Rediscovered Bach organ works performed for the first time in 300 years

18 November 2025, 15:19

Two lost works by J.S. Bach were given their debut in Leipzig.

Two long-lost organ pieces by J.S. Bach have been performed publicly in Germany for the first time in more than three centuries.

The Chaconne in D minor, BWV 1178, and the Chaconne in G minor, BWV 1179 works are believed to have been written by a teenage Bach around 1705 while he was living in Arnstadt.

Both were performed this week at Leipzig’s St Thomas Church, where Bach is buried. The story of the manuscripts goes back to 1992, when two anonymous chaconnes were found in the Royal Library of Belgium.

Only after years of painstaking research were musicologists able to confirm their authorship.

Leipzig Bach Archive director Professor Peter Wollny, who led the investigation, said that identifying the copyist was key to solving the mystery.

“I spent a long time searching for the missing piece of the puzzle in the attribution of the works,” he said, “now the whole picture is revealed. We can state for once and for all that the copies were made around 1705 by Bach pupil Salomon Günther John.”

Read more: ‘Mozart drops new music’ – fans queue to hear newly discovered work in Leipzig

Musical sensation: Presentation of newly discovered Bach works // 75 years of Bach Archive Leipzig

“Margaret Steinitz, artistic director of the London Bach Society, added: “These new discoveries are hugely important as they show further Bach's incredible composing skills even at the tender age of 18, inspiration for today's younger generation.”

The two works show a youthful composer already experimenting with structural daring and expressive freedom.

“The idea of Bach as fully-formed from the head of Zeus, attractive to our modern sensibilities, often obscures a better understanding of just what it was about the remarkably open mind of a young Johann Sebastian Bach that made him wholly unique,” harpsichordist and Bach enthusiast Mahan Esfahani told Classic FM.

“We hear a young man who is able to translate all that is outside of him into a language that is wholly his and his alone. Every work by Bach is a masterpiece because it attests to the inner workings of this sharp mind that obviously worked in overdrive. It may be young genius, but it’s genius.”