The Lost Works of JS Bach
THE LOST MUSIC OF JS BACH
There are reasons to believe a great deal of music by Johann Sebastian Bach disappeared within a few years of his death in 1750 (some, perhaps, even earlier) so I would like to make this brief post on the subject. (It’s an area I want to devote myself to study in detail when I finally get time – hopefully within a few years time).
Perhaps the largest group of missing works by JS Bach are church cantatas, these (according to several lines of evidence and as is generally agreed) amounting to 120 cantatas or so in all. Certainly a huge number of around that magnitude. According to scholars JS Bach composed not less than 5 complete cycles of church cantatas of which we have, today, approximately 3. The missing figure is certainly over 100. These are generally believed (though not unanimously) to have been cantatas written for a 4th and 5th Leipzig cycle. Therefore late works. We know the 4th cycle used texts by C.F. Henrici (usually known as Picander). And surviving individual works from a 5th liturgical cycle, said to have been composed between 1729 but not finally completed until the 1740s, (most of them composed before 1735) complete this picture. A considerable other number of works may also have existed. Reference is made around the time of Bach’s death to him having composed ‘many’ magnificats. There are several lost Passions. And there is the known loss of at least 15 secular cantatas, many of these written for marriages, civic functions, etc.
Though it’s commonly believed these works were somehow scattered amongst Bach’s sons and later lost/destroyed there are enough clues to suggest these works may actually have survived and may one day be rediscovered. Horror stories of music being used to wrap meat, or used by house servants to light fires (as in the case of at least one stage work by Schubert) may not have been the fate of these works.
Further support for such large numbers of cantatas having been written is in the large number of chorales, many of these (though by no means all) used in surviving cantatas. So the fate of this lost music seems (to me at least) to have involved its likely transfer to other owners and the chance it was wantonly destroyed seems minimal.
[This message has been edited by robert newman (edited 09-20-2006).]
There are reasons to believe a great deal of music by Johann Sebastian Bach disappeared within a few years of his death in 1750 (some, perhaps, even earlier) so I would like to make this brief post on the subject. (It’s an area I want to devote myself to study in detail when I finally get time – hopefully within a few years time).
Perhaps the largest group of missing works by JS Bach are church cantatas, these (according to several lines of evidence and as is generally agreed) amounting to 120 cantatas or so in all. Certainly a huge number of around that magnitude. According to scholars JS Bach composed not less than 5 complete cycles of church cantatas of which we have, today, approximately 3. The missing figure is certainly over 100. These are generally believed (though not unanimously) to have been cantatas written for a 4th and 5th Leipzig cycle. Therefore late works. We know the 4th cycle used texts by C.F. Henrici (usually known as Picander). And surviving individual works from a 5th liturgical cycle, said to have been composed between 1729 but not finally completed until the 1740s, (most of them composed before 1735) complete this picture. A considerable other number of works may also have existed. Reference is made around the time of Bach’s death to him having composed ‘many’ magnificats. There are several lost Passions. And there is the known loss of at least 15 secular cantatas, many of these written for marriages, civic functions, etc.
Though it’s commonly believed these works were somehow scattered amongst Bach’s sons and later lost/destroyed there are enough clues to suggest these works may actually have survived and may one day be rediscovered. Horror stories of music being used to wrap meat, or used by house servants to light fires (as in the case of at least one stage work by Schubert) may not have been the fate of these works.
Further support for such large numbers of cantatas having been written is in the large number of chorales, many of these (though by no means all) used in surviving cantatas. So the fate of this lost music seems (to me at least) to have involved its likely transfer to other owners and the chance it was wantonly destroyed seems minimal.
[This message has been edited by robert newman (edited 09-20-2006).]
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