Posted on 12/08/2025 10:58:15 AM PST by nickcarraway
Two musical pieces written by Johann Sebastian Bach were recently performed for the first time ever, more than 300 years after they were composed.
Both written for the organ, they are believed to date from the great composer’s very early career, when he worked as a organ tutor in Thuringia.
Germany’s Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer called the discovery of the two pieces a “great moment for the world of music.”
Both pieces were unsigned and undated when they were found in the 1990s by Mr. Peter Wollny, a Belgian Bach researcher working at the Royal Library in Brussels. Entitled Chaconne in D minor and Chaconne in G minor, Wollny wasn’t sure who had written them, but suspected they might have been Bach’s.
That hunch needed 30 years to be realized, as the archivist, now director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, wanted to absolutely sure of it.
“Stylistically, the works also contain features that can be found in Bach’s works from this period, but not in those of any other composer,” Wollny told the BBC, adding he was “99.99% sure that Bach had written the two pieces.”
Given the Bach catalogue identification tags BWV 1178 and BWV 1179, they were played for the first time in 320 years by Dutch organist Ton Koopman at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig where Bach worked for 27 years as a cantor. Koopman, as one might imagine, said he was proud to be the first person to play them, and described them as being of “of a very high quality” and ideal for both large church organs and small ones.
A Mount Rushmore composer without a shadow of a doubt, Bach is generally considered to have stood at the pinnacle of his art, with the senior classical critic at the New York Times calling him the greatest. By 1802, there were already biographies of Bach made, and manuscripts of his works being bought at huge expense. In 1850, the first of several Bach societies was organized in Leipzig.
Claude Debussy described Bach as “a benevolent God” to whom musicians should pray before setting to work. Not one, nor two, but three Bach pieces were included on the NASA Voyager’s Golden Record.
A recent concert in Austria saw a 200-year-old Mozart piece performed for the first time when it too was discovered by an archivist under similar circumstances.
The Swingle Singers did a vocal album of Bach which I always enoyed-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soZwC7eN8TI&list=PLtEM1gDj5mldURRt7fJviCs3ALi6j1KkD
I’ll listen to most any version of Bach. This oboe piece is pretty good-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDavtD6P0uI
bump
Lacrimosae composed between coffee bean shipments presumably lol
I will say this regarding his Toccata and Fugue in d Minor: after a long day of looking out over the Universe, God sat down, put His feet up, put His hands behind His head and listened to the piece for the first time, and said….”Yeah…….”
Well, I don’t like it. But I don’t like Bach’s music much anyway.
Bach
That is Bachman Turner Overdrive - Roll On Down The Highway (1720)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oUBxyXxyFo
Alex was a Ludwig Van fan.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gqfF3rbhES8&t=14s&pp=2AEOkAIB0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
Watching Beato’s videos makes me wish I had gotten more into music theory when I was younger.
That’s what made EVH better than all of his imitators. EVH was influenced by classic music, while the ones who came after were influenced by other rock musicians. It’s like making a copy of a copy.
Oh yes, this has been an old dream of mine, too🎼
Yes. Of all the great music, J. S. Bach’s is by far the greatest, at least for me.
And may He bless you and all the People of Germany, my home for three beautiful, happy years.
The music of J. S. Bach is transfigurative.
There is a place where beauty, joy, love, and truth are all the same thing. Many things can take us there--a beautiful sunset, the laughter of children, a flower, the kiss of the beloved--many things. The music of J. S. Bach can take us there.
That place is here and now. We are never away from it; only our awareness of it varies.
“He worked with unequal temperaments (like well-tempered tuning)”
How is music played when a nonstandard temperament is used? A piano is always tuned to the standard, isn’t it? If not, music would sound different and unpleasant if played in different keys.
Bach to the future?
you can tune a piano any way you want but you cannot tuna fish.
pianos back when Bach was writing were not common, he wrote much of his stuff for harpsichord and organ.
There are organizations like the academy for ancient music that specialize in using period instruments and sometimes with period tuning. It sounds quite different.
I asked a random AI if you could do this with a modern synth and it said
Yes, you absolutely can and should tune a harpsichord to a Bach-period temperament (unequal temperament) to hear how Bach intended, using specific “recipes” like Vallotti or Kirnberger, rather than modern equal temperament, which makes keys sound distinct, but it requires specialized apps or tuning by ear with a tuner for those specific intervals, not reprogramming electronics.
Digital keyboards can often switch temperaments, but a physical harpsichord needs manual adjustment for each string to achieve these historical settings, following patterns that vary by key.
Thank you so very much for your kind, heart-warming words.
Yes, Bach really is the beginning and the end of all music, as Max Reger (1873-1916) so famously said 🙂 Or at least to many people, including myself 🙂
The work of his that I would also love to hear one day is BWV 244 a (Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt) the cantata of mourning for Bach‘s late friend and employer, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. But there have been attempts of reconstructing it, though I have not yet heard them.
Somehow, this music is fitting for my own situation, since an elderly aunt of mine has just passed on, and, a cousin of mine is dying of cancer, at the ripe old age of 37 😞 We are all praying for a miracle…
However, I would like to wish you, dear Savage Beast, and your dear ones a wonderful Christmas time and a Happy New Year! 🎄🍾
Bfl
“he wrote much of his stuff for harpsichord and organ.”
Aren’t those tuned more-or-less permanently like a piano.
I know the common even-temperament scale is a compromise, but it is extremely close to perfection in all 12 keys. I don’t see any value in a 12-tone scale tuned, say, for the key of C.
I wish for you and those you love a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
I pray for your happiness and that God will shower you with His blessings.
I also pray for your beloved cousin.
Love to you and your family always,
S
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