Trio Sonata for Two Flutes and Basso Continuo in G major (BWV 1039) (Score & Parts)

J S Bach Trio Sonata for Two Flutes and Basso Continuo in G major (BWV 1039) (Score & Parts)

For more than ten years (1729–41), with brief interruptions, Bach directed one of Leipzig’s two collegia musica.  Here some thirty semi-professional musicians, mostly university students, came together in order to give joint performances.  Their weekly concerts called for a large repertoire of chamber music, including secular cantatas, instrumental concertos, orchestral overtures, solos, trios, and quartets.  Compared to the multitude of works that Bach must have performed over the years, surprisingly little of his own chamber music has survived from the Leipzig period.

The principal source for the G major Trio is a set of handwritten parts formerly owned by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and which later entered the Royal Library in Berlin.  Two scribes were involved in the production of this manuscript.  Since one of them evidently contributed an entry to Anna Magdalena Bach’s second Notenbüchlein, it seems logical to assume that he belonged to Bach’s family circle.