In 1985 Christoph Wolff, working at Yale University, discovered a collection of 82 chorales compiled by Johann Gottfried Neumeister (1756-1840) which contained 38 compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. They reveal great stylistic variety whose forebears stem from the Northern German organ tradition.
Already these early works comprising fantasias, fugues, fughettas and imitative techniques employing motifs from chorale melodies bear witness to Bach’s broad compositional spectrum.
This newly published volume is an updated edition of Series IV/9 of the “New Bach Edition” (NBA), edited by Christoph Wolff and based on this source.
In addition to a newly added concordance and corrections to the musical text, it also contains a detailed Foreword by Christoph Wolff with further information on the Neumeister Collection and hymnological details. The source of the complete Neumeister Collection has recently been made available on “Bach digital”, shedding light on the manuscript for the very first time.
Links to major sources have been provided in collaboration with the Bach Leipzig Archive and its database “Bach digital”. The desired page of the source can be accessed quickly and conveniently via URLs at http://links.baerenreiter.com. The links stored there are examined for their validity on a regular basis.
Any complete scholarly critical edition of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach must incorporate new research findings in the interest of scholars and performers alike.
Now all of Bärenreiter’s new performing editions of Bach’s organ works are being revised to reflect the current state of scholarship and to convey maximum fidelity to the sources by being linked to “Bach digital”.