List of chorale harmonisations by Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale harmonisations, alternatively named four-part chorales, are Lutheran hymn settings that characteristically conform to the following:

Around 400 of such chorale settings by Bach, mostly composed in the first four decades of the 18th century, are extant:

Apart from homophonic choral settings, Bach's Lutheran hymn harmonisations also appear as:

The compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach that had been printed during his lifetime were nearly exclusively instrumental works. Moreover, by the time Bach died in 1750 it was forgotten that a few of his vocal works (BWV 71, BWV 439–507,...) had indeed been printed in the first half of the 18th century. In the period between the publication of The Art of Fugue in the early 1750s, and the publication of further works from 1900, only one group of Bach's works was published: his four-part chorales.

The most complete 18th century publication of chorales by J. S. Bach is Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's edition in four volumes, published by Breitkopf from 1784 to 1787. About half of the chorale harmonisations in this collection have their origin in other extant works by Bach. This collection went through four more editions and countless reprintings until 1897. Several other collections of chorales by J. S. Bach were published, some of these using the original C-clefs or different texts.

The loss of musical material from Bach's death to the first printings of chorale collections may have been substantial. Not only are many works the chorales were extracted from no longer extant but there is no way of knowing how much of all the harmonisations that were once compiled the current collections include. For example, there is no way of knowing how many of the 150 harmonisations first proposed for sale in 1764 also appear in Princess Anna Amalia's manuscript which ultimately forms the basis of the Breitkopf edition. As to the chorale melodies with figured bass, current collections include less than one hundred of them whereas those proposed for sale in 1764 numbered 240.

The chorale harmonisations BWV 250–438 were probably all extracted from lost larger vocal works. For six of them the work they have been derived from has been identified. Bach's chorale harmonisations are all for a four-part choir (SATB), but Riemenschneider's and Terry's collections contain one 5-part SSATB choral harmonisation (Welt, ade! ich bin dein müde, Riemenscheider No. 150, Terry No. 365), not actually by Bach, but used by Bach as the concluding chorale to cantata Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende, BWV 27.

Some harmonisations exist in different keys, i.e. pitches, in 18th-century sources: for instance a Bach cantata autograph gives the four-part chorale in one key, and the same harmonisation is found in one or more of the early chorale compilations in a different key.

The first record of the existence and sale of groups of collected chorale harmonisations and chorale melodies with figured bass extracted from larger works by J.S. Bach is from 1764, fourteen years after Bach's death. In that year the firm Breitkopf und Sohn announced for sale manuscript copies of 150 chorale harmonisations and 240 chorale melodies with figured bass by J.S. Bach.

In 1777 Johann Kirnberger started an active letter campaign to induce Breitkopf to publish a complete set of chorale harmonisations. Kirnberger's letters emphasize his motivation to have the chorales printed in order to preserve them for the benefit of future generations. The manuscript to be used once belonged to C. P. E. Bach, who sold it through Kirnberger to Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia (for twelve louis d'or). It is presumed that this manuscript contained neither the text of the chorales nor any reference to the larger works from which the harmonisations had been taken. The manuscript's harmonisations extracted only the vocal parts and ignored the instrumental parts and the continuo, even though all of Bach's chorale settings included both instrumental parts and continuo. The instrumental parts were either independent, so called obbligato instrumental parts, or mostly doubled the vocal parts sometimes separating from it for a very few beats, and the continuo had its bass mostly double the vocal bass at the lower octave, but could also separate from it for a very few beats. Finally in some cases, for reasons unknown, whoever extracted the chorale from the larger work, changed the key of the setting.

A few chorale harmonisations had been published before Bach adopted them into his larger vocal works, and are therefore listed as spurious in the third annex of the BWV catalogue:

Several more harmonisations stay close to the version published by Vopelius: for example "Christus, der ist mein Leben", BWV 281, is a variant of the harmonisation found in the Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch, with added embellishments and the harmonic structure altered for one of the tune's four phrases.

Printed collections of Bach's harmonisations usually provide an alphabetical collation of the chorales, that is, ranged alphabetically by text incipit of the hymn. Some editions contain an alphabetical index at the end of the compilation, for instance at the end of the final volume of C. P. E. Bach's 18th-century collection. Other editions, such as the Breitkopf compilations of 1892 and 1899, present the chorales themselves in alphabetical order. However, not all of these alphabetical collations result in analogous chorale sequences. Some mayor differences in this respect result from chorales that are known by different names: in that case it depends on the editor which name is used for the collation. For example, the melody of "Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost" also being known as "Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält" it is an editor's discretion whether BWV 256 is found early on or near the end of an alphabetically sorted collection.

Some of Bach's voice and thoroughbass settings published in Georg Christian Schemelli's 1736 Musicalisches Gesang-Buch are better known in their four-part realisation included in the chorale harmonisation collections.

C. P. E. Bach's selection of 371 chorale harmonisations was republished a few times in the 19th century, for instance by Carl Ferdinand Becker in 1832 (third edition), and by Alfred Dörffel in 1870.

The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, published in 1950, did not assign a separate BWV number to harmonisations contained in extant larger vocal works such as cantatas and Passions. The Three Wedding Chorales were assigned the numbers 250 to 252, and the 185 (+1: see below) four-part chorales contained in Vol. 39 of the BGA edition were given, in the same order, the numbers 253 to 438.

Most of Bach's known chorale harmonisations are movements in his extant cantatas, motets, Passions and oratorios. These are compositions which have a BWV number ranging from 1 to 249. BWV 250 to 438 is the range of the separate four-part chorales. Chorale harmonisations with a number above 438 are mostly later additions to the BWV catalogue. The 5th chapter of the 1998 edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV) contains the chorales BWV 250–438, and some later additions (BWV 500a, 1084, 1089 and 1122–1126).

All BWV numbers used in the listings below are according to the latest version of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis and further updates of these numbers found at the Bach Digital website. When a BWV number is followed by a slash ("/"), the number or letter after that slash indicates the movement in the composition.

Settings from Schemellis Gesangbuch are indicated by their BWV number (BWV 439–507), by the number of the hymn in the original publication (Nos. 1–954), and, between brackets, the number of the setting in Vol. 39 of the BGA edition (1–69).

A cross-reference between Lutheran hymns, their Zahn number, and their appearance in compositions by Bach (including, but not limited to, the chorale harmonisations) can be found pp. 471–481 of BWV.

More than 200 of Bach's over 400 homophonic chorale harmonisations survived in his larger vocal works.

Four-part chorales also appearing as cantata movements composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (verse incipits, and their translations by Pamela Dellal, from the Emmanuel Music website unless otherwise indicated): BWV 1/6: "Wie bin ich doch so herzlich froh" ("How happy I am", v. 7 of "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern") • 2/6: "Das wollst du, Gott, bewahren rein" ("This, God, you would keep pure", v. 6 of Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein") • 3/6: "Erhalt mein Herz im Glauben rein" ("If my heart remains pure in faith", v. 18 of "Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid") • 4/8 • 5/7 • 6/6 • 7/7 • 9/7 • 10/7 • 12/7 • 13/6 • 14/5 • 16/6 • 17/7 • 18/5 • 19/7 • 20/7=/11 • 22/5 • 24/6 • 25/6 • 26/6 • 28/6 • 29/8 • 30/6 • 31/9 • 32/6 • 33/6 • 36/4 and /8 • 37/6 • 38/6 • 39/7 • 40/3, /6 and /8 • 41/6 • 42/7 • 44/7 • 45/7 • 46/6 • 47/5 • 48/3 and /7 • 52/6 • 55/5 • 56/5 • 57/8 • 59/3 • 60/5 • 62/6 64. • 64/2, /4 and /8 • 65/2 and /7 • 66/6 • 67/4 and /7 • 69/6 • 69a/6 • 70/7 and /11 • 72/6 • 73/5 • 74/8 • 75/7=/14 • 76/7=/14 • 77/6 • 78/7 79. • 79/3 and /6 • 80/8 • 81/7 • 83/5 • 84/5 • 85/6 • 86/6 • 87/7 • 88/7 • 89/6 • 90/5 • 91/6 • 92/9 • 93/7 • 94/8 • 95/1 (extract: 282) and /7 • 96/6 • 97/9 • 99/6 • 100/6 • 101/7 • 102/7 • 103/6 • 104/6 • 105/6 • 107/7 • 108/6 • 110/7 • 111/6 • 112/5 • 113/1 and /8 • 114/7 • 115/6 • 116/6 • 117/4=/9 • 119/9 • 120/6 • 120a/8 • 121/6 • 122/6 • 123/6 • 124/6 • 125/6 • 126/6 • 127/5 • 128/5 • 129/5 • 130/6 • 133/6 • 135/6 • 136/6 • 137/5 • 139/6 • 140/7 • 144/3 and /6 • 145/a and /5 • 146/8 • 147/6=/10 • 148/6 • 149/7 • 151/5 153. • 153/1, /5 and /9 • 154/3 and /8 • 155/5 • 156/6 • 157/5 • 158/4 • 159/5 • 161/6 • 162/6 • 164/6 • 165/6 • 166/6 • 167/5 • 168/6 • 169/7 • 171/6 • 172/6 • 174/5 • 175/7 • 176/6 • 177/5 • 178/7 • 179/6 • 180/7 • 183/5 • 184/5 • 185/6 • 187/7 • 188/6 • 190/7 • 194/6 and /12 • 195/6 • 197/5 and /10 • 197a/7 (≈398)

Spurious chorale harmonisations in Bach's autographs: BWV 8/6 • 27/6 (=Anh. 170) • 43/11

Chorale harmonisations from spurious or doubtful cantatas (or: cantata versions) in the Richter/Kalmus collection of 389 chorale harmonisations: No. 130: BWV Anh. 31: "Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir" [scores] from a doubtful version of BWV 130 • No. 219: BWV 218/5 = TWV 1:634/5: "Komm, Gott Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist", by Telemann • No. 387: BWV 219/5 = TWV 1:1328/5: "Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält", by Telemann

Chorale harmonisations appearing in Bach's motets: BWV 226/2 • 227/1=/11, /3 (SSATB) and /7 • 229/2

Four-part chorales appearing in the St Matthew Passion: BWV 244/3, /10, /15≈/17, /25, /32, /37, /40, /44, /46, /54 and /62 • 244b/29

Four-part chorales appearing in the St John Passion: BWV 245/3, /5 (=BWV 416), /11, /14, /15, /17, /22, /26, /28, /37 and /40

For his own performances of the Jesus Christus ist um unsrer Missetat willen verwundet Passion Bach composed and/or reworked a few of its chorales: No. 9b: "So gehst du nun, mein Jesu" (BWV 500a) • No. 14: "O hilf Christe, Gottes Sohn" (BWV 1084) • No. 29: "O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid" (BWV deest)

Four-part chorale appearing in the Ascension Oratorio: BWV 11/6

Four-part chorales in Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248: Part I/5 and /9 • II/3, /8 and /14 • III/5, /10 and /12 • IV/7 • V/4 and /11 • VI/6 and /11

Somewhat less than 200 of Bach's chorale harmonisations only survived in early collections containing multiple, usually short, works.

The Bach Gesellschaft published 185 four-part chorales in the 39th volume of its complete Bach-edition. The BWV 253–438 range, which, in its original collation, was based on the BGA publication does however contain 186 chorales. The difference is that BWV 279, (near-)identical to BWV 158/4, was not retained in the BGA set:

Provenance of standard texts and tunes, such as Lutheran hymns and their chorale melodies, Latin liturgical texts (e.g. Magnificat) and common tunes (e.g. Folia), are not usually indicated in this column. For an overview of such resources used by Bach, see individual composition articles, and overviews in, e.g., Chorale cantata (Bach)#Bach's chorale cantatas, List of chorale harmonisations by Johann Sebastian Bach#Chorale harmonisations in various collections and List of organ compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach#Chorale Preludes.

Included in the second Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (started 1725): BWV 299: "Dir, dir, Jehova, will ich singen" (included as No. 39, in both a four-part chorale version and a voice and bass version) • BWV 397: "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort" (included as No. 42 in a voice and bass version = BWV 513)

Two-part versions in Schemellis Gesangbuch: No. 40 (3), BWV 447 → BWV 297 • No. 281 (18), BWV 481 → BWV 413 • No. 293 (22), BWV 499 → BWV 410 • No. 296 (23), BWV 500 ↔ BWV 500a, four-part variant in St Mark Passion pasticcio • No. 315 (26), BWV 501 → BWV 412 • No. 320 (27), BWV 441 → BWV 441 or deest • No. 397 (32), BWV 452 → BWV 299 • No. 488 (37), BWV 461 → BWV 320 • No. 741 (53), BWV 470 → BWV 357 • No. 779 (55), BWV 506 → BWV 424 • No. 881 (63), BWV 488 → BWV 258 • No. 894 (65), BWV 495 → BWV 405

Authenticated as Bach's after the first edition (1950) of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis: BWV 1089: "Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund" • BWV 1122: "Denket doch, ihr Menschenkinder" • BWV 1123: "Wo Gott zum Haus nicht gibt sein Gunst" • BWV 1124: "Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ" • BWV 1125: "O Gott, du frommer Gott" • BWV 1126: "Lobet Gott, unsern Herren" • BWV deest: "Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben"