# BWV



## Oliver (Feb 14, 2012)

I know BWV groups Bach's works into categories, the first being the cantatas, then the motets etc. What I cannot work out is how the pieces were ordered within each category. It certainly is not by date of composition. For example, BWV 150 was composed around 1707, and BWV 2 in 1724. Any ideas?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

The cantatas were originally numbered during the creation of the complete edition of the Bach Gesellschaft in the 19th century. Their numbering was probably largely based on the findings of Philip Spitta, who wrote a 2-volume biography of Bach. As the cantata numbering at the time of Schmieder(the creator of the BWV catalog) had been around for many decades, he simply took that.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

You have to remember that when the first complete edition was being assembled, there was still only the murkiest sense of how much and what Bach had written, and new things were still being found (and indeed still are being found today). Looking at ink and watermarks of paper to judge dates of composition is only a very recent thing, so many of the dates assigned to them were more or less guesswork, often based on style. Unlike Mozart, Bach didn't habitually date everything from his pen. We have the advantage of an additional 100-150 years of scholarship to make a better timeline that the publishers of the Bach Gesamtausgabe didn't have, so cut them some slack. They were trying their best. There's a lot about the order that Bach composed various things that we still don't have a very good handle on.


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

Cantatas are listed by the date of their first publication by Bach Gesellschaft from 1851, sorted by the editors in groups of 10. details can be found at http://cn.imslp.org/wiki/Bach-Gesellschaft_Ausgabe_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian).


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