Not Bach at all: Christ lag in Todesbanden by Johann Ludwig Krebs (KrebsWV 503/2, Emans 42)

Next to all the music of which the authorship of Johann Sebastian Bach is without any doubt, there is also a lot of music that was once attributed to Bach, but where his authorship is uncertain. That list used to be quite long. Musicological research every now and again proofs of some of these pieces that they were infact written by someone else.

There are two main numbered lists of the works of uncertain authorship. One is Schmieder's anhang (appendix) to his main catalogue of Bach-works, the famous BWV-number. Schmieder's catalogue lists over 1100 works in the main catalogue of which the authorship is without doubt and some 200 in the appendix, of which Bach's authorship is doubtful. The other list one is a catalogue compiled by Reinmar Emans, which contains another 200 works that once were attributed to Bach.

A lot of these works however, are now known to be composed by other composers. One of these works is the choral prelude to "Christ lag in Todesband". When old editions (or manuscripts, I'm not sure) surfaced, of Johann Ludwig Krebs' "Klavier Übung" (keyboard training), it contained this piece as well. A little differently though that the version Emans knew, because the original, as it turned out, was written for hands only. The version in Emans' list was adapted for organ with pedals, which makes it quite a different piece.

With hindsight it is of course easy to state that the music is clearly not in the style of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. However, the music was good enough to be thought to be perhaps a work of a youthful Bach.

The version for organ, that is now known as Emans 42 ánd as KrebsWV 503/2, is a choral Trio for organ, that is pleasant to listen to, but actually quite tricky to play. The pedal part is never above the middle c of the pedal board and mostly moves in the lower half of the lower octave. As such it’s a good practise for maintaining balance.

The recording was done with the Hauptwerk software and the sampleset, made by Sonus Paradisi, of the Schnittger organ in the St. Martini-kerk, Groningen (https://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/organs/netherlands/groningen-st-martini.html).

I recorded the music as part of @organduo's Secrets of Organ music Playing, last september (https://peakd.com/hive-175836/@primalamusica/johann-ludwig-krebs-christ-lag-in-todesbanden-krebswv-5032-or-secrets-of-organ-playing-contest-week-143). And I promised then to publish the score soon. Well, that took a litlle longer than I thought then.

But today I finally published the score: https://partitura.org/index.php/johann-ludwig-krebs-christ-lag-in-todesbanden-krebswv-503-2/

Reason enough to dust of this 5 months old recording...