Bach's Sons — The Kulukundis Collection

»BACH’S SONS — The Kulukundis Collection«

Special exhibition in the Treasury March 6 to November 3, 2025

To mark its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2025, the Leipzig Bach Archive received an extraordinary gift: the Kulukundis Collection.

Over almost seventy years, New York shipowner and music researcher Elias N. Kulukundis assembled one of the most significant private collections related to the Bach family. At its heart are music manuscripts and correspondence by Bach’s sons, who themselves became professional musicians and composers.

It certainly wasn’t easy for Wilhelm Friedemann (1710 – 1784), Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714 – 1788), Johann Christoph Friedrich (1732 – 1795) or Johann Christian Bach (1735 – 1782) to emerge from the shadow of their brilliant father. However, Johann Sebastian gave them the freedom to develop their own distinct musical voices.

The special exhibition shows valuable documents: Letters, music manuscripts and rare first and early prints by the four Bach sons. The long-lost autograph score of the opera Zanaida by Johann Christian Bach is particularly noteworthy. The stage work, which premiered at the King's Theatre in London on May 7, 1763, was revived almost 250 years later as part of the 2011 Leipzig Bach Festival.

Guided tours of the Treasury exhibition:

April 4 & 18, 3 p.m., April 20, 2025, 11 a.m.

May 23, 3.00 p.m., May 25, 2025: 11.00 a.m.

The catalogue showcases precious items from the Kulukundis Collection and explores the lives and works of Johann Sebastian Bach’s four composing sons, examining their individual achievements and their relationship with their father.

Katalog Bachs Soehne - Die Sammlung Kulukundis.pdf

Title motif: Letter from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to Johann Nikolaus Forkel in Göttingen, Autograph, Hamburg, December 1774

Partly funded by the City of Leipzig and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and co-financed with tax revenue authorized by the budget adopted by Saxony’s regional parliament.