Christian Petzold (1677–1733)

Christian Petzold was a contemporary of J.S.Bach though slightly older. However much less is known about him and his music. What we do know is that much of his working life was spent in Dresden. He was the organist at the St. Sophia (Sophienkirche) in Dresden, and later became the court chamber composer and organist. We might assume that his duties were broadly similar to Bach's, yet in comparison much fewer of his compositions have survived. Petzold was highly regarded as an organist and Bach senior visited him in Dresden, and no doubt there was some sharing and exchanging of thoughts and ideas. Bach himself was court musician or church organist in various locations including Weimar and Leipzig. When Petzold died in 1733 it was Bach's oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (with J.S.Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara) who succeeded Petzold as organist at St. Sophia.

A point of historical confusion existed for many years when Bach's 2nd wife (Anna Magdalena) included two minuets in G major and G minor in her "Notebook" (essentially a teaching, practice and study notebook) numbered as items 4 and 5. Until the 1970s these were assumed to have been composed by J.S.Bach himself and given BWV numbers 114 and 115 respectively, but have now been recognised as works by Christian Petzold. Indeed it is now known that the two minuets are movements from a longer harpsichord suite by Petzold. The minuets sound very much like a related pair, and the manuscript of the complete Suite indicates to play the G major Minuet first then the G minor and then repeat the G major. The G major is the best known of the pair, and is the basis for a pop song called "A Lover's Concerto" released in 1965 by a group called "The Toys" and which charted in several countries.