Twelve Little Preludes

Twelve Little Preludes (French: Douze petits Préludes; German: Zwölf kleine Praeludien), BWV 924–930, 939–942 and 999, is a 19th-century compilation of short pieces, collected from various 18th-century manuscripts written by Johann Sebastian Bach and others.

Notwithstanding their diverse origin and characteristics, they were published as a set of twelve keyboard preludes by Bach in, amongst others, the 36th volume of the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe (BGA).

[1] The Twelve Little Preludes are however a 19th-century compilation extracted from two manuscripts, the Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and the composite manuscript P 804 (known as the Kellner Collection) of the Berlin State Library, both with dozens of works by various composers and written down by multiple known and unknown scribes.

In January 1720 he had started the Klavierbüchlein (keyboard-booklet) for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, who was nine years old at that time.

All other pieces extracted from W. F. Bach's Klavierbüchlein are titled "Praeambulum" or "Praeludium" (both Latin expressions translated as "Prelude") in the manuscript.

[4][24][25] Peters published the Twelve Little Preludes in 1843 as "Douze petits Préludes ou Exercices pour les commençans", No.

[8][16][29] Collections of Bach's Little Preludes were republished as didactical material for starting piano students, for instance at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles.

[16][17] The 19th-century compilation set of the Twelve Little Preludes kept its presence as a collection of piano pieces in music printing and performance in the second half of the 20th century,[31][32] while other editors stayed closer to the collation in the 18th-century sources and/or that of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis for their presentation of Bach's short piano pieces.