Bach’s French Suites are among his most popular keyboard works, and are also much used as teaching material. This was already the case at the time of their composition, so that today a vast number of copies survives from Bach’s own circle of students. These copies provide many, presumably authentic, variants. In this revised Henle Urtext, editor Ullrich Scheideler presents the complicated source situation with exemplary clarity.

Suite no. VI in E major, BWV 817, is extracted from the complete...