“We have until now not had anything dated before 1700,” Bach-Archiv Director Christoph Wolff said in an August 31 Reuters report, “and what is particularly important is that these are not just manuscripts but musical arrangements which are particularly demanding.” Wolff added that a note attached to the Reinken manuscript confirmed that Bach had studied in Lüneburg with the North German organist Georg Böhm.
The Amalia Library’s collections were badly damaged by a devastating fire in September 2004, but the Bach manuscripts survived because they had been stored in the building’s vault.
Posted September 1, 2006.