18th-century prints of Bach's four-part chorales

In the period between the publication of The Art of Fugue in the early 1750s, and the publication of further works from 1900, only one group of Bach's works was published: his four-part chorales. In 1777 Johann Kirnberger started an active letter campaign to induce Breitkopf to publish a complete set of chorale harmonisations. Kirnberger's letters emphasize his motivation to have the chorales printed in order to preserve them for the benefit of future generations. The manuscript to be used once belonged to C. P. E. Bach, who sold it through Kirnberger to Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia.

Birnstiel's first volume (1765): title page.

The most complete 18th century publication of chorales by J. S. Bach is Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's edition in four volumes, published by Breitkopf from 1784 to 1787. About half of the chorale harmonisations in this collection have their origin in other extant works by Bach. This collection went through four more editions and countless reprintings until 1897.

History

After 1750, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg was the first to embark on preparing a published edition of Bach's four-part chorales. Marpurg employed the Berlin publisher Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel, using manuscript copies dating from 1758. The project was aborted in 1763, because Marpurg was no longer available, having assumed responsibility for the Royal Prussian Lottery. The first part of the Birnstiel edition was later published in 1765, with C. P. E. Bach in the title page and preface. C. P. E. Bach was, however, dissatisfied with the second part of Birnstiel's 1769 edition. He broke off negotiations and surrendered the manuscript rights to Kirnberger in 1771. Despite Kirnberger's promises to publish Breitkopf's edition during the intervening period (1771–1777), no manuscripts materialised. Following a respectful pause to mark Kirnberger's death in 1783, C.P.E. Bach resumed discussion on the chorales with Breitkopf, with a positive outcome for the first instalment in July 1784. With no further reasons to delay printing, the first instalment began at the end of the year, followed by further annual instalments until the whole collection was completed in 1787. After two false starts in 1765 and 1769, a new chapter thus commenced in the history of Bach's impact, as his choral repertory became more extensively available.[1]

  • Engraving of F.W. Marpurg by Berol after a drawing by Kauke, 1758
  • Pastel portrait of C.P.E. Bach, Hamburg, c 1780
  • Portrait of J.P. Kirnberger by C.F.R. Lisiewski, 1780

According to recent findings, neither Marpurg, C. P. E. Bach Emanuel or Kirnberger had priority to the principal collector of Bach's four-part chorales. Instead the honour fell to an alumnus of the Thomasschule zu Leipzig, unknown until the early 1960s, one of the choristers aimed at Bach's famous 1730 "Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music" ("Entwurf einer wohlbestallten Kirchenmusik"). It was already known to have been "Hauptkopist F" (Dürr 1957), Bach's principal copyist in the first half of the 1730s, who for example performed in the Christmas Oratorio. In 1981 Andreas Glöckner identified the copyist as Johann Ludwig Dietel (1713-1777), who attended the Thomasschule from 1727–1735, matriculated at the University of Leipzig in 1736 and later became cantor in his home town of Falkenhain, north east of Leipzig.[1]

Chorales published by Birnstiel
Birnstiel's first volume (1765), p. 3, containing BWV 267 by J. S. Bach and BWV Anh. 203 by D. Vetter.[2][3]

In 1765 F. W. Birnstiel published 100 chorales in Berlin. The edition had been initiated by F. W. Marpurg and completed, edited and supplemented with a preface and a list of errata by C. P. E. Bach. A second volume of 100 was issued by the same publisher in 1769, edited by J. F. Agricola.[4][5]

  • Birnstiel's first volume (1765): first half of C. P. E. Bach's Preface.
  • Birnstiel's first volume (1765): second half of C. P. E. Bach's Preface.

First volume (1765)
Chorale settings by D. Vetter in Birnstiel's 1765 Volume[6]
BWV Birnstiel Vetter Title
Anh. 201 15 35 Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ[7]
Anh. 202 31 29 Gott hat das Evangelium[8]
Anh. 203 06 20 Ich hebe meine Augen auf[3]
Anh. 204 18 05 O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid[9]

Second volume (1769)

C. P. E. Bach criticised Birnstiel's second volume as being full of mistakes in an article which was published in Hamburg in the Staats- und Gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyeschen Correspondenten on 30 May 1769, in which he also claimed that some of the chorale harmonisations included in the volume had not been composed by his father.

C. P. E. Bach's edition for Breitkopf
Breitkopf 1784: No. 1 "Aus meines Herzens Grunde" (= BWV 269) and No. 2 "Ich dank' dir, lieber Herre" (= BWV 347)

After Kirnberger died in 1783, C. P. E. Bach became Breitkopf's editor for the chorales, which he then published in four parts:[10]

  • Vol. I (1784): Nos. 1–96
  • Vol. II (1785): Nos. 97–194
  • Vol. III (1786): Nos. 195–283
  • Vol. IV (1787): Nos. 283–370

Since the number 283 was used twice (last number of Vol. III and first number of Vol. IV), the collection actually contained 371 items. The collection also contained several doubles (e.g. No. 156 is identical to No. 307): it totalled 348 independent harmonisations.[11]

Reception

The Breitkopf collection went through four more editions and countless reprintings until 1897:[12]

  • The Breitkopf edition of 1832.
  • The Breitkopf edition of 1898.

The new 1831 score was revised directly by Breitkopf, only afterwards approaching an expert to supply the preface and title. The choice of the Leipzig music collector Carl Ferdinand Becker followed a traditional route: a former chorister from the Thomanerschule, who was later appointed organist at the Alte Peterskirche in Leipzig. Becker subsequently seems to have regretted his decision. At that stage organist at the Leipzig Nikolaikirche, Becker's critical commentary was the first to discuss the manuscript sources prepared by Kirnberger and C. P. E. Bach, even if only in a general way.[12]

References
  1. Schulze 1983.
  2. "An Wasserflüssen Babylon / Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld, BWV 267". Bach Digital. Leipzig: Bach Archive. 2019-03-11.
  3. "Ich hebe meine Augen auf, BWV Anh. 203 / Anh. II 31→". Bach Digital. Leipzig: Bach Archive. 2018-07-07.
  4. Smend 1966.
  5. Wachowski 1983, pp. 54–55.
  6. Wachowski 1983, p. 55.
  7. "Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV Anh. 201 / Anh. II 31→". Bach Digital. Leipzig: Bach Archive. 2018-07-07.
  8. "Gott hat das Evangelium, BWV Anh. 202 / Anh. II 31→". Bach Digital. Leipzig: Bach Archive. 2018-07-07.
  9. "O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid, BWV Anh. 204 / Anh. II 31→". Bach Digital. Leipzig: Bach Archive. 2018-07-07.
  10. Wachowski 1983, pp. 56–57.
  11. Dürr & Kobayashi 1998, p. 285.
  12. Wachowski 1983.

Sources
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.