Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV). Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian BachChristine Blanken, Christoph Wolff, and Peter Wollny

Abstract

The expanded third edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, known in the trade as BWV3, was unfurled in Germany late last year with great fanfare, and with good reason. Ten years in the making, it not only updates, refines, and expands the thematic work catalogue of the previous editions but also summarizes new areas of Bach research that have crystallized in recent times: the contents of Bach’s music library, the copyists who assisted him in writing out his music and performance materials, the early posthumous prints and modern first editions of his works, and the owner, publisher, and auction catalogues that have allowed scholars to trace the provenance of both extant and lost pieces. By any measure, BWV3 is a monumental musicological accomplishment. The original catalogue was assembled by Wolfgang Schmieder, the veteran bibliographer who served as archivist for Breitkopf & Härtel, publisher of the Bach-Gesamtausgabe (BG; 1851–99). Issued in 1950 after a long delay caused by the Second World War (Schmieder completed the catalogue in the spring of 1943, but his original manuscript and typeset text were destroyed in the bombing of Leipzig later that year), the BWV was designed to serve as a supplementary guide to the BG edition. As a consequence, Schmieder adopted the BG’s organizational scheme for Bach’s vocal and instrumental works, assigning BWV numbers to the church cantatas, for instance, not in the order in which they were composed or in which they occurred in the liturgical year, but rather in the order in which they were issued in the BG. Thus, the ten cantatas in volume 1 of the BG became BWV 1–10, the ten in volume 2 became BWV 11–20, and so forth, the even though the works were written by Bach at various times for a diverse array of Sundays and feasts. Mein Herz schwimmt im Blut, the last sacred cantata issued by the BG, became BWV 199, despite its origin as an early Weimar composition.