A Rare Fragment of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 188 Cantata Offered at RR Auction

Although Johann Sebastian Bach was respected by his peers during his lifetime, the brilliance of his compositions went unmarked for half a century after his death. Changing religious and political trends placed his church cantatas out of reach for the general public. Bach’s legacy did not languish long, however. His sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, worked to preserve their father’s music and promote his works after his death. Many of Bach’s original manuscripts are still available today due to this preservation.

A piece of Johann Sebastian Bach’s legacy will soon be available in RR Auction’s upcoming Fine Autographs and Artifacts sale. An original fragment of Bach’s handwritten manuscript for Ich habe meine Zuversicht (BWV 188) leads the event, which will begin on April 12, 2023 at 6:00 PM EDT.

Born in 1685 to a large family of north German musicians, Johann Sebastian Bach likely received a vigorous, communal musical education as a boy. He sang in a boy’s choir in Michaelskirche, Lüneburg, an experience that later influenced his interest in composing sacred rather than secular music. Bach was a competent organist by the age of 18. His career as a composer bloomed from there. 

By the 1720s, Bach had started to experiment with styles and forms inspired by Italian operas and composers such as Antonio Vivaldi. He worked under the patronage of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. It was a productive but tumultuous period for Bach, marked by the unexpected death of his first wife, his second marriage to Anna Magdalena Wilcken, and his friendship with the musically-inclined prince. Bach also composed church music for the city of Leipzig during this period. He produced many new cantatas, sometimes as many as one per week. This included Ich habe meine Zuversicht, BWV 188, which Bach intended for the 21st Sunday after Trinity in October of 1728. The piece was written for four solo voices, a choir, oboes, violins, violas, and an organ.

The fragment of BWV 188 available with RR Auction comprises 11 ½ bars in the cantata’s fourth movement, an alto aria in E minor key with cello and organ obbligato. It is known as Unerforschlich ist die Weise, or Inscrutable are the ways of the Lord. The present fragment contains the words “…Seinen führt, unerforschlich ist die Weise, Wie der Herr die Seinen führt, unerforschlich ist die Weise, Wie…” A meditation on the Crucifixion and human suffering, the music is dark and dramatic. It comes to auction with an estimate of USD 400,000 to $500,000. The fragment itself has been inlaid in a larger sheet of paper. Half of the piece has heavy ink corrosion resulting in cracks and losses; the bottom half remains in good condition. 

Johann Sebastian Bach’s manuscript for BWV 188 scattered to the winds in the decades following his death. More than half of the manuscript has been lost since the early 19th century. The remaining pages landed in private collections around the world. Before coming to auction, this fragment was acquired by the musicologist Friedrich Wilhelm Jähns, then by Viennese collector Gustav Petter and then Nora Kluge (née von Hase) of Lübeck, wife of the composer and musicologist Manfred Kluge. It sold at auction with Christie’s in 1981 and again in 2014. As this fragment returns to the market for the first time in almost a decade, the upcoming sale presents a rare opportunity to own a piece of Bach’s legacy and reflect on the composer’s enduring genius. 

RR Auction’s Fine Autographs and Artifacts event will begin at 6:00 PM EDT on April 12, 2023. Visit Bidsquare to find the complete catalog and register to bid. 

For more coverage of this event, visit Auction Daily.