The sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach are among the most profound and enduring works in the Western musical canon. They serve as both spiritual mediations and virtuosic displays of Baroque craftsmanship. Many of Bach’s cantatas are prefaced by sinfonias,

In his role as the leading keyboard virtuoso of his day, J.S. Bach (1685–1750) published 4 books of keyboard music under the title of Clavier-Übung, following the precedent set by his predecessor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Johann Kuhnau had

Few composers loom larger in Western music history than Johann Sebastian Bach – and few are surrounded by as many myths. Over the centuries, Bach has been described as everything from a neglected genius labouring in obscurity to a joyless

Johann Sebastian Bach is known as a composer of precise intellectual rigour. But beneath the carefully calibrated precision of his music lies a deep current of messy sorrow. Again and again over the course of his career, Bach returned to

Today, we remember Johann Sebastian Bach as one of the most prolific composers in music history. However, a significant portion of his output – about half – has not survived. These lost works span categories including sacred and secular cantatas,

In 1875, the English lawyer Arthur Duke Coleridge, an amateur musician with influential connections, spent some time in Leipzig studying music alongside the young Charles Villiers Stanford. He became acquainted with Bach‘s B-minor Mass, a work that had received its

The new book Bach: The Cello Suites by Edward Klorman features exhaustive research into the six Bach Cello Suites and is available as a new Cambridge Music Handbook through Cambridge University Press. This handbook is not to be underestimated, despite

The story has it that the Goldberg Variations were written for the harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727–1756), who entertained the long white nights of Count Hermann Karl von Keyserling (1697–1764), the Russian ambassador to Saxony. Bach was well paid for