Bach Sends Six Concertos to Brandenburg

On 24 March 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach signed a formal French dedication on a presentation manuscript titled Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments. Bach, serving as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Kothen, sent the fair copy directly to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. The composer had performed for the margrave several years earlier, an encounter likely taking place during a 1719 trip to Berlin to purchase a harpsichord crafted by Michael Mietke. In the inscribed dedication, Bach politely presented the concertos as an offering of duty, having received a request from the nobleman to submit examples of his compositions.

The origin of the individual works predated the compiled presentation volume. For instance, the opening movement of the First Concerto in F major derived from an introductory passage composed for the 1713 cantata Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd, BWV 208, while an early version of the Fifth Concerto in D major dates from around 1720. While Heinrich Besseler proposed that the combined instrumentation across the works aligned with the seventeen court musicians available at Kothen, musicologist Christoph Wolff argues that the overall collection did not mirror any specific ensemble structure maintained by either Prince Leopold or the margrave.