Restoring Bach

Abstract

Number seven in a series presented by the American Bach Society, this volume aims, according to the blurb, to ‘restore Bach's concertos to their rightful place of honour’. Out of the four chapters contained within, three deal with the provenance and composition history of particular concertos by Bach, while the fourth considers the idea of the concerto more generally. The first two essays—studies of the keyboard concertos BWV1053 by Gregory Butler and BWV1056 by Peter Dirksen—offer detailed examinations of sources, transcription errors and stylistic aspects in order to present revised scenarios regarding the original versions of the concertos and the chronology of initial composition and subsequent arrangement. According to Butler, BWV1053 was assembled from a variety of disparate sources, while Dirksen posits a violin concerto in G minor as the model for BWV1056. Their propositions add a range of interesting new possibilities to an area of research that has preoccupied Bach scholars from Philipp Spitta onwards, asking when, how and why Bach turned towards the genre of the keyboard concerto, and interrogating his pervasive tendency to reuse and rework his own inventions.