Neumeister Collection

The Neumeister Collection is a manuscript compilation of chorale preludes for organ assembled by Johann Gottfried Neumeister (1757–1840) after 1790,^[1] including 31 compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1090–1120) that were uncatalogued until scholars rediscovered the manuscript in the 1980s. It has been suggested that the collection may have been copied from a single source, possibly a Bach family album put together in J.S. Bach's early years.^[2] The five works by Neumeister's own music teacher, Georg Andreas Sorge, were a later addition.^[3] Some time after 1807 the manuscript passed to Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770–1846),^[4] whose library was bought by Lowell Mason in 1852. After Mason's death in 1873, his collection was acquired by Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.^[1]

There the Neumeister volume lay as manuscript LM 4708 until it was rediscovered "early in 1984" by musicologists Christoph Wolff (Harvard) and Hans-Joachim Schulze (Bach-Archiv Leipzig) and librarian Harold E. Samuel (Yale).^[5] After satisfying themselves that the manuscript was genuine, they announced the discovery in December 1984.^[6] Their conclusions were confirmed in January 1985 by German organist Wilhelm Krumbach (1937–2005), who had been working on the same material independently, and with a fatal lack of urgency, since 1981.^[5][7][8] Wolff acknowledged that he brought his announcement forward when he learned that Krumbach was in the field.^[6][9][10] Krumbach was unhappy with the way things turned out.^[5][11]The collection was published by Wolff in 1985–1986, both in facsimile and as part of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe.^[12][13]

The chorales

The Neumeister Collection consists of 82 chorales, most of which were previously unknown (one or two of the attributions in the manuscript have been questioned):

• 38 by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
• 25 by Johann Michael Bach (1648–1694), cousin and father-in-law of Johann Sebastian
• 5 by Georg Andreas Sorge (1703–1778)
• 4 by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663–1712)
• 3 by Johann Christoph Bach (1642–1703),^[14] brother of Johann Michael and cousin of Johann Sebastian
• 1 by Daniel Erich (1649–1712)
• 1 by Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706)
• 5 unattributed works

Johann Michael Bach

The rediscovery of the Neumeister Collection quadrupled the number of keyboard works indisputably written by Johann Michael Bach, from eight to thirty-two, with six more arguably also his.^[15] Of the twenty-five pieces attributed to him in the manuscript, seven were known but incorrectly credited to other composers and eighteen were entirely new, making this the largest single trove of his work.^[16] This remains the case even if, as some have suggested, one of the chorales that appears under his name is actually by Johann Heinrich Buttstett.^[17] Wolff has proposed that the five unattributed works in the volume could also be by Johann Michael Bach—confidently in three cases, less so in the other two.^[18]

Johann Sebastian Bach

The rediscovered manuscript prompted revisions to J.S. Bach's catalogue and reconsideration of his musical development.^[19]

The collection includes thirty-eight works by J.S. Bach, now sometimes referred to as the Arnstädter Chorales. Five of them were already known from other sources:

• three in near-identical form (BWV 601 and BWV 639 from the Orgelbüchlein; and BWV 737, the authenticity of which had been considered doubtful, from a miscellaneous manuscript); and
• two in similar form, which, despite being included in the Bach catalogue, were believed to be written by others (BWV 719, wrongly attributed to Johann Christoph Bach;^[14] and BWV 742, wrongly attributed to Georg Böhm).

The other thirty-three were partly or wholly new:

• two previously known only from fragments, the authenticity of which had been considered doubtful (BWV 714 and BWV 957); and
• thirty-one previously unknown works (BWV 1090–1120) now identified as the Neumeister Chorales Nos. 1–31 (including BWV 1096, a somewhat different version of which was, in fact, known from another source, but wrongly attributed to Johann Pachelbel).

The Arnstädter Chorales are considered on stylistic grounds to be early works, probably dating from 1703 to 1707, when Bach was active at Arnstadt, and possibly even earlier.^[20] They provide a new window on his formative years as a composer and cast the chorale preludes in the Orgelbüchlein, previously considered his earliest essays in the form, in a fresh light: the Orgelbüchlein pieces are not the work of a precocious beginner, but of an already practised hand.

The Bach chorales in the Neumeister Collection attracted the interest of organists even before they were published. They were first performed privately by Wilhelm Krumbach at Utrecht in January 1985, and publicly by John Ferris and Charles Krigbaum at Yale in March.^[5][21] Later the same year, Joseph Payne made the world-premiere recording for Harmonia Mundi at St. Paul's Church in Brookline, Massachusetts, working from a photostat of the Yale manuscript, and Werner Jacob made the first recording of the Wolff edition for EMI-Angel on a restored Johann Andreas Silbermann organ at Arlesheim cathedral.^[22]

Media

	O Lamm Gottes unschuldig, BWV 1095 Performed by Ulrich Metzner
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References

External links

• Neumeister Chorales, BWV 1090–1120 (by J. S. Bach): Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• J.S. Bach's Neumeister Chorales performed by James Kibbie on historic German baroque organs