7 Johann Sebastian Bach 7Instrumental Works
In 1726, after he had completed the bulk of his cantata
production, Bach began to publish the clavier Partitas
singly, with a collected edition in 1731. The second part of
the Clavierübung, containing the Concerto in the Italian Style
and the French Overture (Partita) in B Minor, appeared in
- The third part, consisting of the Organ Mass with the
Prelude and Fugue [“St. Anne”] in E-flat Major (BWV 552),
appeared in 1739. From c. 1729 to 1736 Bach was honorary
musical director to Weissenfels; and, from 1729 to 1737
and again from 1739 for a year or two, he directed the
Leipzig Collegium Musicum. For these concerts, he
adapted some of his earlier concerti as harpsichord con-
certi, thus becoming one of the first composers—if not
the very first—of concerti for keyboard instrument and
orchestra.
About 1733 Bach began to produce cantatas in honour
of the elector of Saxony and his family, evidently with a
view to the court appointment he secured in 1736; many
of these secular movements were adapted to sacred
words and reused in the Christmas Oratorio. The Kyrie and
Gloria of the Mass in B Minor, written in 1733, were also
dedicated to the elector, but the rest of the Mass was not
put together until Bach’s last years. On his visits to
Dresden, Bach had won the regard of the Russian envoy,
Hermann Karl, Reichsgraf (count) von Keyserlingk, who
commissioned the so-called Goldberg Variations; these were
published as part four of the Clavierübung about 1742, and
Book Two of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier seems to have
been compiled about the same time. In addition, he wrote
a few cantatas, revised some of his Weimar organ works,
and published the so-called Schübler Chorale Preludes in or
after 1746.