31 March—Today is Johann Sebastian Bach’s 337^th birthday. Well, it’s one of his 337^th birthday’s, anyway. Like Freddy Chopin, Johnny Bach has two birthdays. But for an entirely different reason: Old-Style (O.S.) Julian vs. New-Style (N.S.) Gregorian calendars. When J.S. Bach was born on 21 March 1685, O.S. was still in vogue in most of Germany. By the time he died on 28 July 1750, N.S. was in, but with the stipulation that all O.S. dates before 31 December 1699 remained valid.

Yes, I should have celebrated Bach’s birthday on 21 March, but I was too busy railing against the whores of Hartford. Es tut mir leid, Johann, aber du gehst nirgendwohin.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer, talented performer, and fecund father. He was a virtuoso on many musical instruments, composed over a thousand works, and fathered a score of children by two wives. Only half the kids made it to adulthood and four of them became noteworthy composers. The only child who brought him shame was Johann Gottfried Bernhard—“Mein, leider, fehlgeleiteter Sohn!”as he wrote at the time—who died at 24 while at law school. Nuff said.

Most of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works have been catalogued by Wolgang Schmieder in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue), known to the trade simply as BWV. Or Schmieder to pedants.

Let’s celebrate J.S. Bach’s 337^th not with the usual farrago of his heavy warhorses, but with only a part of one of his light classics, the delightful prelude from BWV 1006, the Partita No. 3 in E major for solo violin—but performed on over a score of different instruments and ensembles, some using Bach’s original scoring, others transposed, transcribed, or expanded as the instruments warrant. All the tracks are well worth listening to. That’s why they’re here. To preclude sublime overload, however, you may want to listen to a few tracks at a time. They’ll all be waiting for you at your convenience.

To drive yourself (and others) nuts, play all the tracks together . . .