Jazz, spiritual and other musical styles blended with Bach to complete Baroque maestro’s Little Organ Book, left unfinished when he died

The titan of Baroque planned to write 164 chorales for his Little Organ Book but finished only 46; modern composers including John Rutter have finished the job

The completed work, with its newly written chorales in styles including jazz and minimalism, will be premiered in a series of 10 concerts in London

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Johann Sebastian Bach at the organ, 1725. His unfinished work Little Organ Book has been completed by contemporary composers and will have its premiere in London. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 4:15pm, 29 Jul 2022

After more than 300 years, Johann Sebastian Bach’s mysteriously unfinished Orgelbuchlein – Little Organ Book – is to receive a full UK premiere as the Royal College of Organists (RCO) presents a complete performance of the project in London.

The premiere of Bach And Friends: The Orgelbuchlein Completed will take place in September and demonstrate 118 new pieces of music composed to complete the unfinished Orgelbuchlein.

German composer Bach intended for the original manuscript to contain 164 chorales but ultimately left it unfinished with only 46 completed and nothing but the titles written for the remainder.

Over the course of more than a decade, the Orgelbuchlein project’s director and organist William Whitehead has commissioned contemporary composers such as John Rutter, Judith Bingham, Sir Stephen Hough, Sally Beamish, Louis Andriessen, Daniel Kidane, Roxanna Panufnik and Nico Muhly to fill in the Orgelbuchlein’s missing pieces.

The Orgelbuchlein project’s director, organist William Whitehead. Photo: William Whitehead

The result of Whitehead and the composers’ work is a new and now complete Orgelbuchlein – a collection of 164 short chorale preludes containing a cross-section of contemporary European styles, with newly edited versions of Bach’s original pieces.