Organ concerto (Bach)

Title page of manuscript, organ concerto BWV 596.

The organ concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach are solo works for organ, transcribed and reworked from instrumental concertos originally composed by Antonio Vivaldi and the musically talented Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. While there is no doubt about the authenticity of BWV 592–596, the sixth concerto BWV 597 is now probably considered to be spurious. Composed during Bach's second period at the court in Weimar (1708–1717), the concertos can be dated more precisely to 1713–1714.[1][2][3][4][5]

Bach also made several transcriptions of Vivaldi's concertos for single, two and four harpsichords from exactly the same period in Weimar. The original concertos were picked from Vivaldi's Op.3, L'estro armonico, composed in 1711, a set of twelve concertos for one, two and four violins. The publication of these Bach transcriptions by C.F. Peters in the 1850s and Breitkopf & Härtel in the 1890s played a decisive role in the Vivaldi revival of the twentieth century.

  1. ^ Boyd 2006, pp. 80–83
  2. ^ Breig 1997
  3. ^ Jones 2007, pp. 140–153
  4. ^ Williams 2003, pp. 201–224
  5. ^ Schulenberg 2013, pp. 117–139 and footnotes pp. 461–3