Rens Bijma
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH AND HIS MUSICIANS IN THE TWO MAIN CHURCHES IN LEIPZIG

Parody of a drawing from Rens Bijma’s thesis
by Aart-Jan Venema. (© De Volkskrant 2018)

Welcome to Rens Bijma’s website
Latest update: 27 January 2023
Newly translated chapter: XXXII (The cornett and the trombone)
Other recently translated chapters:
– Chapter XXVIII (The flutes)
Chapter XXIX (The oboes)
Update 02 january 2023:
I spent the last months of 2022 searching for recent publications on Bach’s own performances. The results were disappointing.
As far as the chapters already translated are concerned, I was able to make some additions and corrections to chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 20 and 30, which are (provisionally) shown in green. Furthermore, in all chapters the BWV numbers have been adapted to the new BWV3. In these, different versions of a work are indicated by sequence numbers. For example, the early version of the St Matthew Passion now has the number 244.1, and the well-known late version 244.2. If you don’t have the new BWV available, you can usually ignore the sequence numbers. The changes in the BWV numbers did not affect the date in the version of the chapters.
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In due course all lacking chapters will be added.
If you want to be kept informed about the publication of new chapters, please let me know via the ‘Contact’ tab.