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marked by the completion of Wolfgang Schmeider‟s Thematisch-systematishes
Verzeichnis der musikalischen Weke von Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach-Werke-
Verzeichnis (BWV), 174 but also the ambitious idea to complete a subsequent edition of
Johann Sebastian Bach‟s oeuvre, succeeding the Bach-Gesellschaft. The project known
now as the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, 175 was launched by two separate but cooperative entities,
The Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut Göttingen and the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, separated at
the time by a divided Germany, and published by Bärenreiter-Verlag in Cassel and
Deutscher Verlag für Musik in Leipzig. 176 By 1954 volumes began being published that
could boast of critical and scholarly “urtext” editions that were user-friendly based on the
fact that a majority of the volumes used modern clefs. 177 The Neue Bach Ausgabe
provided at least three important achievements: the discovery of spurious works in the
Bach canon, rediscovery of many lost compositions and a new understanding of Bach‟s
compositional chronology. 178
The amended awareness of Bach‟s compositions, due in large part to the dating
efforts of Alfred Dürr and Georg von Dadelsen, was significant in that it provided
evidence that the majority of Bach‟s religious Leipzig works, thought to be around 150
compositions, was composed within the initial five years (1723-1727) of his
appointment. 179 The repercussions of these findings seem to tear down the perceived
Romantic image of Bach as the lifelong devoted religious composer. For decades many
viewed Bach as the servant of the Lutheran Church who spent the majority of his life
composing humbly for Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone).
With modernist undertones, an objective reappraisal of Bach‟s image ensued that
promoted a secularized persona. Friedrich Blume proposed in the 1960s that the findings
of Dürr and Dadelson suggest waning importance Bach placed on his sacred duties,
turning instead to secular endeavors as well as a secular self-image. Following Blume‟s
174
A revised second edition was published in 1990.
175
Its official title is J.S. Bach: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Weke
176
Melamed and Marissen, An Introduction to Bach Studies, 89.
177
Ibid.
178
Ibid.
179
Robert Marshall, “Toward a Twenty-First-Century Bach Biography,” The Musical Quarterly 84.3 (Fall
2000): 497.
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