New Bach volumes completed

German researchers have completed the final volume of a new collection of the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach, crowning a 55-year effort, the head of Leipzig’s Bach Archive said.

The Neue Bach-Ausgabe, or New Bach Edition, was compiled by the Bach Archive and the Johann Sebastian Bach Institute in Goettingen.

It consists of more than 100 volumes, with the composer’s cantatas filling more than 40 alone, said Christoph Wolff, director of the Bach Archive. The first volume was in 1953.

Some cantatas as well as several sonatas that were previously attributed to Bach were determined not to have been written by him and removed from the collection, Wolff said.

“More complicated is the content of the St. Luke Passion, which as a whole has been found not to be authentic but still contains one chorus composed by Bach,” Wolff said.

Musicians and musicologists generally consider the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, or BWV, by Wolfgang Schmieder, as the standard catalog of the composer’s works. Wolff said the new collection contains 47 recently discovered pieces not in BWV.

The Kassel-based Baerenreiter-Verlag company published the new collection.