A manuscript in the Joachims-Thaler Gymnasium (Templin Thulemeyer
Collection no. 55) appears to be a yet apparently unpublished Trio Sonata
in F written by W.F. Bach.  The original title reads: "Sonata per il
cembalo obligata overo Violono, Flauto Traverso e Basso Del Sig: Bach
jun".  A later hand adds "dem Hallischen Bach Willh.  Freidemann Bach".

In the liner notes of Allegro Galaxy 3037 (a 1950s-era recording of this
work), Daniel Pinkham writes: "Once considered of questionable authorship,
the work is considered not only genuine but characteristic by no less an
authority on Freidemann Bach than Professor George Benson Weston, of
Harvard University." I took a long time for me figure out where the listing
was for this in the W.F. Bach worklist in the New Grove, where it is
regarded as "spurious".  Apparently the editors of the NG/BF found Benson's
authority no more convincing in this work than they found it in some of the
organ works he edited for E.  Power Biggs' 1947 edition of W.F.'s Organ
Music- several of the pieces listed in NG are given as "doubtful".
However, for the sound of it, this Trio Sonata certainly is certainly very
convincing to me as a *genuine* work of W.F. Bach, just as Pinkham states.
I doubt that there are many experts who could help me on this point, but is
there anyone out there who can surmise as to why the Grove editors cannot
accept this Trio Sonata as being the 'real deal'? It has all the quirky
modulations and uncomfortable classical-mannerisms-within-Baroque-texture
gestures to which I have become accustomed in listening to accepted W.F.
Bach compositions.

Uncle Dave Lewis
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