Bach Digital

Johann Sebastian Bach composed cantatas, motets, masses, Magnificats, Passions, oratorios, four-part chorales, songs and arias. His instrumental music includes concertos, suites, sonatas, fugues, and other works for organ, harpsichord, lute, violin, cello, flute, chamber ensemble and orchestra.

There are over 1000 known compositions by Bach. Nearly all of them are listed in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV), which is the best known and most widely used catalogue of Bach's compositions.

The earliest lists of Bach's compositions are given by his biographers, starting from his obituary which gives a list of instrumental works printed during the composer's lifetime (from Clavier-Übung I to The Art of Fugue), followed by a list which groups other types of compositions he wrote. The first separately published biography of the composer, by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, follows the same setup: its ninth chapter first lists printed works (adding four-part chorales that were published in the second half of the 18th century), followed by a rough overview of the unpublished ones. In the first half of the 19th century more works were published, so the next biographies (Schauer and Hilgenfeldt in 1850) had more elaborate appendices listing printed works, referring to these works by publisher, and the number or page number given to the works in these publications. So, for example, the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major can be indicated as "C. F. Peters Vol. III No. 1", or any of the variants ("Griepenkerl and Roitzsch Vol. 3 p. 2", "Peters Book 242 p. 2", "P. S. V., Cah. 3 (242), No. 1", etc.)

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Wikipedia