By Stephen Rose

Leipzig’s churches have a long and distinguished tradition of music-making. According to most accounts, sacred music in Leipzig reached its zenith in the years after 1723, when Johann Sebastian Bach became cantor at the Thomasschule. Less well known are the musical achievements of Bach’s predecessors as Thomaskantor: Sebastian Knüpfer, Johann Schelle, and Johann Kuhnau. One reason that the compositions of Bach’s Leipzig predecessors remain little known is that only a small portion of them survive. By the 1720s such pieces were considered old-fashioned, and most manuscripts were destroyed. Hence church music from late-seventeenth-century Leipzig survives not in the city’s libraries but in other collections. One such location is the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which holds the music manuscripts collected by the English apothecary James Sherard (1666–1738). Sherard’s collection includes eight compositions by Leipzig cantors, five of which survive nowhere else. These eight works are now available in Leipzig Church Music from the Sherard Collection (Y2-020).

A-R Editions is the leading North American publisher of scholarly editions of music. We publish classical music, books related to various aspects of music study, and an online music anthology. We are also the exclusive distributor for the American Institute of Musicology.

A-R Editions is now offering music available to print online--digital print! You can purchase digital scores and then print them from your online library within the A-R website. Digital print products are reasonably priced, and printing is unlimited. This option is currently available only for our choral and keyboard music, but all our repertoire will be available soon.