Neumeister Collection
82 chorale preludes by J. S. Bach and others in a manuscript copy produced by Johann Gottfried Neumeister, 31 of which were unknown before its rediscovery in the 1980s and have been assigned BWV numbers 1090-1120
The Neumeister Collection is a compilation of 82 chorale preludes found in a manuscript copy produced by Johann Gottfried Neumeister (1757–1840). When the manuscript was rediscovered at Yale University in the 1980s it appeared to contain 31 previously unknown early chorale settings by Johann Sebastian Bach, which were added to the BWV catalogue as Nos. 1090–1120, and published in 1985.
History
Neumeister compiled his manuscript after 1790. It has been suggested that the 77 earliest works in the collection may have been copied from a single source, possibly a Bach family album put together in J. S. Bach's early years. The five works by Neumeister's own music teacher, Georg Andreas Sorge, were a later addition.
Some time after 1807 the manuscript passed to Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770–1846), whose library was bought by Lowell Mason in 1852. After Mason's death in 1873, his collection was acquired by Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. There the Neumeister volume lay as manuscript LM 4708 until it was rediscovered "early in 1984" by musicologists Christoph Wolff (Harvard), Hans-Joachim Schulze (Bach-Archiv Leipzig), and librarian Harold E. Samuel (Yale). After satisfying themselves that the manuscript was genuine, they announced the discovery in December 1984.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Neumeister Collection” is 82 chorale preludes by J. S. Bach and others in a manuscript copy produced by Johann Gottfried Neumeister, 31 of which were unknown before its rediscovery in the 1980s and have been assigned BWV numbers 1090-1120. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Neumeister, chorale and preludes, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “82 chorale preludes by J. S. Bach and others in a manuscript copy produced by Johann Gottfried Neumeister, 31 of which were unknown before its rediscovery in the 1980s and have been assigned BWV numbers 1090-1120” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1816777. VIAF identifies the subject as 307169516. The Library of Congress control number is n85236657. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1757, 1840, 1090 and 1120.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Neumeister Collection”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Neumeister Collection primary sources, Neumeister Collection archive and Neumeister research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Neumeister Collection” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.