A valuable gift from New York: since the 1950s, the shipowner and music researcher Elias N. Kulukundis has amassed the world's largest private collection on the family of Johann Sebastian Bach. In the year of the 75th anniversary of the Bach Museum, he donated the most valuable part of the collection to the Bach Archive. The most important pieces of the Kulukundis collection, which are currently worth around ten million dollars, have been on display in the Bach Museum's treasure chamber since March 6. The exhibition can be visited until November 3, 2025.
The donation contains over 130 unique sources. Twenty of the most beautiful and important objects are on display as part of the special exhibition "Bach's Sons - The Kulunkundis Collection". The overarching theme of the collection is the musical era between Bach and Mozart.
The collection comprises around 1,000 documents, including mainly music manuscripts, first and early prints and letters from the four Bach sons, who were also musicians. The collection includes cimelia such as the autograph score of the opera "Zanaida" by Johann Christian Bach, which was long thought to be lost, letters from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and documents from Johann Christian and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach. The collection also includes artfully hand-colored aria collections and family registers from the second half of the 18th century.
Kulukundis comes from a Greek-American shipping family and worked for many years in the New York branch of the family business. He laid the foundation for his collection as a musicology student at Yale University in the 1950s. Even before the donation, Kulukundis had been making his collection available to the Bach Archive on loan for academic analysis since 2010.
Background: The Bach Archive Leipzig is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its foundation this year. Today, it is the musical competence center at Johann Sebastian Bach's main place of activity. Its purpose is to research the life, work and history of the composer and the Bach family of musicians, to preserve his legacy and to pass it on as an educational asset. The Bach Archive is a member of the Conference of National Cultural Institutions.
The donation contains over 130 unique sources. Twenty of the most beautiful and important objects are on display as part of the special exhibition "Bach's Sons - The Kulunkundis Collection". The overarching theme of the collection is the musical era between Bach and Mozart.
The collection comprises around 1,000 documents, including mainly music manuscripts, first and early prints and letters from the four Bach sons, who were also musicians. The collection includes cimelia such as the autograph score of the opera "Zanaida" by Johann Christian Bach, which was long thought to be lost, letters from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and documents from Johann Christian and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach. The collection also includes artfully hand-colored aria collections and family registers from the second half of the 18th century.
Kulukundis comes from a Greek-American shipping family and worked for many years in the New York branch of the family business. He laid the foundation for his collection as a musicology student at Yale University in the 1950s. Even before the donation, Kulukundis had been making his collection available to the Bach Archive on loan for academic analysis since 2010.
Background: The Bach Archive Leipzig is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its foundation this year. Today, it is the musical competence center at Johann Sebastian Bach's main place of activity. Its purpose is to research the life, work and history of the composer and the Bach family of musicians, to preserve his legacy and to pass it on as an educational asset. The Bach Archive is a member of the Conference of National Cultural Institutions.
