Little survives of Emanuel's work prior to his move to Berlin in 1738. That the mature Bach was concerned with leaving behind nothing that would embarrass him or his descendants is clear from his burning “a ream or more of old works,” as he mentioned doing in a letter of 1786. An earlier note, included in a list of his keyboard music to 1772 (CV), indicated that he had set aside “all works [from] before the year 1733.” The word he used was caßiret, which could mean “destroyed” but also has the more specific legal sense of “annulled” or “canceled” (as a debt). Given Bach's legal training, he might have had this latter meaning in mind, or, in view of his long residence in Prussia, the word's military usage as “cashiered,” in the sense of dismissed or retired. Until 1772, therefore, he probably retained much of his early work; how much he eventually destroyed, and whether this included early versions of music that he retained in revised form, is impossible to say.

Nevertheless, a small number of early works do survive that are not listed in CV or the later NV. In addition, many compositions included in those lists survive in distinct versions; among these are early versions of works that are described in NV as having been revised at Berlin during the 1740s.