Essential Repertoire,
Piano Sheet Music Essentials: J.S. Bach
Probably one of the first names that comes to mind when we think about the keyboard is Johann Sebastian Bach, and for good reason! Bach remains one of the most celebrated composers to have ever lived, and was incredibly influential to many composers that came after him.
In our Piano Sheet Music Essentials series, we aim to offer recommendations for some of the most popular piano pieces by a selection of celebrated composers, broken up into general difficulty level, so pianists of all ages and abilities can begin to explore the works of great classical composers. This article focuses on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, renowned composer of the Baroque era.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany in 1685 to a remarkable family of musicians. He was by far the most prominent in a long line of musicians and had much success in his lifetime. After leaving school in 1703 he was appointed as court musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst in Weimar, where he quickly gained a reputation for being an outstanding keyboard player. He wrote many church cantatas and organ works here before taking up the position of Kapellmeister in Köthen in 1717. It was here where he was mostly engaged with chamber music, and composed his famous Brandenburg Concertos. In 1723 he took up his final posting as cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he remained until his death in 1750.
Bach was a preeminent composer of High Baroque music, and his skill for counterpoint has arguably never been matched. A long list of prominent composers took inspiration from his compositions and today he is considered one of the greatest composers of all time.
Easy - Intermediate Pieces
The pieces listed below are suitable for beginner to early intermediate pianists. As with all sheet music, some basic music theory and an understanding of how to read and interpret sheet music is required to play these pieces. However, these selections include some of the easiest works by Bach, alongside transcriptions of more difficult pieces, making them accessible choices for beginners. These pieces offer an introduction into the world of J.S. Bach, and include popular pieces from Anna Magdalena's Note Book, The Well Tempered Clavier, and more.
Learn from the master. Johann Sebastian Bach composed countless pieces specifically for his many students. My First Bach contains many of these educational pieces which are, for the most part, arranged in increasing difficulty. Easy two-part chorales and dances are followed by more demanding little preludes, two-part inventions and the first Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Available Format: Sheet Music
As with all Alfred Masterwork Editions, the thirteen selections of this book appear in their original, unsimplified forms. Menuets, marches, musettes and preludes comprise this carefully edited volume for early-intermediate pianists. Background material describes dance forms, ornamentation and dotted rhythms. Editorial indications for tempi, dynamics and articulations appear in gray print, and are based on scholarly research. It provides a valuable introduction to the keyboard works of this master composer.
Available Format: Sheet Music/CD
My First Book Of Bach contains twenty-six favourite pieces in easy piano arrangements, edited by David Dutkanicz. Students of all ages will delight in these simple piano arrangements of familiar melodies such as Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring, Wachet Auf and highlights from the Brandenburg Concertos, Goldberg Variations and Inventions, plus menuets, gavottes, bourees and other fun-to-play pieces, all gathered together here to demonstrate the beauty, enjoyment and skill of J.S. Bach's compositions.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This edition combines the contents of both books of the timeless Bach/Carroll Schirmer Library volume. Includes audio recorded by the editor and performance notes on the individual pieces.
Available Format: Sheet Music/CD
Twenty-nine pieces, including selections from Anna Magdalena's Note Book, The Little Clavier Book, and other suitable works for the beginning pianist. Includes the original prefaces to both Bach for Beginners books, highlighting the importance of Bach's keyboard music in the development of beginning pianists. This complete edition offers introductory Bach keyboard literature at a value price.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This collection of easy arrangements for piano of well-known choral, organ and orchestral works by J. S. Bach has enjoyed great popularity since its first appearance. Another easy arrangement has been added to this new edition in response to popular demand: the famous Sinfonia from the Christmas Oratorio.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This collection of thirty popular original compositions and arrangements for piano presents a selection of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach that will delight any pianist. Besides the Prelude and Fugue in C major from the Well-Tempered Clavier and other popular educational pieces, this volume also contains many arrangements, such as the Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 or the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. All the pieces are of an easy or intermediate level of difficulty.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Intermediate – Early Advanced Pieces
The following pieces are suitable for intermediate to early advanced pianists. Some publications will include pieces that are easier to master, and some that are much more advanced. Our selections below include popular pieces such as the Two-Part Inventions and the Aria from The Goldberg Variations.
This practical edition offers a selection of the easiest keyboard and dance pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Bach - At The Piano
Sixteen well-known original pieces in progressive order of difficulty with practical comments
Johann Sebastian Bach is more or less the alpha and omega of keyboard playing: there is hardly a piano pupil who did not start off with his little preludes or his inventions. And almost all pianists regard his Well-tempered Clavier as an unsurpassed highpoint in the history of piano music. Our volume follows these well-trodden paths, but not without the occasional sideways glance at some less prominent pieces by the Master, such as his picturesque Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother.
Available Format: Sheet Music
A fine selection of both original works for piano and arrangements of some of Bach's most famous works, including a CD with full performances of all the pieces! Includes Two-Part Inventions, In Tears Of Grief from the St. Matthew Passion, and Air on a G String.
Available Format: Sheet Music/2 x CD
Drawn from Christoph Wolff’s new and cutting-edge scholarly edition of the complete Anna Magdalena Notebooks, Edition Peters is proud to present a new volume of shorter and easier pieces from the notebooks, perfect for practical use by students of all ages and their teachers.
Available Format: Sheet Music
For those looking for a comprehensive collection of Bach's music, The Indispensable Bach Collection is the perfect choice. Featuring twenty-three of Bach's most famous masterpieces.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Advanced – Professional Level Pieces
Lastly, these selections are most suited for advanced to professional musicians, including some of the most challenging Bach compositions. The selections below include a combination of full works and collections, including the French and English Suites, Toccatas, and the complete Well-Tempered Clavier.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s three great cycles of suites belong to the fundamental canon of keyboard literature: the Partitas and the so-called English and French Suites. It is the French Suites that have long been by far the most popular – and this was also the case at the time that they were written. This Henle Urtext edition has been completely revised, and also offers new fingerings. It enables pianists and Bach enthusiasts alike to re-discover Bach’s universe for themselves!
Available Format: Sheet Music
Urtext Edition including fingering suggestions. The Goldberg Variations are without a doubt the most important piano cycle of the 18th century. Only Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations from the 19th century can be compared to them as far their far-reaching significance is concerned.
Available Format: Sheet Music
An authoritative and accurate Barenreiter Urtext Edition of Bach's Toccatas, BWV 910-916 for solo piano, edited by Peter Wollny.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This Wiener Urtext Edition of J.S. Bach's English Suites addresses the problematic question of extinct secondary sources. With Bach's autograph no longer surviving, this edition attempts to extract the original text from a plethora of manuscript copies by means of detailed comparisons and deduction. All editorial decisions are documented in an extensive critical commentary, with the aim of enabling the readers to conduct their own critical evaluation of the musical text. Indispensable notes on authentic performance practice contain valuable information for the performer.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias, better known as two- and three-part inventions, were an integral part of the teaching repertoire used in the composer’s piano lessons. And they still are! For piano pupils, there is no getting away from them, for their basic demands, that is ‘to learn to play in tune’ and ‘to achieve to play in a cantabile style’, are still valid. The notes on interpretation and the critical remarks provide information on further aspects of the performance practice.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Johann Sebastian Bach's idea of composing a collection of preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys was new and revolutionary in the second decade of the 18th century. He was the first composer to conquer the entire breadth of tonality in his Das Wohltemperirte Clavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier), thus providing the musical world with a masterpiece of keyboard literature. The preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier embrace an entire cosmos of compositional devices and musical characters. Here Bach not only presented the sum total of keyboard artistry in his day but foresaw its future evolution. His treatment of the keys marked a turning point in music history.
Book two is also available here.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Gift Ideas for Bach Aficionados
Includes all works for solo keyboard. An amazingly inexpensive study edition presenting all of Bach's clavier music in four large, handy volumes containing the definitive Urtext from the New Bach Edition. This unique edition was prepared by internationally recognized scholars on the basis of all known sources and the latest research findings. Besides familiar versions of many pieces, the reader will also discover widely divergent and heavily ornamented variants from Bach's immediate circle. Many of these variants appear here for the first time in print.
Available Format: Sheet Music
What is usually presented as ‘the’ Anna Magdalena Notebook is a set of excerpts from the 1725 collection. The scholarship that informed the New Bach Edition in 1957 has been greatly developed and expanded since then. Now, for the first time, Edition Peters presents a new Urtext edition of the Notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach containing all the material from the 1722 and 1725 notebooks together in one volume, in the original landscape format.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Ellena Taylor - Sheet Music and Books Manager
