Two chaconnes for organ, found in 1992 in the Royal Library of Belgium, have been identified as early works by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Authentication of the pieces took more than 30 years because the scores were not in Bach’s hand and the copyist, Salomon Günther John, an organist who claimed to be a pupil of Bach’s, was not identified until researchers found similar handwriting in documents that John is known to have written.
The chaconnes in G minor and D minor, assigned the numbers 1178 and 1179 in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV) catalogue, were re-introduced by organist Ton Koopman at the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) in Leipzig, where Bach served as cantor in maturity and is buried.
The scores, dating from 1705, “are quite identifiable with Bach’s early style, in which the contrapuntal writing is not yet what it would become, but the imagination, grandeur, and sheer joy in playing are all there in abundance,” the Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, a Bach specialist, told The Guardian’s Philip Oltermann:
Letter V 