Overview
- The Ciacona in D minor BWV 1178 and the Ciacona in G minor BWV 1179 received their world premiere at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche performed by Dutch organist Tom Koopmann.
- The Bach-Archiv Leipzig presented the pieces and a Leipzig publisher issued editions on Monday, making the scores available to the public.
- Both works survive only in copies discovered in the Royal Library of Belgium, not in Bach’s hand and originally undated and unsigned.
- Director Peter Wollny led a decades-long investigation that combined provenance research, handwriting comparison and a new digital portal of Bach-family sources.
- The copyist was identified as Bach pupil Salomon Günther John, dating the manuscripts to about 1705 and aligning the music’s style with the composer’s early output at roughly age 18.