	Sonata for Violin, Flute, and Clavier, in C minor (in the “Musical Offering”) (bk. 237 p. 3) (1747).
	Three Partitas for the Lute (?1740).[345]

Organ:—

	The Catechism Choral Preludes (in Clavierübung, Part III.) (bk. 16) (1739).
	Fugue in D minor (in ditto) (bk. 16 p. 49) (1739).
	Prelude and Fugue in E flat major (in ditto) (bk. 6 p. 28) (1739).
	Do. do. the “Great,” in C major (bk. 9 p. 156).
	Do. do. the “Great,” in B minor (bk. 7 p. 52) (1727-36).
	Do. do. the “Great,” in E minor (bk. 8 p. 98).
	Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch” (bk. 19) (1746).
	The Schübler Choral Preludes (bk. 16) (c. 1747-50).
	The Eighteen Choral Preludes (bk. 17) (c. 1747-50).
	The Musical Offering (P. bk. 219) (1747).
	The Art of Fugue (P. bk. 218) (1749).

APPENDIX II. THE CHURCH CANTATAS ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY

We have the statement of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach,[346] confirmed by Forkel,[347] Bach's earliest biographer, that his father composed five Cantatas for every Sunday and Festival of the ecclesiastical year. Concerted music was sung at Leipzig annually on forty-three Sundays and sixteen week-days.[348] Bach therefore must have written at least 295 Cantatas. Of this number he composed at least thirty before 1723. Hence approximately 265 were written at Leipzig. But Bach's fertility does not appear to have outlived the year 1744. We have reason, therefore, to conclude that the 265 Leipzig Cantatas were written in the course of twenty-one years, that is, between 1723 and 1744. To complete that number Bach must have composed a new Cantata every month, a surprising but demonstrable conclusion.

Of the 295 Cantatas only 202 have come down to us, three of them in an incomplete state.[349] Of those written before 1723 the survivors are too scanty to indicate a rate of productivity. But thereafter we have fuller materials for a calculation. Bach, as Cantor, conducted his first Leipzig Cantata on May 30, 1723, and in the following sixteen months produced twenty-four Cantatas, at the [pg 164] rate of more than one a month.[350] Beginning at the New Year of 1725 he wrote eighteen Cantatas in nine months, some of which, however, may belong to the years 1726-7-8-9. But even so, his monthly average seems to have been maintained. For 1730 we have, perhaps, ten Cantatas. For 1731 about twenty survive, of which half a dozen may belong to 1732, a deduction which still preserves Bach's steady average. In 1735 he produced actually nineteen Cantatas between the New Year and the following November, though not all of them are positively dated. Thereafter his activity is less certainly measured. But from 1736 till the end of 1744 he composed fifty-three Cantatas, at the rate, that is, of at least six every year, without making allowance for Cantatas written and lost.

There are few phenomena in the record of art more extraordinary than this unflagging cataract of inspiration, in which masterpiece followed masterpiece with the monotonous periodicity of a Sunday sermon. Its musical significance has been presented with illuminating exegesis by more than one commentator. But its literary apparatus has captured little attention. Yet Bach's task must have been materially eased or aggravated according as the supply of libretti was regular or infrequent, while the flow of his inspiration must have been governed by their quality. Moreover, the libretto was the medium through which he offered the homage of his art to the service of God. The subject therefore deserves attention. However trivial, measured against the immensities of Bach's genius, the study will at least provide a platform from which to contemplate it.

At the outset the opinion may be hazarded that the provision of his weekly libretti caused Bach greater anxiety than the setting of them to music, a task which he accomplished with almost magical facility. It is [pg 165] true that from the early part of the 18th century cycles of Cantata texts for the Church's year were not infrequently published. Bach was in more or less intimate touch with the authors of four, perhaps five, printed collections of the kind. But he used them with surprising infrequency. Neumeister's published cycles provided him with seven libretti,[351] Franck's with sixteen,[352] Picander's with ten,[353] Marianne von Ziegler's with nine,[354] and Helbig's with two.[355] He took three libretti from the Bible,[356] and the hymn-book furnished him with eleven more.[357] But all these published sources together only account for fifty-eight texts. Bach possessed only one book that could assist his own efforts at authorship—Paul Wagner's eight-volumed Hymn-book—whence he took the stanzas which decorate his Cantatas like jewels in the rare settings he gave them. It was, therefore, mainly upon writers with whom he was brought into occasional or official contact that Bach depended for his texts.