In 1950 German musicologist Wolfgang Schmieder, Special Advisor for Music for the City and University library at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, published the Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach (Thematic-systematic catalogue of musical works of Johann Sebastian Bach). The numbering system by which Schmieder organized Johann Sebastian Bach's compositions became known as the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, with the numbers Schmieder assigned to each work taking on the prefix BWV.
