Johann Sebastian Bach

Abstract Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Thuringia, on 21 March 1685 and died in Leipzig, Saxony, on 28 July 1750. The BWV numbers refer to Wolfgang Schmieder’s catalogue of Bach’s works, published in 1950. Schmieder was as retiring as one imagines librarians and archivists to be, and he did not want the items in the catalogue he spent years making referred to by S-numbers, comparable to the K-numbers associated with Ludwig Köchel’s Mozart catalogue; he recommended instead the use of BWV for Bach Werke Verzeichnis (Catalogue of Bach’s Works). Schmieder’s catalogue is arranged by categories rather than chronologically; thus his numbers tell us nothing about when a given work was composed. This is just as well, given the extensive revisions in Bach chronology that were made not long after the publication of the catalogue.