Miscellaneous Works for Piano III

J S Bach Miscellaneous Works for Piano III

Although Johann Sebastian Bach’s vocal music fell largely into oblivion after his death, his keyboard music continued to be played.  In addition to his large-scale collections, a number of works that survived in isolation were already highly popular during the eighteenth century.  Foremost among these was the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903, followed by the C-minor Fantasy, BWV 906 (see volume 2, BA 5233).

With some justification, the clavier pieces in this volume may be viewed as peripheral to Johann Sebastian Bach’s œuvre as compared, say, to the Partitas or the French and English Suites.  But they are peripheral in another sense as well: all of them evidently originated early in his career prior to the English Suites, which are known to date from his Weimar years.  Both their style and their manuscript traditions place them in Bach’s youthful period sometime between 1700 and 1710.  In the course of preparing this edition a number of works attributed to Bach were shown to be spurious.  As a result, those pieces that remain sharpen our awareness of the stylistic characteristics of his early music and deepen our understanding of his musical origins.  It is perhaps here – and in their youthful vigor and charm - that their principal value lies for us today.

- Urtext of the New Bach Edition