- This is a very early work of Bach’s. He probably wrote it before 1708, when he began working at the court of Weimar at the age of 23.1
- Bach’s biographer Christoph Wolff describes this early work as “youthful and unrestrained,” and says that it might reflect the writing and playing of a very young Bach who was eager to display his virtuosity, but who was perhaps “still not quite sure how to manage certain aspects of form and fugal counterpoint.”2
- Wolff also notes that later in life, Bach described young organists who play in this showy style as “Clavier hussars” (presumably because he lacked the term “aspirational rock stars”)
Sources
- Christoph Wolff and Walter Emery, “Bach, Johann Sebastian,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 12, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278195.
- Christoph Wolff, Bach: The Learned Musician (UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 72.
Cut IDs
46233 20837 45341 10573 11237 11801 19276 19874 22686