Organ concertos, Op. 4 (Handel) had already been established during his one-year position as cathedral organist in Halle in 1702. Handel's organ concertos thus have a special place in his oeuvre. They paved the way for Mozart and Beethoven, who like Handel achieved fame in their lifetimes as composers and performers of their own concertos. In the sinfonias of some of his cantatas, Johann Sebastian Bach had already introduced concerto movements for organ and orchestra. However, Bach's organs in both Weimar and Leipzig were large organs with double keyboards and pedals, powerful instruments that could only dominate a baroque orchestra. Bach's organ writing in the
Brandenburg Concertos of silver. The autograph manuscript of the concertos was only rediscovered in the archives of Brandenburg by Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn in 1849; the concertos were first published in the following year. The manuscript was nearly lost in World War II, when being transported for safekeeping to Prussia by train in the care of a librarian. The train came under aerial bombardment, and the librarian escaped the train to the nearby forest, with the scores hidden under his coat. In the modern era these works have been performed by orchestras with the string parts each played by a number of players,