To say that J.S. Bach's Harpsichord Concerto No. 8 in D
minor, BWV 1059, is incomplete doesn't really begin to
explain the real state of affairs. Just nine bars of
the piece -- the first nine bars -- have survived.
Because of Bach's practice of re-using and reshaping
his own material, however, it is possible to
reconstruct at least the first movement of the concerto
with reasonable accuracy, and several such
reconstructions do exist.
The situation is a complicated one and needs some
exp...(+)
To say that J.S. Bach's Harpsichord Concerto No. 8 in D
minor, BWV 1059, is incomplete doesn't really begin to
explain the real state of affairs. Just nine bars of
the piece -- the first nine bars -- have survived.
Because of Bach's practice of re-using and reshaping
his own material, however, it is possible to
reconstruct at least the first movement of the concerto
with reasonable accuracy, and several such
reconstructions do exist.
The situation is a complicated one and needs some
explaining. We know that BWV 1059, like nearly all of
Bach's harpsichord concertos, is (or perhaps was -- it
very nearly qualifies as a "lost" work) an adaptation
of a concerto written for another instrument, in this
case oboe. That work is completely lost. Before he ever
got around to making the harpsichord version (which
probably dates from the mid- to late 1730s), however,
Bach adapted the first movement of the oboe concerto
for use as the opening sinfonia of Cantata No. 35,
Geist und Seele wird verwirret, BWV 35, of 1726 -- we
know this because the surviving nine bars of the
harpsichord version are identical to the opening of BWV
35's opening sinfonia. As that sinfonia has an
obbligato organ part, it is not an impossible task to
fashion a rough cut of the first movement of the
Harpsichord Concerto No. 8 in D minor.
Furthermore, it may well be the case that the remaining
two movements of the concerto, seemingly lost
altogether, are to be found in that same cantata. The
very first solo alto aria of the cantata also has an
obbligato organ part and may be the slow movement "in
disguise" (of course, we know from other examples of
Bach adapting his concerto slow movements as arias that
the music sometimes takes very different shapes to
accommodate two soloists -- the singer and the
obbligato -- and reconstruction by working backwards is
a risky business), and the second half of the cantata
begins with another sinfonia that some feel to be a new
form of the oboe concerto finale.
Because the work does not actually exist in a proper
sense, performances and recordings of BWV 1059 are
understandably few and far between. But there is value
in a reconstruction such as Igor Kipnis' well-known
one, enough to give us a taste, perhaps, of the lost
ambrosia.
Although originally written for Harpsichord, Oboe,
Strings and Continuo, I created this Arrangement of the
Concerto in D Minor (BWV 1059R) for Oboe & Strings (2
Violins, Viola & Cello).
SHEET MUSIC