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Though it is possible to ascertain a date of latest composition for the Brandenburg Concertos because of the inscription of 24 March 1721 on the dedication manuscript to the Margrave, most likely they had been written over a number of years during Bach's tenure as Kapellmeister at Anhalt-Cöthen and possibly even extending back to the period of his employment at Weimar (1708-17).

The dedication page Bach wrote for the collection merely indicates they are Concerts avec plusieurs instruments (Concertos with several instruments). Indeed, in these works Bach innovated in a daring manner. He used the "widest spectrum of orchestral instruments... in daring combinations," as Christoph Wolff has commented in his book on Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (WW Norton, New York, 2000). "Every one of the six concertos set a precedent in scoring, and every one was to remain without parallel."

Bach was not above taking a rather obsequious tone toward a potential patron. Here is the first sentence of his dedication to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt:

"As I had the good fortune a few years ago to be heard by Your Royal Highness, at Your Highness's commands, and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the little talents which Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking Leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honour me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my Composition: I have in accordance with Your Highness's most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments; begging Your Highness most humbly not to judge their imperfection with the rigor of that discriminating and sensitive taste, which everyone knows Him to have for musical works, but rather to take into benign Consideration the profound respect and the most humble obedience which I thus attempt to show Him."

Because King Frederick William I of Prussia patronized the military over the arts, Christian Ludwig lacked enough musicians in his Berlin ensemble to perform the concertos. They were left in the Margrave's library until his death in 1734, when they were sold for only 24 groschen. The concertos were discovered in the archives of Brandenburg in the 19th century.