The Neumeister Collection is a compilation of 82 chorale preludes found in a manuscript copy produced by Johann Gottfried Neumeister (1757âÂÂ1840). When the manuscript was rediscovered at Yale University in the 1980s it appeared to contain 31 previously unknown early chorale settings by Johann Sebastian Bach, which were added to the BWV catalogue as Nos. 1090âÂÂ1120, and published in 1985.
Neumeister compiled his manuscript after 1790. It has been suggested that the 77 earliest works in the collection may have been copied from a single source, possibly a Bach family album put together in J. S. Bach's early years. The five works by Neumeister's own music teacher, Georg Andreas Sorge, were a later addition.
Some time after 1807 the manuscript passed to Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770âÂÂ1846), whose library was bought by Lowell Mason in 1852. After Mason's death in 1873, his collection was acquired by Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. There the Neumeister volume lay as manuscript LM 4708 until it was rediscovered "early in 1984" by musicologists Christoph Wolff (Harvard), Hans-Joachim Schulze (Bach-Archiv Leipzig), and librarian Harold E. Samuel (Yale). After satisfying themselves that the manuscript was genuine, they announced the discovery in December 1984. Their conclusions were confirmed in January 1985 by German organist (1937âÂÂ2005), who had been working on the same material independently, and with a fatal lack of urgency, since 1981. Wolff acknowledged that he brought his announcement forward when he learned that Krumbach was in the field. Krumbach was unhappy with the way things turned out.
The Neumeister Collection contains 82 chorales, most of them unpublished before the 1980s re-evaluation of the Neumeister manuscript. The attribution of a few pieces in the manuscript remains uncertain:
From the state of the manuscript Wolff concludes that the five unattributed works were written by composers represented elsewhere in the collection, whose names were omitted by accident. Weighing both textual and stylistic evidence, he proposes Johann Michael Bach as the author of all five, while allowing that one could also have been written by J. S. Bach and another by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow.
The rediscovery of the Neumeister Collection quadrupled the number of keyboard works indisputably written by Johann Michael Bach, from eight to thirty-two, with six more arguably also his. Of the twenty-five pieces attributed to him in the manuscript, seven were known but had been credited to other composers and eighteen were entirely new, making this the largest single trove of his work. This remains the case even if, as some have suggested, one of the chorales that appears under his name would have been composed by Johann Heinrich Buttstett. Wolff has proposed that the five unattributed works in the volume could also be by Johann Michael BachâÂÂconfidently in three cases, less so in the other two.
Generally attributed to J. M. Bach:
Likely by J. M. Bach:
Possibly by J. M. Bach, the five anonymous preludes:
The rediscovered manuscript prompted revisions to J. S. Bach's catalogue and reconsideration of his musical development. The collection contains 40 chorales with a BWV number:
Two chorales of the first edition of the BWV catalogue are no longer generally associated with J. S. Bach:
The other thirty-eight works are most often attributed to J. S. Bach, and are sometimes referred to as the Arnstädter Chorales. Five of them were already known from other sources:
The other thirty-three were partly or wholly new:
<ol><li>Wir Christenleut, BWV 1090</li> <li>Das alte Jahr vergangen ist, BWV 1091</li> <li>Herr Gott nun schleuÃÂ den Himmel auf, BWV 1092</li>
<li>Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen, BWV 1093</li> <li>O Jesu, wie ist deine Gestalt, BWV 1094</li> <li>O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig, BWV 1095</li> <li>Christe, der du bist Tag und Licht, BWV 1096, a.k.a. Wir danken dir, Herr Jesu Christ, possibly by J. Pachelbel, moved to Anh. III (the annex of the spurious works) in BWV<sup>2a</sup> (1998). The Bach Digital website lists both Bach and Pachelbel as possible composers.</li> <li>Ehre sei dir, Christe, der du leidest Not, BWV 1097</li> <li>Wir glauben all an einen Gott, BWV 1098</li>
<li>Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu Dir, BWV 1099</li> <li>Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 1100</li> <li>Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt, BWV 1101</li> <li>Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 1102</li> <li>Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort, BWV 1103</li> <li>Wenn dich Unglück tut greifen an, BWV 1104</li> ><li>Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 1105</li> <li>Gott ist mein Heil, mein Hilf und Trost, BWV 1106</li> <li>Jesu, meines Lebens Leben, BWV 1107</li> <li>Als Jesus Christus in der Nacht, BWV 1108</li> <li>Ach Gott, tu dich erbarmen, BWV 1109</li> <li>Oh Herre Gott, dein göttlich Wort, BWV 1110</li> <li>Nun lasst uns den Leib begraben, BWV 1111</li> <li>Christus, der ist mein Leben, BWV 1112</li> <li>Ich hab mein Sach Gott heimgestellt, BWV 1113</li> <li>Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut, BWV 1114</li> <li>Herzlich lieb hab ich dich, o Herr, BWV 1115</li>
<li>Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, BWV 1116</li> <li>Alle Menschen müssen sterben, BWV 1117</li> <li>Werde munter mein Gemüte, BWV 1118</li> <li>Wie nach einer Wasserquelle, BWV 1119</li> <li>Christ, der du bist der helle Tag, BWV 1120</li> </ol>
The Arnstädter Chorales are considered on stylistic grounds to be early works, probably dating from 1703 to 1707, when Bach was active at Arnstadt, and possibly even earlier. They provide a new window on his formative years as a composer and cast the chorale preludes in the Orgelbüchlein, previously considered his earliest essays in the form, in a fresh light: the Orgelbüchlein pieces are not the work of a precocious beginner, but of an already practised hand.
Wolff published the chorale preludes by J. S. Bach in 1985, and a facsimile of the complete collection in 1986. Scores of the other composers here: https://partitura.org/index.php/bach-johann-michael/
A facsimile of the entire collection was published in 1986. In the 21st century facsimile renderings of the Neumeister manuscript became available on the Bach Digital website.
Christoph Wolff's 2003 edition Orgelchoräle der Neumeister-Sammlung (Organ Chorales from the Neumeister Collection), Score and Critical Commentary, Volume 9 of Series IV: Organ Works of the New Bach Edition (, NBA), includes 36 chorales (BWV 714, 719, 737, 742, 957 and 1090âÂÂ1120). Of the 40 Neumeister chorales with a BWV number, four are not included in this edition:
The NBA volume presented Bach's Neumeister Chorales in the order in which they occurred in the Neumeister manuscript. The 2018 last two volumes of Breitkopf & Härtel (B&H)'s new Urtext edition of Bach's organ works included them in alphabetical order, that is, together with other chorale preludes transmitted independently of the collections collated by the composer. The B&H edition includes 35 chorale preludes of the Neumeister Collection: apart from the four BWV numbers not adopted in the NBA edition, it additionally omits BWV 1096 (likely composed by J. Pachelbel).
The Bach chorales in the Neumeister Collection attracted the interest of organists even before they were published. They were first performed privately by Wilhelm Krumbach at Utrecht in January 1985, and publicly by John Ferris and Charles Krigbaum at Yale in March. Later the same year, Joseph Payne made the world-premiere recording for Harmonia Mundi at St. Paul's Church in Brookline, Massachusetts, working from a photostat of the Yale manuscript, and Werner Jacob made the first recording of the Wolff edition for EMI-Angel on a restored Johann Andreas Silbermann organ at Arlesheim cathedral.