a CD of him playing all the music, which is both inspiring and horribly discouraging to the beginner.  I couldn't find a video of John King playing the Prelude 846, but here's someone else on YouTube doing a pretty nice job of it.