Overview
- The works, titled Ciacona in d minor (BWV 1178) and Ciacona in g minor (BWV 1179), were presented in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche and performed by Dutch organist Ton Koopman in a livestreamed premiere.
- Editions of both pieces were released by Leipzig publisher Breitkopf & Härtel, making the scores immediately available to performers and researchers.
- Director Peter Wollny said his confidence in the attribution is about 99.9 percent, citing stylistic fingerprints, paper evidence, and the c.1705 copies by John.
- Wollny first encountered the anonymous copies in the Royal Library of Belgium in the early 1990s and pursued more than three decades of comparative archival and digital-source research.
- The chaconnes are presented as early works from Bach’s Arnstadt period, and officials hailed the discovery as a major cultural event for Leipzig and for Bach scholarship.