page_title: Weimar concerto transcriptions (Bach)
section_title: History, purpose, transmission and significance
hierarchical_section_title: Weimar concerto transcriptions (Bach) / History, purpose, transmission and significance
caption_attribution_description: English: Musical instruments in the Bach House, Eisenach, 2014.
context_page_description: The concerto transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach date from his second period at the court in Weimar. Bach transcribed for organ and harpsichord a number of Italian and Italianate concertos, mainly by Antonio Vivaldi, but with others by Alessandro Marcello, Benedetto Marcello, Georg Philipp Telemann and the musically talented Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. It is thought that most of the transcriptions were probably made in 1713–1714. Their publication by C.F. Peters in the 1850s and by Breitkopf & Härtel in the 1890s played a decisive role in the Vivaldi revival of the twentieth century.
  Johann Sebastian Bach was a court musician in Weimar from 1708 to 1717. He wrote most, if not all, of his concerto transcriptions for organ and for harpsichord from July 1713 to July 1714. Most of these transcriptions were based on concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Other models for the transcriptions included concertos by Alessandro Marcello, Benedetto Marcello, Georg Philipp Telemann and Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar.
  Around 1715 Johann Bernhard Bach, Johann Sebastian's second cousin, copied 12 of the concerto transcriptions in a single manuscript.
context_section_description: The pleasure His Grace took in his playing fired him with the desire to try every possible artistry in his treatment of the organ.
  — Nekrolog, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola
  Bach's concerto transcriptions reflect not only his general interest in and assimilation of musical forms originating in Italy, in particular the concertos of his Venetian contemporary Antonio Vivaldi, but also the particular circumstances of his second period of employment 1708–1717 at the court in Weimar. 
  During his first brief period in Weimar in 1703 Bach was employed as a court violinist for seven months by Johann Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who ruled jointly with his elder brother Wilhelm Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. Wilhelm Ernst's Lutheran piety contrasted with his younger brother's alcoholism. On Johann Ernst's death in 1707, he was succeeded as coregent by his elder son Ernst August, who lived  with his younger stepbrother, Prince Johann Ernst, outside the ducal Wilhelmsburg in the Rotes Schloss. A talented amateur musician, from an early age Prince Johann Ernst had been taught the violin by the court violinist Gregor Christoph Eilenstein. Johann Ernst studied the keyboard with Bach's distant cousin Johann Gottfried Walther, after he became organist at the Stadtkirche in Weimar in 1707. The following year, when Bach himself was appointed as organist in  Weimar in the ducal chapel or Himmelsburg, he not only had at his disposal the recently renovated chapel organ but also the organ in the Stadtkirche. In the Wilhelmsburg, Wilhelm Ernst had already revived the court orchestra, of which Bach eventually became Concertmaster in 1714. As well as music-making in the Wilhelmsburg, Bach was almost certainly involved in the parallel more secular musical events in the Rotes Schloss organised by August Ernst and Johann Ernst. Harpsichords were available to Bach at both venues.
  Jones (2007) traces the influences on Bach's early keyboard compositions—in particular his sonatas (BWV 963/1, BWV 967) and toccatas (BWV 912a/2, BWV 915/2)—not only to the works of his older compatriots Kuhnau, Böhm and Buxtehude, but also to the works of Italian composers from the end of the seventeenth century; in particular the chamber sonatas of Corelli and the concertos of Torelli and Albinoni. 
  Early works like BWV 912a and BWV 967, probably composed before 1707, also display concerto-like elements. The first documented evidence of Bach's engagement with the concerto genre can be dated to around 1709, during his second period in Weimar, when he made a hand copy of the continuo part of Albinoni's Sinfonie e concerti a 5, Op. 2 (1700). Earlier compositions had been brought back to Weimar from Italy by the deputy Capellmeister, Johann Wilhelm Drese, during his stay there in 1702–1703. In 1709 the virtuoso violinist Johann Georg Pisendel visited Weimar: he had studied with Torelli and is likely to have acquainted Bach with more of the Italian concerto repertoire. In the same year Bach also copied out all the parts of the double violin concerto in G major, TWV 52:G2, of Georg Philipp Telemann, a work that he might have acquired through Pisendel.  Bach would also have known Telemann well then since he was court musician at Eisenach, Bach's birthplace. Telemann's concerto for solo violin, TWV 51:g1,  transcribed by Bach for harpsichord as BWV 985, comes from the same series of Eisenach concertos  as the double violin concerto; moreover, as explained in Zohn (2008), there is evidence  that the slow movement of Telemann's oboe concerto TWV 51:G2, also from the series, was borrowed and adapted by Bach for the opening sinfonia of the cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe, BWV 156 and the slow movement of the harpsichord concerto in F minor, BWV 1056, both dating from his period in Leipzig. Telemann also had a documented social connection with Bach: in March 1714 he was godparent at the baptism in Weimar of Bach's second son Carl Phillip Emanuel.
  Later in July 1713, Prince Johann Ernst returned from Utrecht after studying there for 2 years.  A keen amate
caption: Instruments in the Bachhaus Eisenach. In the foreground is a copy of a 1705 harpsichord of the type Bach would have played in Weimar. In the background is a 1650 chamber organ from Kleinschwabhausen near Weimar.
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