Concerto for Harpsichord,2 Recorders and Strings

In early 1729 Bach became director of the so-called »Scottish Collegium Musician« a music organization of students and local citizens. The remarkable results of this undertaking are the concertos for harpsichord. Today it is almost certain that practically all of these concertos were transcribed from concertos for melody instruments (mostly violin or oboe).

The Concerto in F major, BWV 1052 is the sixth of the harpsichord concertos contained in the autograph score that Bach wrote out in or around 1738 (Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. Bach P 234). The initials at the end of the piece, SDGl ('Soli Deo Gloria'), form a pendant to the J.J. ('Jesus Juva') found at theopening of the D-minor Concerto, BWV 1052. This indicates that BVW 1057 formed the final piece in this six-work opus, the only authentic and self-contained collection of concertos we have from Bach apart from his presentation copy of the Brandenburg Concertos (1721). Like all the other concertos in this series, BWV 1057 is an arrangement of an earlier work, in this case the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto in G major (BWV 1049).