to the largest scales, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly
Italy and France.
Revered for their intellectual depth and their technical and artistic beauty, Bach’s works
include works for the keyboard such as the Well-tempered Clavier, the Goldberg
Variations, Partitas, English Suites, French Suites and Partitas. They also include the
Brandenburg Concertos, the Mass in B minor, St Matthew Passion, St John Passion,
Musical Offering, Art of Fugue, Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo, suites for cello, more
than 200 surviving cantatas and a similar number of organ works.
While Bach’s fame as an organist was great during his lifetime, he was not particularly
well-known as a composer. His adherence to baroque forms and contrapuntal style was
considered old-fashioned by his contemporaries, especially late in his career when the
musical fashion tended towards the rococo and later to the classical styles. A revival of
interest in and performances of his music began early in the nineteenth century and Bach
is now widely considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition.
Bach’s inner personal drive to display his musical achievements was evident in a number
of ways. The most obvious was his successful striving to become the leading virtuoso
and improviser of the day on the organ. Keyboard music occupied a central position in
his output throughout his life, and he pioneered the elevation of the keyboard from
continuo to solo instrument in his numerous harpsichord concertos and chamber
movements with keyboard obbligato, in which he himself probably played the solo part.
Many of Bach’s keyboard preludes are vehicles for a free improvisatory virtuosity in the
German tradition, although their internal organisation became increasingly more cogent
as he matured. Virtuosity is a key element in other forms, such as the fugal movement
from Brandenburg Concerto no. 4, in which Bach himself may have been the first to play
the rapid solo violin passages. Another example is in the organ fugue from BWV547, a
late work from Leipzig, in which virtuosic passages are mapped onto Italian solo-tutti
alternation within the fugal development.
Bach encompassed whole genres through collections of movements that thoroughly
explore the range of artistic and technical possibilities inherent in those genres. The most
famous examples are the two books of the Well Tempered Clavier, each of which
presents a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key, in which a variety of
contrapuntal and fugal techniques are displayed. The English and French Suites, and the
Partitas, all keyboard works from the Cöthen period, systematically explore a range of
metres and of sharp and flat keys. The Goldberg Variations (1746) include a sequence of
canons at increasing intervals (unisons, seconds, thirds) and The Art of Fugue (1749) is a
compendium of fugal techniques.
Catalogue
Johann Sebastian Bach’s works are indexed with BWV numbers, which stand for Bach
Werke Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue). The catalogue, which is organised