the writings of momigny can be considered as marking the reawakening of an interest in bach in france. already in 1803, barely a year after the publication of forkel's biography of bach, he had started his study of polyphony with the fugues and sonatas of bach. one of momigny's main contributions was an article in the music section of the "encyclopédie méthodique ou par ordre de matière" (1818) analysing the sonatas bwv 1014 and bwv 1015/1. the article discusses the development of the sonata in the eighteenth century, divided into halves, with the sonatas of bach, in nägeli's edition, taken as representatives for 1700–1750 and the piano sonatas of haydn for 1750–1800. although momigny enthusiastically wrote of bach, "c'est dans les trente ou quarante premières années du siècle dernier, qu'il offrit au public les fruits pleins de maturité de son génie transcendant,"—"it was in the first thirty or forty years of the last century that he gave the public the fully matured fruits of his transcendent genius"—the general revival of interest in the music of bach, particularly his choral works, was slower in france than in germany. while referring to the timelessness and influence of bach's music, momigny lamented that the sonatas were so rarely performed; he wrote that the time was not ripe because of changes in musical taste, but also observed that "there are very few people capable of playing them and understanding them".