A major project by the Royal College of Organists, drawing on some of today’s leading composers, will see Bach’s Orgelbüchlein Project completed – and in so doing, offer a remarkable survey of compositional styles of our own era.

Bach had originally intended the manuscript of his ‘Little Organ Book’ to contain 164 short chorale preludes, offering a compendium of chorale tunes for the whole church year, but it was ultimately left unfinished with just 46 completed and only the titles for the rest written in.

The remaining 118 have now been written by composers as diverse as John Rutter, Judith Bingham, Sir Stephen Hough, Sally Beamish, Louis Andriessen, Daniel Kidane, Roxanna Panufnik and Nico Muhly, all of whom have addressed the project’s central challenge: if Bach were alive today, how might he go about writing a short chorale prelude in the Orgelbüchlein style?

The premiere will take place over the weekend of September 23-5, across nine concerts presented by broadcaster Zeb Soanes and each featuring a mix of the new and original Bach works. All performances will be free to attend, with no pre-booking required, and take place in London venues including Westminster Abbey, St George’s Hanover Square, the Chapel Royal of St James Palace, and St Brides Fleet Street.

The project has been brought together across a decade by William Whitehead, who will also be one of the eight organists performing over the weekend. ‘The manuscript of Orgelbüchlein has always been such a tantalising mystery, with no one knowing exactly why Bach completed only a quarter of his intended 164 chorale preludes,' he said.

‘But by leaving the titles for the missing 118 pieces he presented us with a unique and intriguing opportunity – what would happen if we commissioned the most interesting composers working today to complete these pieces, reinventing for the modern age the techniques laid down by Bach?’ Whitehead added.

‘The result is an astonishing completed work, an eclectic but cohesive whole with many of the schools of contemporary composition represented – minimalism, spirituality, new complexity, modernism, serialism and jazz, together with a range of styles from periods since Bach’s death.’

For more details about the weekend, visit rco.org.uk/events/bachandfriends and for more information about the Orgelbüchlein Project, visit orgelbuechlein.co.uk