Magnificat in A minor (Hoffmann)

Magnificat
Sacred vocal music by Melchior Hoffmann
Early 18th-century manuscript copy, likely written by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, of the "Traversa" part of Hoffmann's Magnificat[1]
Other name	Kleines Magnificat
Key	A minor
Catalogue	BWV Anh. 21
Text	"Meine Seele erhebt den Herren"
Language	German
Composed	1707

The Magnificat in A minor, BWV Anh. 21, TWV 1:1748, is Melchior Hoffmann's musical setting of a German version (Meine Seele erhebt den Herren) of the Song of Mary (Magnificat, "My soul magnifies the Lord") from the Gospel of Luke. The composition originated around 1707, when the composer was director musices and organist of the Neue Kirche in Leipzig. Composed in A minor, the Magnificat is scored for soprano and small orchestra.^[2] The work was first published in the 1950s, and it was recorded by Magda László, by Joshua Rifkin, by Wolfgang Helbich, and by Deborah York, among others.

According to the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft-Ausgabe (BGA), the work, considered lost since the late 1850s, was composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was dubbed Kleines Magnificat (kleines translating as "little" or "small")^[3][4] to distinguish it from more extended Magnificat settings, such as BWV 243 in Latin, and BWV 10 and BWV 189 in German (the last of these is listed as a composition by Hoffmann at the Bach Digital website).^[5] The 1950 first edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV) listed the small Magnificat in its first Anhang, that is the Anhang of lost works. Some years later, when recovered original manuscripts of the composition and of other works by the composer were analysed, the work was, after being erroneously attributed to Georg Philipp Telemann for some years, ultimately attributed to Hoffmann.