How should I organize my collection of JS Bach's music?

Cafe Society
1

I received an early Christmas present of a box set of the complete works of JS Bach, which comes divided up into 172 CDs. As someone who is a bit OCD about organizing such things, I am trying to organize all the tracks and albums in a way that both makes sense musically and aesthetically. The set starts out with the Bach cantatas, which are easy enough to start with. The CDs for the cantatas pretty much follow the BWV numbers in order. Once it gets to the chorales, organ works, and keyboard works, however, things seem to pretty much be all over the place. The major collections such as the Brandenburg concertos, Art of Fugue, Goldberg variations, etc. are kept together, but otherwise the pieces seem to be scattered all over the place. It seems that the chorale works are organized by theme (secular, joyous religious works, pieces about death, etc.) while the organ and keyboard works are organized by time periods (Weimar period, Kothen period, Leipzig period, etc.). Neither one has those works in order by the BWV number. If I would like to see the works in order by BWV, would it make sense to move them around in my iTunes library to do that, or would I be destroying the context that the pieces have in the order they are already in?

2

Wow 172 CDs? I would do genres, then date.

3

I’ve got about 2/3 of them done, but the other 1/3 seem to be a bit more difficult to tame.:eek:

4

I’d suggest listening to parts of the compilation you think are “all over the place” and see if they make sense (to you) the way they are. If they don’t, then you’re free to categorize whichever way sees fit.

If you want to sort by BWV, remember that there are more than 200 compositions that don’t fit into the main catalog.

5

Thank you for the advice :). I have another question regarding the BWV numbering. Some pieces seem to have multiple BWV numbers. For example one track is listed as BWV 431, 432, and 641. This is a single track with all three numbers, not one track listed in three different places. I can’t seem to find any information about why some pieces are listed like this. What’s the story behind those pieces?