On 31 August 2006, an article in the newspaper Die Zeit described the discovery by researchers from the Bach-Archiv, Leipzig, of some large manuscript leaves (34 × 34cm) in the Anna-Amalia-Library, Weimar, containing previously unknown keyboard tablature in the hand of J. S. Bach. Some key facts are:

1. two important chorale fantasias, Buxtehude's ‘Nun freut euch liebe Christen g'mein’ and Reinken's ‘An Wasserflüssen Babylon' were copied, major new sources for the music they contain.

2. an inscription under the latter, Il Fine â Dom. Georg: Böhme descriptum ao. 1700 Lunaburgi, the earliest known Bach autograph, was evidently made at the ‘apprentice age’ of fifteen (see above, p. 22).

Bach was using tablature in his mid-teens, probably earlier (see p. 300). Pending fuller analysis elsewhere, the discovery already raises such questions as these:

1. whether the Buxtehude copy was made earlier, at age ‘12 or 13’, as has been claimed; this would be while Bach was still in Ohrdruf.

2. since it seems that Bach did work with Georg Böhm, either as soon as he moved to Lüneburg or in/from the summer of 1700 as his voice broke (see above, pp. 20ff), was this his main reason for moving to Lüneburg at the age of fifteen?

3. whether â Dom. indicates domus (‘house’) or, more likely, Dominus (‘master’), is uncertain, but only the former need imply a live-in pupil.

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