On this date in 1730, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a letter to his long lost friend Georg Erdmann:
“Dear Friend,” Bach writes, “you might excuse an old friend, who allows himself to bother you with this letter. Almost four years are gone, since you answered my last letter. I remember you asked me to report about my difficulties, which I would like to do now. Since our youth you know my career, until my change as a bandmaster in Köthen…” Bach also reports to Erdmann about personal matters, “I am married for the second time… From my first marriage three sons and one daughter are still living, whom you saw in Weimar years ago. From my second marriage one son and two daughters are living. My oldest son is studying law; the two others still go to school, one in the prima; the other one in the secunda. The children from the second marriage are still little; the oldest is six years of age. They are all future musicians.” The “Partite diverse” BWV 766 dates from around 1700, at a time when both Ermann and Bach were studying at the Michaelis School.