Musical Offering (BWV 1079) (Study Score)

J S Bach Musical Offering (BWV 1079) (Study Score)
format 22.5 x 16.5cm

The Musical Offering owes its origin to Johann Sebastian Bach's visit to the Prussian court of Frederick II, for whom his son Carl Philipp Emanuel served as harpsichordist.  The memorable occasion of the king's encounter with the "famous Capellmeister Bach of Leipzig" on May 7-8, 1747 was fully reported within only a few days by the newspapers in Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Magdeburg.  They also mention Bach's promise, expressed at the court, that he intended "to set . . . down on paper in a regular fugue, and have...engraved on copper" the "exceedingly beautiful" theme which the king had placed before him. 

Of course, upon his return from the journey Bach did not confine himself to the perfecting of the improvised fugue (as it probably appears in the 3-part ricercar).  To the further manipulations of the Thema Regium belong the 6-part ricercar, as a belated fulfilment of the royal desire for a "fugue with six obbligato parts" for the improvisation of which Bach had only trusted himself with a theme of his own choosing, then the trio sonata as a special gift to the flute-playing monarch for the enrichment of his repertoire of chamber music and finally a series of ten canonic settings.

The composition of the entire work was completed in July 1747; the print appeared at the Leipzig Michaelmas fair at the end of September of the same year.

- Urtext of the New Bach Edition