GERMANY: A previously unknown composition by Johann Sebastian Bach of "exceptional quality" has risen like a phoenix from flames that ravaged Germany's most precious library last September.
Thousands of precious books, including manuscripts by Shakespeare and Schiller, were lost in the fire that destroyed Weimar's Duchess Anna Amalia library, dubbed "Germany's literary memory".
Staff managed to save a 1534 Bible that belonged to Martin Luther and 50,000 other volumes and, unwittingly, a box with a "new" composition by Bach.
The four-minute aria was composed by Bach in October 1713 for the 52nd birthday of his benefactor, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxony-Weimar. As a present, Bach set to music a poem by Johann Anton Mylius which begins with the words "Alles mit God und nichts ohne Ihn" ("Everything with God and nothing without Him"), the Duke's family motto.
The composition is written in Bach's own hand on two sheets of rare marble paper. It was not the music but the paper and the binding that attracted the attention of a researcher who took the book from the library a month before the fire.
"If it hadn't been removed, it would certainly have been lost," said Prof Christoph Wolf, director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig. It was one of Wolf's students, Michael Maul, who discovered the work two weeks ago, as part of his research into Baroque opera in Leipzig.
"I was flipping through a file of occasional poetry without any particular expectations - and then I found this sheet music behind the Mylius poem," said Mr Maul yesterday.
"After 10 hours of work without a break, without food, without water, I thought I was having a hallucination. But, pretty quickly, I was around 80 per cent certain that it was the handwriting of Bach.
"A quick comparison with other Bach handwriting substantiated the thesis and the employees of the Bach Archive were also sure beyond a doubt."
The work, one of the few surviving pieces from Bach's early period, and the first new discovery by the composer since 1935, was overlooked because it is not mentioned in any of the archives and because it doesn't carry the composer's signature, said Wolff. But a comparison with Bach works in Harvard University proved that the work was genuine, he said.
Now Everything with God and Nothing without Him will receive its premiere in September, the first anniversary of the library fire, conducted by Britain's Sir John Eliot Gardiner.