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By Kevin Shihoten
14 Jun 2007
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| J.S. Bach |
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| photo by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, c.a. 1748 |
A new edition of the complete works of J.S. Bach is now finished, 55 years after the project was begun by the Bach Archive in Leipzig and the Johann Sebastian Bach Institute in Göttingen, Germany.
In 100 volumes — 41 of which are devoted to the cantatas —the Neue Bach-Ausgabe contains new scholarly editions of all of the composer's scores. In addition, Bach Archive director Christoph Wolff told The Associated Press, the catalogue of Bach's works has been purged of several cantatas and many sonatas which had been erroneously attributed to the Thomaskantor.
"More complicated," said Wolff, "is the content of the St. Luke Passion," which researchers determined to be entirely spurious, save for one chorus Bach really did compose. Additions include 47 newly-found works excluded from Wolfgang Schmieder's Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, or BWV, the catalog most musicians and musicologists consider the standard index of J.S. Bach's output.
The German music publisher Bärenreiter has issued the complete collection.
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