Peter Wollny, the director of the Bach Archive and Festival in Leipzig, is one of the most respected Bach scholars in the world. In connection with the 75th anniversary of his institution, he recently presented two anonymous works for keyboard which had already been given numbers in the definitive catalog of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV 1178 and 1179). The media coverage of the announcement (live-streamed from St. Thomas in Leipzig with a butchered performance on the organ and a useless speech by the German Federal Minister of Culture; subsequent jubilant reports in all major international outlets both print and electronic) was unprecedented.
Prof. Dr. Wollny is on record as saying he is 99.99% sure that the two pieces –– chaconnes in a style common in Germany around 1700 –– are by J.S. Bach. Who am I to say that he is wrong, and that the residue of 0.01% will come back to bite him?
Well, I’m going to say it anyway. As Felix Mendelssohn remarked about a St. Luke Passion (BWV 246) copied out by J.S. and C.P.E. Bach: “If that is by Sebastian I’ll be hanged.”
Very briefly: Wollny’s evidence is all circumstantial, and would be thrown out of any court of law. The fact that the two chaconnes are anonymous in the small collection of similar pieces copied by an organist named Salomon Günther John (1695-post 1745), whereas the others have clear ascriptions, points to the fact that they were composed by the copyist himself. There were countless such minor masters in central Germany who would have been capable of such middling efforts. Traits similar to some found in Bach’s early works are not that striking, and could have been copied from the great man during alleged studies with him in Arnstadt or Weimar. Other traits which have absolutely no parallel in Bach go unmentioned. Most importantly, the quality of the two chaconnes is vastly below that of any securely attested early work by Bach. And they don’t feel like Bach under the fingers –– not that that is an argument musicologists generally accept.
The great art historian Max J. Friedländer wrote: “False attributions are often presented with an excessive display of acuteness, and of arguments which sound irrefutable. False Raphael pictures are accompanied by whole brochures. The weaker the inner certainty, the stronger the need to convince others and oneself by lengthy demonstrations.”* I’m afraid this applies to the present case, substituting the name of Sebastian Bach for that of Raphael.
***
The Neumeister Collection of 82 short organ chorale preludes kept at Yale University (LM 4708) is one of the touchstones for Bach’s early works. I won’t go at any length into the pro’s and cons of this retrospective assemblage by a collector of that name who lived from 1756 to 1840. It starts out with the same liturgical-year order as J. Sebastian’s incomplete Orgelbüchlein but later abandons the idea. Its sources and their dates are unclear, but the large percentage of works by Johann Michael and J. Sebastian, along with three by one (or more) of the J. Christophs, suggests some distant connection to a portfolio from the Bach family circle. The collection contains 30 chorale preludes ascribed to Sebastian unattested anywhere else, most of them filling in gaps in the Orgelbüchlein scheme, as well as early versions of two Orgelbüchlein works, and a few found in other sources.
The implication is that the pieces attributed to Sebastian represent part of an Arnstadt-period cycle, possibly planned to include works by senior members of the family. So its discovery was a sensation, accompanied by a similar degree of tam-tam as this recent one –– although without the benefit of Youtube and streaming services –– when it was unveiled in the tricentennial birth year, 1985. Similar, too, was the lack of critical caution regarding attributions. Neumeister’s ascriptions to J. S. Bach were all taken at face value by Christoph Wolff, then at Harvard. A number of them are as absurd as the two anonymous chaconnes, and one (BWV 1096) has been shown to be an extension (by Bach?) of a fughetta by Pachelbel.**
But the best of the lot is on the Christmas chorale Wir Christenleut haben jetzund Freud’, an anonymous melody of such elemental power that Bach returned to it for the Orgelbüchlein, as well as two cantatas and the Christmas Oratorio. (There is another setting for organ, BWV 710, which is ascribed to Krebs in one manuscript –– another object lesson in the perils of attribution!) Writers have opined that it must be one of the latest in Neumeister, verging as it does on the mastery of Orgelbüchlein.
In fact, it is a masterpiece of an earlier style –– more like the Arnstadt Actus Tragicus in its focus on exact word-painting, rather than on the motivic unity of the later collection. Here is the text of the first verse:
Wir Christenleut han jetzund Freud
Weil uns zu Trost Christus ist Mensch geboren,
Hat uns erlöst.
Wer sich des tröst und glaubet fest
Soll nicht werden verloren.
We Christian folk now have joy
For Christ, to console us, has been born as man,
Has redeemed us.
Whosever is comforted by this and firmly believes
Shall not be lost.
The opening section is the longest and most unified. Instead of concentrating on joy, it depicts the sadness of human life. Christ’s descent from heaven in the form of the Holy Spirit (according to Christian doctrine) is represented in the opening falling scale –– an echo of Johann Michael’s Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland. Its 16th-notes carry on in dialogue*** under the anonymous chorale tune. At the words “born as man”, dissonance and chromaticism foreshadow his death on the cross. The mood suddenly changes with redemption; in 12/8 time chains of dissonances are broken by a leaping bass line. The final section is a powerful French overture expressing firm faith. Bach uses the rising and falling tetrachords of the final line of the chorale as dotted fugal motifs. It appears intact in the treble at the very end, in a four-part triumph of eternal life –– but not before being preceded by a bar and a half of two-part pleading. The contrast between “lost” and faith in Christ’s redemption could hardly be stronger.
If this piece was composed before 1707 by Bach at Arnstadt, where John claimed to have studied with “the former organist” –– not Bach! –– it displays a contemporaneous mastery that puts John’s poor chaconnes to shame. So do many of the other Neumeister chorales, even those by lesser masters like Johann Michael Bach, Sebastian’s posthumous father-in-law. Five are taken from an undated post-1747 print by Georg Andreas Sorge (1703-77)****. This late date adds to the uncertainty regarding the significance of Neumeister’s collection, as does the large number of obvious errors and compositional blunders it contains. How many the young Sebastian composed of the 30 single-source preludes attributed to him there will remain an unsolvable riddle. (And what about the five anonymous ones?) My best guess is: about half, with true and false coming in small groups, as might be expected of a collector drinking at more than one well.
One must never forget how tempting it was (and still is) to ascribe works of art –– whether in good or bad faith –– to a recognized master, nor the great number of simple errors of ascription in old sources as well. But I think this question is less material than the way the whole Neumeister collection aligns with Sorge’s advice: to prelude chorales on the organ “according to their various contents, such that a church congregation will be animated to sing the subsequent chorale with due devotion.”
12 December, 2025
* I owe both these quotes to John Koster. He is more open-minded about the new additions to BWV than I am, but shares my skepticism at least to some degree. He opts for the Scottish legal verdict “not proven”. The distinguished Bach scholar David Schulenberg rejects them (email of 11 December 2025). My thanks to both these gentlemen for interesting discussions of this vexing subject.
** See Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Vol. 4 1986. The article by Günter Hartmann leaves most of Wolff’s assertions in tatters.
*** The dialogue between God and man in prayer is significant in Lutheran thought; see the closing Duetten in Dritter Theil der Clavier Übung.
**** Erster Theil der Vorspiele vor bekannten Choral-Gesängen…, Nürnberg, n.d. Unique copy also at Yale. Neumeister had studied with Sorge.
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