Two long-lost organ items by JS Bach carried out for first time in 300 years | JS Bach

Two long-lost organ items by Johann Sebastian Bach have been carried out in Germany, roughly 320 years after the composer wrote them as a teenage music trainer.

Entitled Chaconne in D minor BWV 1178 and Chaconne in G minor BWV 1179, the items have been added to the official catalogue of Bach’s works on Monday and performed in public for the primary time in three centuries inside Leipzig’s St Thomas Church, the place Bach is buried.

Researchers found the 2 nameless and undated works within the Royal Library of Belgium in 1992, however it wasn’t till not too long ago that they have been in a position to authenticate Bach as their creator.

Peter Wollny, the director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, stated on Monday that over three a long time he had amassed about 20 “puzzle pieces” pointing to authorship by the composer. Identifying the copyist who had written down the rating, nonetheless, proved a problem.

Several years in the past, Wollny’s co-researcher, Bernd Koska, found a letter from 1729, with related handwriting by a hitherto unknown organist known as Salomon Günther John, who claimed to have been certainly one of Bach’s pupils in Arnstadt, Thuringia.

It was solely when the researchers managed not too long ago to trace down an earlier court docket doc written by John with matching handwriting that they have been sure that he had written down the rating beneath Bach’s watch in 1705.

“I searched for a long time for the missing piece of the puzzle to identify the compositions – now the whole picture is clear,” Wollny stated at Monday’s presentation. “I am 99.99% certain that Bach composed both of these works.”

The items are chaconnes, a musical type that sometimes makes use of sequence of variations over a brief bass line.

Wollny stated the works have been “highly individual” and “complex”, containing compositional instruments that might solely be present in Bach’s music on the time, akin to using a fugue to weave a single theme into the broader musical tapestry.

“This is an amazing discovery,” Canadian pianist and Bach specialist Angela Hewitt advised the Guardian. “They are substantial pieces, and will be an excellent addition to the organist’s repertoire.

“For me they are quite identifiable with Bach’s early style, in which the contrapuntal writing is not yet what it would become, but the imagination, grandeur, and sheer joy in playing are all there in abundance.”

Germany’s federal minister for tradition and media, Wolfram Weimer, described the invention as a “great moment for the world of music”, including: “This is more than just musical research. Colleagues in the press will write that it is a world sensation, but in truth, it is magic.”

Ton Koopman, the Dutch organist who performed the works, stated he anticipated that musicians would carry out them commonly sooner or later. “When one thinks of the young Bach or Mozart, it is often assumed that genius comes later in life – but that is not the case,” he advised Agence France Presse.