Earlier in his career, when employed at Weimar by Wilhelm Ernst, a devout Lutheran and music lover, Bach had been encouraged to develop secular and liturgical organ works of all forms, in what was to be his most productive period for organ composition. The composer’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach later recalled: “His grace’s delight in my father’s playing fired him to attempt everything possible in the art of how to treat the organ. Here he also wrote most of his organ works.” The chapel organ at Weimar was extensively improved and enlarged. Occupying a loft at the east end of the chapel just below the roof, it had two manual keyboards, a pedalboard and about a dozen stops, including at Bach’s request a row of tuned bells. It is probable that the longer chorale preludes composed then served some ceremonial function during the services in the court chapel, such as accompanying communion.
When employed in later years at Köthen and Leipzig, Bach’s obligations did not include compositions for the organ. The autograph manuscript of the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes documents that Bach began to prepare the collection around 1740, after having completed Part III of the Clavier-Übung in 1739. The first thirteen chorale preludes BWV 651–663 were added by Bach himself between 1739 and 1742, supplemented by BWV 664 and 665 in 1746–7. In 1750 when Bach began to suffer from blindness before his death in July, BWV 666 and 667 were dictated to his student and son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnikol and copied posthumously into the manuscript. Only the first page of the last choral prelude, BWV 668, the so-called “deathbed chorale”, has survived, recorded by an unknown copyist. There have been diverse accounts of the circumstances surrounding the composition of this chorale. Forkel’s 1802 version of events states that Altnikol was copying the work at the composer’s deathbed, though this has since been discounted by many. By the second half of the eighteenth century, it had become an apocryphal legend, encouraged by Bach’s heirs, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach and Wilhelm Friedmann Bach. BWV 668 is now accepted as a planned reworking of the shorter chorale prelude Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein, BWV 641 from the Orgelbüchlein, composed in 1715.
A mid-eighteenth century salute to the musical traditions of the previous century, the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes offer a breadth of styles and forms for the organ as diverse as found in the Well Tempered Clavier for the keyboard. The pieces are on a large and often epic scale, compared with the miniature intimacy of the choral preludes of the Orgelbüchlein. Many of the chorale preludes pay homage to much older models in the German liturgical tradition — including Georg Böhm, Buxtehude and Pachelbel — but the parallel influence of the Italian concerto tradition is equally apparent. The chorales are characterised by their freely developed and independent accompaniment filling the long intervals between the successive lines of the cantus firmus, a feature of their large scale that has not pleased all commentators.
The Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes were known throughout Germany by the turn of the nineteenth century, though only the last chorale prelude was available in print, due to its reputation as the “deathbed chorale”. Prior to the two Leipzig editions of Felix Mendelssohn in 1846 and of Griepenkerl and Roitzsch in 1847, the only other published chorale prelude of the collection was the brilliant trio Allein Gott BWV 664, which appeared in 1803 as one of the 38 chorale preludes in J. G. Schicht’s four-volume anthology. However, the two chorale preludes Nun komm’ der heiden Heiland, BWV 659 and Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, BWV 654 had nevertheless become favourites. Mendelssohn and Schumann both venerated the latter chorale. A soberly and ornamental piece, the soprano alternates with the dance-like ritornellos of the two intertwining lower parts above a pedal bass. The unearthly counterpoint between the four different parts creates an air of great serenity, a “rapturous meditation” on the rite of communion. Indeed, Schumann recalled how Mendelssohn confessed after a performance of Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, BWV 654, “If life were to deprive me of hope and faith, this single chorale would replenish me with them both.”
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An early manuscript of the ‘Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes’
The first page of the score
The court chapel at the Schloss in Weimar, where Bach was court organist. The organ loft is visible at the top of the photograph.
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) was a German composer, organist and teacher, who brought the south German organ tradition to its peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.
An excerpt from ‘Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele’, BWV 654
Mass in B Minor, BWV 232
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On 1 February 1733, Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania and Elector of Saxony, died. Five months of mourning followed, during which all public music-making was suspended. Bach spent much of his time during this period working on the composition of a mass. Though employed as a Lutheran church musician in Leipzig, he was composing the mass for the Catholic court in Dresden. This mass, now known as Mass for the Dresden Court, BWV 232, consists of a Kyrie in three movements and a Gloria in nine movements, and is an unusually extended work scored for SSATB soloists and choir, and an orchestra with a broad winds section. A portion of the liturgy would be sung in Latin and common to both the Lutheran and Roman Catholic rites. His aim was to dedicate the work to the new sovereign Augustus III, a Catholic, with the hope of obtaining the title “Electoral Saxon Court Composer”. Upon its completion, Bach visited Augustus III and presented him with a copy of the mass, together with a petition to be given a court title, dated 27 July 1733. On the accompanying inscription on the manuscript Bach complains that he had “innocently suffered one injury or another” in Leipzig. The petition did not meet with immediate success, but Bach eventually received his title and he was made court composer to Augustus III in 1736.
It was in the final years of his life that Bach expanded the Mass for the Dresden Court into a complete setting of the Latin Ordinary. Bach scholar Wolfgang Osthoff has suggested that the composer intended the completed Mass in B minor, BWV 232 for a performance at the dedication of the new Hofkirche in Dresden, which was begun in 1738 and was nearing completion by the late 1740’s. However, the building was not completed until 1751 and Bach’s death in July 1750 prevented the mass from being submitted for use at the dedication. Instead, Johann Adolph Hasse’s Mass in D minor was performed, a work sharing many similarities with Bach’s mass; for example the Credo movements in both works feature chants over a walking bass line.
Mass in B minor is orchestrated for two flutes, two oboes d’amore, one natural horn, three natural trumpets, timpani, violins I and II, violas and basso continuo. Overall, the mass consists of 27 sections, which can be grouped into four parts:
I. Kyrie and Gloria (Missa)
II. Credo (Symbolum Nicenum)
III. Sanctus
IV. Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis Pacem
The Kyrie and Gloria were written in 1733 for the Elector of Saxony at Dresden, and the Sanctus dates back as far as 1724. The work’s magnificence is evident from the opening bars of the Kyrie — one of the most engaging passages of music that Bach ever wrote — which gives a mighty five-part setting of the words, followed by a weighty fugue. The Christe eleison provides a gentle duet for sopranos with a charming ritornello for strings. The second Kyrie, for four-part choir, has an intense, chromatic fugal subject. Kyrie Eleison (Greek for ‘Lord have mercy’) is a very old, even pre-Christian expression used constantly in all Christian liturgies, establishing a tone of timeless nobility. The mass’ Quoniam, with its dark tones of horn obligato and well-rounded bassoon duet figurations, offers an impressive vehicle for the bass soloist, and leads straight into the gloriously jubilant Cum Sancto Spiritu, complete with agile choral fugue, marking the end of Bach’s original mass.
The first pub
lic performance of the Symbolum Nicenum section took place thirty-six years after Bach’s death, in the spring of 1786, led by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach at a benefit concert for the Medical Institute for the Poor in Hamburg. The next documented performance in the nineteenth century was when Carl Friedrich Zelter — a key figure in the nineteenth century Bach revival — led the Berlin Singakademie in read-throughs of the mass in 1811, covering the Kyrie. The first public performance in the century — though only the Credo section was performed — took place in Frankfurt in March 1828, featuring over 200 performers and many instrumental additions. In the same year in Berlin, Gaspare Spontini led the Credo section, adding fifteen new choral parts and numerous instruments. However, it was not until as late as 1859 that the first attested public performance of the mass in its entirety took place in Leipzig, with Karl Riedel and the Riedel-Verein. Since the nineteenth century it has been widely hailed as one of the greatest compositions in musical history and is still frequently performed and recorded today. Alberto Basso summarises the mass as “the consecration of a whole life… This monumental work is a synthesis of every stylistic and technical contribution the Cantor of Leipzig made to music. But it is also the most astounding spiritual encounter between the worlds of Catholic glorification and the Lutheran cult of the cross.”
During the later years of his life, Bach withdrew a great deal from society. His eyesight was worsening, impeding on his ability to perform his duties; so much so, that the municipal council seriously considered the advisability of appointing a successor to him at the Thomasschule. His eyes were operated upon, but unsuccessfully, by an English oculist, who some years later also operated on Handel.
Bach died in his sleep on 28 July 1750 and was buried quietly in St. John’s churchyard at Leipzig, with no cross or monument marking his resting place. Similarly to Mozart, interred in an unknown grave in the churchyard of St. Marx at Vienna, both great composers shared very modest burials. The only extant recording of Bach’s passing can be found in the register of deaths preserved in the Leipzig town library, which states: “A man, age 67, Johann Sebastian Bach, musical director and singing master of the Thomasschule, was carried to his grave in the hearse, 30 July, 1750.”
Bach’s death attracted little attention, partly due to the fact that his family were unable to afford the expense of the customary funeral oration at the grave. The master of the Thomasschule made no reference to the event in his annual speech, nor was mention of it made in any Leipzig newspaper. Ninety-three years later, Felix Mendelssohn, to whom we are so much indebted for the study of Bach at the present day, erected a monument to the memory of the grand old cantor of Leipzig, opposite the house in which he had lived, under the windows of the study where he had laboured so many long hours.
Throughout the eighteenth century, appreciation of Bach's music was chiefly limited to distinguished connoisseurs. The following century saw the first biography of the composer and ended with the completion of the publication of all of Bach's known works by the Bach Gesellschaft. A Bach Revival had started from Mendelssohn's famous performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. In death, Bach was finally winning for himself the reputation of a great composer.
In the twentieth century, Bach's music was widely performed and recorded for the first time, while the Neue Bachgesellschaft published exhaustive research on the composer. Modern adaptations of Bach's music contributed greatly to his popularisation in the second half of the century, as more classical performers moved away from the performance style and instrumentation established in the Romantic era. They started to perform Bach's music on period instruments of the Baroque era, studying playing techniques and reducing the size of instrumental ensembles and choirs to what Bach would have utilised himself. By the twenty-first century, the composer’s complete extant output became available online, with several websites exclusively dedicated to the life and work of Bach.
Johann Sebastian Bach was the most celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians. He was admired by his contemporaries as an outstanding harpsichordist, organist and expert on organ building. Bach perfected the established German styles through his mastery of counterpoint and motivic organisation, while adapting the new forms from Italy and France. His prestigious output of compositions includes hundreds of cantatas, both sacred and secular, Passions, oratorios and motets. He wrote extensively for organ and other keyboard instruments and developed pioneering concertos and suites, for both chamber music and for orchestra. Today, we revere him as one of the world’s greatest composers, celebrated as the creator of the Brandenburg Concertos, the Mass in B Minor, The Well-Tempered Clavier and countless other masterpieces of church and instrumental music.
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Autograph of the first page of Symbolum Nicenum, beginning with the Gregorian chant Credo in the teno
Autograph score of the Benedictus, aria for tenor and obligato flute
Augustus II the Strong (1670-1733) of the Albertine line of the House of Wettin was Elector of Saxony, Imperial Vicar and elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783) was a German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music.
Portrait, possibly of Bach, the ‘Volbach Portrait’, c. 1750
Bosehaus in Leipzig, where the Bach Archive has been housed since 1985
The Statue of Bach in front of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig
Complete Compositions
Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, 30 miles southeast of Hamburg, two decades before Bach’s stay in that town. He attended the prestigious St Michael’s School pictured in lower right.
Index of Bach’s Compositions
In this section of the eBook you can browse a listing of Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete compositions, with hyperlinks to audio recording searches.
Please note: some works may not be available at retailer websites. The provided hyperlinks are only designed as an aid to search for the compositions. If a search fails to find the piece you are looking for, it is recommended to delete the text in the search field except for the BWV number and search again.
CONTENTS
Cantatas
Motets
Masses, Mass movements, Magnificat
Passions and Oratorios
Songs, Arias and Quodlibet
Four-part Chorales
Keyboard Compositions
Lute Compositions
Chamber Music
Works for Orchestra
Canons
Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue
Later Additions and Reconstructions
Cantatas
BWV 1 Cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern
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BWV 2 Cantata Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein
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BWV 3 Cantata Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid
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BWV 4 Cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden
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BWV 4, Cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden
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BWV 5 Cantata Wo soll ich fliehen hin
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BWV 6 Cantata Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden
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BWV 7 Cantata Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam
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BWV 8, v1 Cantata Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?
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BWV 8, v2 Cantata Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?
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BWV 9 Cantata Es ist das Heil uns kommen her
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BWV 10 Cantata Meine Seel erhebt den Herren a.k.a. German Magnificat
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BWV 12 Cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen
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BWV 13 Cantata Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen
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BWV 14 Cantata Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit
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BWV 16 Cantata Herr Gott, dich loben wir
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BWV 17 Cantata Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich
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BWV 18 Cantata Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt
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BWV 19 Cantata Es erhub sich ein Streit
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BWV 20 Cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort
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BWV 21, v1 Cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
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BWV 21, v2 Cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
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BWV 21, v3 Cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
Delphi Masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach Page 5
