Bach’s Brandenburgs nearly burned on a wartime train
In 1721 Johann Sebastian Bach hand-copied six concertos for Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg—music probably written earlier. Forgotten after Bach’s death, rescued in 1849, the score later survived World War II when a librarian fled a bombed train with the manuscript under his coat.
Bach titled them Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments (BWV 1046–1051), dedicating the set on 24 March 1721 after the margrave heard him—likely during Bach’s 1719 Berlin trip to pay Michael Mietke for a new harpsichord for Prince Leopold. Christoph Wolff calls the “several instruments” label an understatement: each concerto invents a scoring without parallel, from horns and violino piccolo in No. 1 to trumpet-recorder-oboe-violin concertino in No. 2.
Whether the margrave could perform them is debated; they vanish from his inventory after his 1734 death. Ownership later passes through pupil Johann Kirnberger and Princess Anna Amalia to Berlin’s libraries; as of 2023 the autograph remains in the Berlin State Library. After Bach, only No. 5 kept currency for its keyboard brilliance until Siegfried Dehn found the set in 1849 and published it for Bach’s 1750 centenary. Recording—from Adolf Busch’s 1936 complete set onward—and historically informed practice restored their fame.
No. 1 alone has four movements and ties to hunting cantata music of 1713; No. 2’s clarino trumpet part ranks among the repertoire’s hardest and opened the Voyager Golden Record; No. 3, the shortest, for nine strings plus continuo, hides a one-bar Phrygian half-cadence that performers treat as a cadenza cue—and even appeared among Windows 98’s MIDI demos.
A job application in French courtesy became Baroque orchestra’s calling card—and almost ash in a forest.
Source: Brandenburg Concertos
