From 1723 to his death in 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach worked as a Kapellmeister at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. In addition to teaching students at the church’s affiliated school, his primary duty was to compose and perform church music. The local Collegium Musicum, a group of professional musicians and college students, also offered him the chance to write and play secular music, orchestral in particular. Bach’s seven concertos for harpsichord solo, as well as his three concertos for two harpsichords, two for three harpsichords and one for four harpsichords may have been first performed atthe music-making occasions of this group. (These works are the first concertos in music history composed for strings and keyboard.) All except one of the harpsichord concertos are transcriptions of (mostly lost) older concertos originally written for a variety instruments. The original of the G-minor concerto is the popular A-minor violin concerto. Bach left the orchestral parts unchanged in the transcription, but, exploiting the possibilities of the harpsichord, he considerably enriched the solo violin part, altering the ‘violinistic’ elements according to the characteristics of the keyboard instrument.