Rare “New” Music by Bach Found and Performed

Leipzig, Germany —(Map)

Last week, two “new” pieces of music by the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach were played for the first time in centuries. The discovery of the pieces is the result of 30 years of hard work by Peter Wollny, who studies Bach’s music.

Bach was a German composer of classical music in the late 1600s and early 1700s. He is known for his complicated and clever musical patterns. Like Beethoven, Bach’s music is still played daily around the world.

Mr. Wollny, who’s now in charge of Leipzig’s Bach Archive, is a big fan of Bach’s music. The Bach Archive is a special museum and research center dedicated to Bach.

In 1992, Mr. Wollny was a student at Harvard University and was doing research on Bach’s oldest son. While working in the Royal Library of Belgium, Mr. Wollny found two scores – pieces of written music – from the 1700s. They weren’t signed, but something about the music caught his attention.

Mr. Wollny made photocopies of the music and took the copies with him. Over the next 30 years, he held onto those copies, thinking about them from time to time.

The scores were for a special kind of music called a chaconne. A chaconne has some expected patterns, but these two pieces broke those patterns in unusual ways. Whoever had written them was clearly a clever composer.

But who was the composer? Mr. Wollny thought that it might be Bach, since the music was so clever and unusual.

Mr. Wollny became interested in the writing of the person who had put the music on paper. There were some mistakes in the writing that a good composer like Bach probably wouldn’t have made. That made Mr. Wollny think a music student might have made the copies.

Mr. Wollny knew that Bach had students who wrote out copies of his music. The students did this to learn from Bach. But it was also common for students to copy the music and sell the copies.

In time, Mr. Wollny found 20 other papers with the same handwriting as the person who copied the two scores. But he still didn’t know who the person was.

Then, in 2012, a friend showed Mr. Wollny a letter written in 1729 by Salomon Günther John. John was an organ player who wrote about learning from Bach. And the handwriting matched the two scores.

Mr. Wollny believes that Bach wrote the two chaconnes when he was just 18, or perhaps younger. The pieces were copied down by John a few years later, around 1705.

After Mr. Wollny presented his ideas and research, the Bach Archive added the two pieces to the official list of music known to be written by Bach.

On November 17, the two pieces were performed for the first time in over 300 years. The performance took place at Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church, where Bach once worked. The two pieces were played by Ton Koopman, a famous Dutch organ player.

Mr. Wollny was there to hear them.

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Did You Know…?
If you’d like to hear Mr. Koopman play the pieces, you can hear them in this YouTube video.