BWV Bach Works Catalogue
Schmieder's catalogue of Bach's works, arranged by genre — the number does not mark when the work was written
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BWV stands for Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, the catalogue Wolfgang Schmieder compiled in 1950. It sorts Bach's output by genre first — cantatas, organ works, keyboard music, chamber and orchestral music — and numbers within each group. That is why BWV 1 is a church cantata while the D minor Toccata and Fugue sits beyond number 500.
The common mistake is to read the number as a date. A BWV number says which shelf a work sits on, not when it was written. A piece may also carry both a BWV number and an old collected-edition number. There is also an appendix (BWV Anh.) for doubtful or misattributed works, such as the famous Minuet in G, now given to Christian Petzold.
The real point of the number is identity: BWV 565 names one piece without arguing over nicknames. It fixes what the work is, not when it appeared or how good it is.
Read deeper → Fugue · Köchel Number
Sources
- 巴赫作品编号与 BWV 各类的划分，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Bach, Johann Sebastian" 与 "Schmieder, Wolfgang"；目录本体参 Schmieder, Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis（1950，后续有修订）；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.