Whatever frustrations and difficulties Bach encountered at Hamburg left few signs in the documentary record. His years there were his most productive, even discounting the substantial number of church works that were more arrangements or adaptations of existing music than original compositions. While at Hamburg Bach also published most of the instrumental works that kept his name alive for two centuries after his death, even after most of his other music had been forgotten or become inaccessible. Bach himself, however, seems to have considered those compositions, including the six late volumes of keyboard pieces for Kenner und Liebhaber, to be minor works. They earned him good money, and the fantasias preserved his accomplishment as a Fantast. But what Bach believed would be his lasting musical legacy was the Versuch, together with several large vocal works that he described in his correspondence as swan songs or masterpieces.

Bach is not known to have owned any works by Schütz, and he is unlikely to have been aware that the latter had expressly designated his setting of Psalm 119 as his “swan song,” to be sung at his own funeral. But the idea of the silent swan leaving a final musical offering to posterity is a traditional one. Unlike Schütz's, Bach's swan song appears to have been conceived not for devotional purposes but to help train future generations of musicians and to establish his place in music history.