BWV 592

The concerto transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach date from his second period at the court in Weimar (1708–1717). Bach transcribed for organ and harpsichord a number of Italian and Italianate concertos, mainly by Antonio Vivaldi, but with others by Alessandro Marcello, Benedetto Marcello, Georg Philipp Telemann and the musically talented Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. It is thought that most of the transcriptions were probably made in 1713–1714. Their publication by C.F. Peters in the 1850s and by Breitkopf & Härtel in the 1890s played a decisive role in the Vivaldi revival of the twentieth century.

Bach's concerto transcriptions reflect not only his general interest in and assimilation of musical forms originating in Italy, in particular the concertos of his Venetian contemporary Antonio Vivaldi, but also the particular circumstances of his second period of employment 1708–1717 at the court in Weimar.

During his first brief period in Weimar in 1703 Bach was employed as a court violinist for seven months by Johann Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who ruled jointly with his elder brother Wilhelm Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. Wilhelm Ernst's Lutheran piety contrasted with his younger brother's alcoholism. On Johann Ernst's death in 1707, he was succeeded as coregent by his elder son Ernst August, who lived with his younger stepbrother, Prince Johann Ernst, outside the ducal Wilhelmsburg in the Rotes Schloss. A talented amateur musician, from an early age Prince Johann Ernst had been taught the violin by the court violinist Gregor Christoph Eilenstein. Johann Ernst studied the keyboard with Bach's distant cousin Johann Gottfried Walther, after he became organist at the Stadtkirche in Weimar in 1707. The following year, when Bach himself was appointed as organist in Weimar in the ducal chapel or Himmelsburg, he not only had at his disposal the recently renovated chapel organ but also the organ in the Stadtkirche. In the Wilhelmsburg, Wilhelm Ernst had already revived the court orchestra, of which Bach eventually became Concertmaster in 1714. As well as music-making in the Wilhelmsburg, Bach was almost certainly involved in the parallel more secular musical events in the Rotes Schloss organised by August Ernst and Johann Ernst. Harpsichords were available to Bach at both venues.

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