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Compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach printed during his lifetime (1685–1750) include works for keyboard instruments, such as his Clavier-Übung volumes for harpsichord and for organ, and to a lesser extent ensemble music, such as the trio sonata of The Musical Offering, and vocal music, such as a cantata published early in his career. Other works, such as several canons, were printed without an indication by which instruments they were to be performed.
No more than a few works by Johann Sebastian Bach were printed during his lifetime. Extended works for choir and instrumentalists were not printed very often in his day. Bach selected mostly keyboard compositions for publication, which conformed to such contemporary practices, and was instrumental in establishing him as a keyboard composer. His works not only circulated in print: also manuscripts were copied and transmitted. Whether or not a work was selected for print was independent of the quality of the music.
Whereas earlier composers such as Palestrina, Monteverdi, Praetorius and Schütz had their works printed to ensure that the entire range of their music became more widely known, this was not the case with Bach, who only had a small proportion of his works printed. Christoph Wolff has suggested three reasons: firstly the financial support from municipal councils or noble patrons available to previous generations had diminished in Germany as a result of the Thirty Years War; secondly the expense of printing contrapuntal keyboard music which, at that time in Germany, was more often typeset than engraved; and lastly the low number of potential customers for works that were often technically difficult and unconventional.[1]
Counting by BWV numbers, less than ten percent of the composer's output was printed during his lifetime. Especially the choral works, less than half a percent of over 400 BWV numbers, are under-represented. This was however not exceptional for Bach's time when larger works for chorus and orchestra were less often printed. Bach's own efforts to get his works printed concentrated mostly on his keyboard compositions, which contributed to the fact that, at least until the 19th-century Bach Revival, he was mainly regarded as a keyboard composer. Whether or not a work was selected for print was independent of the quality of the music.[2]
| BWV | Work | |
|---|---|---|
| 71 | Council election cantata Gott ist mein König | 1708 |
| 439–507 | songs and arias in Schemellis Gesangbuch | 1736 |
| 552 | Prelude and Fugue in E♭ for organ in Clavier-Übung III | 1739 |
| 645–650 | chorale preludes for organ (Schübler Chorales) | 1747–1748 |
| 669–689 | chorale preludes for organ in Clavier-Übung III | 1739 |
| 769 | Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch" for organ | 1747–1748 |
| 802–805 | duets for keyboard instrument in Clavier-Übung III | 1739 |
| 825–830 | partitas for harpsichord in Clavier-Übung I | 1726–1730, 1731 |
| 831 | French Overture for harpsichord in Clavier-Übung II | 1735 |
| 971 | Italian Concerto for harpsichord in Clavier-Übung II | 1735 |
| 988 | Goldberg Variations for harpsichord (Clavier-Übung IV) | 1741–1742 |
| 1074 | Canon a 4 | 1728, 1739, 1747 |
| 1076 | Canon triplex a 6 | 1747 |
| 1079 | The Musical Offering for diverse instruments | 1747–1749 |
| 1080 | The Art of Fugue | 1751, 1752 |
| 1138.1 | Council election cantata for Mühlhausen #2 (lost)[3] | 1709 |
| 1138.2 | Council election cantata for Mühlhausen #3 (lost)[4] | 1710 |
Most of the prints of Bach's music which appeared during his lifetime were commissioned by the composer.[5] Bach's personal copies, often containing handwritten corrections or additions, have been recovered for several of his printed works. The German expression for personal copy, Handexemplar, also appears in English-language Bach-scholarship, and is used in the list below when referring to prints once contained in the personal library of Johann Sebastian Bach.[6]
During Bach's lifetime his compositions were mostly distributed amongst his immediate musical associates through manuscript copies. After his death in 1750, manuscript copies of keyboard and vocal works were made by professional copyists and distributed by musical publishing firms, especially Breitkopf (Leipzig), Traeg (Vienna) and Westphal (Hamburg). This in turn led to the appearance of printed editions of his works, beginning with the publication of Bach's four-part chorales in the second half of the eighteenth century. The fact that Bach had published representative samples of his music for keyboard instruments contributed to his fame, and to an increased demand for such works after his death.[1]
In his 1732 Musicalisches Lexicon, Johann Gottfried Walther listed all keyboard compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach which had been printed up to that point, that is, the six partitas of Clavier-Übung I.[7][8] In Bach's obituary, which was published four years after the composer's death, printed and unprinted works are listed separately: the list of engraved compositions contains eight items, all of them instrumental works, and concludes with The Art of Fugue, which had been printed shortly after the composer's death.[9] A comparable list, starting with the same eight items, appeared half a century later in Johann Nikolaus Forkel's Bach-biography.[10][11] In 1937 Georg Kinsky published an extensive study of Bach's original publications.[5][2]
The eight publications listed in Bach's obituary included The Art of Fugue which was in fact published shortly after the composer's death. Further, two publications with vocal music and two canons are extant.
Gott ist mein König, BWV 71, Bach's council election (Ratswahl) cantata composed for Mühlhausen in 1708, was printed that same year at the expense of the town council.[5][12][13] Also in 1709 and 1710 Bach wrote the council election cantatas for Mühlhausen, which likewise would have been printed.[14][15] These cantatas, BWV 1138.1 and 1138.2, are however lost: neither a print nor a manuscript survives.[3][4]
Bach's Six Partitas, BWV 825–830, for harpsichord, were published in instalments from 1726 to 1730:[8][16][17][18]
In 1731 these partitas were collectively published as Clavier-Übung ("Keyboard Exercise").[16][17][25][26]
Bach's "Canon mit 4" (canon for four voices), BWV 1074, was published in Georg Philipp Telemann's Der getreue Music-Meister in 1728.[36][37][38] This canon was also published with two solutions in Johann Mattheson's Der vollkommene Capellmeister in 1739, and with three solutions in Volume 3 of Lorenz Christoph Mizler's Musikalische Bibliothek in 1747.[36][39][40]
The second volume of the Clavier-Übung was first published in 1735,[26][41][42] soon followed by a reprint with several corrections.[43][44] It contained two compositions, specified for performance on a two-manual harpsichord:[26][41][43][45]
![Thumb](#/media/File:J._S._Bach_"Komm,_süßer_Tod",_Erstdruck.jpg)
Georg Christian Schemelli's Musicalisches Gesang-Buch (musical songbook), commonly known as Schemellis Gesangbuch, contains 954 song texts, 69 of which, BWV 439–507, are printed with a setting for singing voice and thoroughbass.[49][50] Not all 69 melodies were composed by Bach, but he provided (or "improved") an accompaniment for all of them.[49] Schemellis Gesangbuch was published in 1736, and contains some of Bach's probably least known compositions.[51]
The Prelude and Fugue were published separately as a pair by C. F. Peters in 1845 in Volume III of the Organ Works of J. S. Bach, with the fugue listed in the contents as the "St Annen-Fuge".[53]
In 1741 or 1742 another Clavier-Übung volume was published, the Aria with diverse variations for double manual harpsichord, later known as the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988.[26][49][54][55] Not thus numbered in the print it was the fourth Clavier-Übung publication.[49] This publication does not carry a reference to Johann Gottlieb Goldberg: the music was published over half a century before the perhaps exaggerated anecdote involving Goldberg was printed in Forkel's biography of Bach.[56]
The Canon triplex a 6, BWV 1076, which had appeared on Elias Gottlob Haussmann's portrait of Bach in 1746, was printed in 1747.[36][58]
The Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her", BWV 769, for organ, were published on the occasion of Bach's admission to Mizler's "Society of the Musical Sciences" in 1747.[59][60][61][62][63]
The Musical Offering, BWV 1079, was published in 1747, after Bach's visit to Frederick the Great in Potsdam.[64][65][66][67] The work contains a trio sonata for flute, violin and continuo.[68]
The Schübler Chorales, BWV 645–650, is a set of chorale preludes for organ, published around 1748 as Sechs Chorale von verschiedener Art (Six Chorales of Various Kinds) by Johann Georg Schübler.[62][69][70][71]
In preparation for print when the composer died (1750): The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080.[66][75][76][77] The printed versions (1751 and 1752) contain BWV 668a, a variant of the chorale prelude "Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein", BWV 668.[77]
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