Talk:List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach printed during his lifetime

message: Every Bach composition should have its own article, though it is sensible to begin with that collections go in one article - e.g. French suites, English suites, well-tempered clavier, clavier-ubung 3, and so on. Every cantata should have its own article. 
The title format for each article should be its name followed by BWV number in most cases - e.g. Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 531 - this makes it clear it is by Bach and also exactly which composition it refers to, in the commonly denoted way. In multiple-title names, it should be e.g. Partitas, BWV 825-830 - properly with a long-dash in the middle. For very well-known titles, such as 'well-tempered clavier' (and when Bach is clearly the only one to have written a piece with the title), the BWV numbers can be omitted. I've used (J. S. Bach) as a modifier for 'harpsichord concertos' because they are not continuous in BWV numbers and are not a unified set - so these naming rules can be modified where it is sensible to do so.
In each case, the BWV number should also be made as a redirect to the article in question: e.g. BWV 531 would redirect to Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 531. This makes linking to Bach compositions extremely easy - just use the BWV number - when otherwise confusion might arise about what the exact title was. It also makes it easier to find the article direct through a search. 
In the case of multiple articles, each BWV number should be linked in a similar way to the title - so for Brandenburg Concertos, I've linked BWV 1046 and BWV 1047 and so on up to BWV 1051, all to the article. Only when the multiple articles get too long should there be an article about each piece in a unified set - and we are nowhere near this stage yet on any of the collections.
In writing articles on individual compositions, the use of pictures of musical examples, especially of themes, etc., should ideally be included - see Sonata on the 94th Psalm for an example of how I've done this. As the music is public domain in most editions, this can be easy to capture with picture editing software or a camera. A good source of imformation for writing articles on the cantatas will be http://www.bach-cantatas.com/ Clavecin 12:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestions for creation of articles on individual Bach compositions

message: At least the following works need to be added to the list:
* Six Schubler Chorals BWV 645-650
* Einige Canonische Veraenderungen (Vom Himmel Hoch) BWV 769
--81.173.230.109 07:43, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Incomplete

message: These were never called Prelude and Fugue in Eb by Bach.  This should read Prelude in Eb... Fugue in Eb.  I will correct it.  The tradition to play them as a unit seems to have been initiated by Mendelssohn:   Jubilee♫clipman 23:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Eb Prelude and Eb Fugue

message: The discussion section "Incomplete" seems to contradict the statement in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gott_ist_mein_K%C3%B6nig,_BWV_71 that this cantata "is the first of Bach's works to be printed (an unusual event paid for by the city council); it is the only cantata to have been printed before the composer's death."  The "Incomplete" section may be quoting another part of that article concerning a second cantata commissioned after BWV 71.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.89.76.235 (talk) 17:02, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cantata 71 

message: Very few comprehensive articles haves been written on most of these works. That applies in particular to Clavier-Übung I. On the other hand, that is not true of Clavier-Übung III and the Canonic Variations, BWV 769. I was the main editor responsible for creating those WP articles. They were written using the best scholarly sources available, the main one being the book of Williams. This WP article is a list and should not invent its own bogus method of referencing, much of which is due to Francis Schonken. Simple statements of fact are available in the secondary sources and those are the only ones that should be used. The idea that WP can be edited by only looking at sources available online—many of them primary sources dating back to the 18th and early 19th century—is untenable, unscholarly and contrary to wikipedia guidelines. Mathsci (talk) 09:17, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a clear distinction between the types of references used in this list-article. There are the references to the original printed publications of Bach, which form an unambiguous whole. There are the historical references—all primary sources—to 18th or early 19th century commentators. And then there are the modern usable references, i.e. secondary sources. It is an easy matter to find modern accounts of Art of the Fugue and The Musical Offering in English to which reference could be made. This applies equally well to all the other works (the Partitas, the Goldberg Variations, etc). Numbering amongst Bach's most celebrated works, these are treated extensively in standard modern textbooks. Mathsci (talk) 11:15, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: I cannot see that Francis Schonken is adding any new material to this list-article. He is adding bogus primary sources (see above), but that is a net negative. Until I added the reference to the book of Peter Williams, there was no proper sourcing in almost all the article. Could Francis Schonken please explain the new content he is adding or intends to add to this list and explain which sources he is adding? He can place  on a section of the article; no need to do it on the whole article, unless he has some extensive new information to add. That seems highly unlikely. Mathsci (talk) 09:40, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Francis Schonken does not appear to be making major changes. If he is, he chould explain himself here. what are the new sources, the new content? That's easy enough for him to explain. If he is working on a section in which he is an expert, he can place an  tag there. At the  moment he appears to be gaming the system. The references that he has added are almost all primary. I have been the only one to add a decent secondary source. For the keyboard works, there are plenty of them. Likewise, The Musical Offering and The Art of the Fugue. One simple reference to a secondary source is adequate. Mathsci (talk) 09:57, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major edits? 

message: At the moment in his editing and his timetabling, Francis Schonken seems to have created a scheme that prevents other users from being able to contribute or participate in this topic. Little major content from Francis Schonken's efforts have so far resulted from producing reliable secondary sources. Given the topic, there are vast amounts on this topic, which could be briefly and usefully summarised in these secondary sources. Some attempt should be made to counterbalance dry data from outdated and often primary sources: this type of dry data risks wikipedia readers being discouraged from the subject matter. I have made a minor start in rectifying this. Mathsci (talk) 00:05, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: See above. These edits remove information in an unhelpful way that is hard to understand. As far as I can tell, as the main editor of the article Clavier-Übung III, the edits as the moment seem to be disruptive vandalism. The edits at the moment (5 October 2020) have one source (concocted from the Bach Archive), not several as in previous sources, which have been removed without explanation (hence, vandalism). The sources of Peters exist, so why suppress sources in that way?  Mathsci (talk) 22:14, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: For CU III, this is a complete mess, created by edits that are are at the moment, quite out of of control. Mathsci (talk) 22:52, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:OWN]] 

message: I think it would be interesting for the reader to compare Bach's printed output with that of some of his contemporaries:
* Smaller printed output, e.g.:
** Domenico Scarlatti
** Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel
** Christoph Graupner
* Printed output somewhat comparable to Bach's, e.g.:
** François Couperin
** Antonio Vivaldi
* More prolific in printed output:
** Georg Philipp Telemann
... or other composers, e.g. Louis Marchand, Johann Adolf Scheibe, ... Would there be any secondary sources discussing this? --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:00, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: For clarity: in the article Bach's printed output is now compared to that of "earlier composers such as Monteverdi, Palestrina, Praetorius and Schütz"; I'm asking for input, reliable sources, discussing the same for composers of Bach's generation. Might be such sources don't exist, but that does not make the question inappropriate for this talk page. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, for clarity, I'm not preventing "other users from being able to contribute or participate in this topic" – another reason why I opened this topic, which in a concrete way enables participation. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:48, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Comparing Bach's printed output with that of some of his contemporaries

message: This article as it currently reads is far too fuzzy, even perhaps coy or disingenuous, about the distinction. Printing is not publishing and publishing is not necessarily printing. Grove puts it thus: "Musical texts may be printed but not published. Luxurious editions were often prepared as keepsakes for private and limited circulation, as, for example, were the earliest copies of Parthenia (London, 1613/14); later impressions of this book, however, were intended for sale and should therefore be regarded as having been published. Other music was printed but not published in order to ensure control over performances.... The opposite condition can also exist: music may be published but not printed." TheScotch (talk) 22:13, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Printing versus publishing