Bach's legacy is our calling

The aria: »Eternity, you make me frightened« from the autograph score, Leipzig 1724

This marked the impressive start of Bach’s chorale cantata cycle. In 2016, the Bach Archive acquired the entire score from the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. The City of Leipzig, the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Cultural Foundation of the Federal States, the Cultural Foundation of the Sparkasse Banks in Eastern Germany together with Sparkasse Leipzig, and a host of private donors all contributed towards the purchase.

For more information on BWV 20 please follow digitale Sammlungen Bach Archiv Leipzig

This ten-page letter was Bach’s response to friction with the city council. In it, he described how church music in Leipzig was organized, highlighted various shortcomings, and demanded more funding. Bach’s detailed descriptions make this the most important source about his work as cantor of St Thomas’s Church. Originally on permanent loan from Leipzig Municipal Library, in 1998 the letter was transferred to the newly established Bach Archive Foundation.

To read the whole draft please follow digitale Sammlungen Bach Archiv Leipzig 

This cantata is part of Bach’s cycle of chorale cantatas. He based them on hymns from the Lutheran liturgy earmarked for the Sunday in question in the ecclesiastical year.

Following Bach’s death, his wife Anna Magdalena inherited the performance parts of the chorale cantata cycle. She surrendered them to St Thomas’s School after she had been assured a widow’s allowance by the City of Leipzig. Bach’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, inherited the autograph scores. They are now scattered all over the world.

For performances, copyists wrote out a set of parts based on Bach’s score along with duplicates of parts performed by multiple musicians. This set of parts was complete until 1750. After Bach’s death, the original score (since lost) and the duplicates passed to Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Changing hands several times, they returned to Leipzig in 1917 when they were acquired by Peters Music Library. Since 1951, the Bach Archive has preserved some important Bach sources owned by Peters Music Library as an archive deposit.

Peters Music Library was founded in 1894 by Max Abraham, the proprietor of Leipzig music publisher C.F. Peters, and continued by his successor and nephew Henri Hinrichsen. It rapidly developed into Germany’s first public music library and a first-rate scholarly collection. After its expropriation by the Nazi regime, its nationalization in of East Germany, and its restitution to Hinrichsen’s heirs after German reunification, Peters Music Library was acquired by the City of Leipzig in spring 2013. This was made possible by the assistance of the Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism, the Cultural Foundation of the Federal States, and above all the Packard Humanities Institute (Los Altos, California), to which the Bach Archive is indebted for its major support over many years. The sources on Johann Sebastian Bach are now preserved in the Leipzig Bach Archive as the Max Abraham & Henri Hinrichsen Memorial Bach Collection.

For more information on BWV 178 please follow digitale Sammlungen Bach Archiv Leipzig

This is the most recent significant purchase for the Bach Archive’s collection. In this letter, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach writes about the preparation of a new edition of his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, one of the foremost music treatises of the 18th century. His slightly shaky handwriting two years before his death is evident in the letter.

In 2019, a New York antiquarian bookshop offered the manuscript exclusively to the Bach Archive for sale. The purchase was enabled by assistance from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the American Friends of the Leipzig Bach Archive, the Packard Humanities Institute (Los Altos, California) and private donors.

This acquisition enabled 39 letters to be added to the important collection of letters written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Elias N. Kulukundis Collection, an archive deposit at the Leipzig Bach Archive).

For more information please follow digitale Sammlungen Bach Archiv Leipzig

In 2017, the Bach Archive acquired 37 letters personally written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s daughter Anna Carolina Philippina. Dating from 1790 to 1804, these letters provide insights into the organization of a private supplier of sheet music. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had taken charge of the sale and distribution of his own compositions during his lifetime. After his death, sales were handled by first his widow and then his daughter. The first business letters were written by Anna Carolina Philippina on behalf of her mother. Following the death of her mother in summer 1795, Anna continued the correspondence independently.

The purchase of these letters was kindly funded by the American Friends of the Leipzig Bach Archive. Since its establishment it has financed important purchases by the Bach Archive.

Read more letters of Anna Carolina Bach in digitale Sammlungen Bach Archiv Leipzig

Register of external pupils of St Thomas’s School, 1685 to 1740

The book lists the names of external pupils at St Thomas’s School between 1685 and 1740. They did not live in the dormitories and weren’t members of St Thomas’s Boys Choir. On 14 June 1723, Bach’s sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel were enrolled as external pupils.

The register is part of a collection of manuscripts and prints from the long history of St Thomas’s School comprising about 700 items which was transferred to the Bach Archive in 2019 for preservation and cataloguing. Together with the original parts from the chorale cantatas and 62 individual compositions which the Bach Archive received from St Thomas’s School in 1980, this collection constitutes a unique treasure. It documents the history of St Thomas’s Boys Choir and tells us much about everyday life at the school.

On permanent loan from St Thomas’s Boys Choir, Leipzig

As the cantor of St Thomas’s, Bach was in addition responsible for the music performed on religious holidays at St Paul’s, also known as the University Church.

This depiction of Grimmaische Strasse (Grimma Street) showing Grimma Gate, St Paul’s Church and Fürstenhaus (Princes’ House) is part of an extensive series of views of Leipzig based on drawings by Johann Stridbeck the Younger and published by Gabriel Bodenehr.

Thanks to several donations from Günther Fielmann, between 2004 and 2006 the Bach Archive was able to add a total of 129 drawings to its Graphic Art Collection. Mostly dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, they provide insights into everyday life in the baroque city and indicate how it changed over the years.

Take a peak: Graphische Sammlung des Bach Archiv Leipzig

If we are to believe Bach’s first biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, this composition comprising an aria and a set of 30 elaborate variations was written at the request of Count Kaiserling, the Russian ambassador to the electoral court in Dresden. Apparently, the Count, who suffered from insomnia, had his harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg play the variations to him during his sleepless nights.

Original or first editions of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach from his lifetime are exceedingly rare. Thanks to the acquisition of Peters Music Library by the City of Leipzig in spring 2013 and the resulting expansion of the Bach archive deposit, the Bach Archive now has an almost complete series.

The Goldberg-Variations in digitale Sammlungen Bach-Archiv Leipzig

In March 1729, Bach took charge of Collegium Musicum, a student orchestra, with which he regularly performed in the following years. For these performances, he had numerous copies of sheet music copied out by pupils and members of his family.

Manfred Gorke from Eisenach amassed a collection of about 700 items related to Saxon and Thuringian music history. It’s the biggest collection in the Leipzig Bach Archive and was acquired shortly after its foundation. Purchased by the City of Leipzig for the municipal library in 1935, it was transferred to the Bach Archive in 1952 and remained there despite being incorporated into the holdings of the newly founded Music Library in 1954. In 1998, the City of Leipzig handed over the collection to the newly established Bach Archive Foundation.

Copyists: Christoph Friedrich Meissner, anonymous copyists, Johann Sebastian Bach (title heading ‘Violoncello Concertino / Concerto / Largo’, time signature and bar 1 as well as corrections and additions)

To the complete concert: digitale Sammlungen Bach Archiv Leipzig 

The collection owned by Nuremberg organist Leonhard Scholz – the largest known private collection of keyboard music by the Bach family – was acquired by the Bach Archive from the Göttingen Bach Institute in 2008. It comprises more than 250 copies and arrangements of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, 70 compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and music by other composers. The collection explains much about performance practice in the late 18th century. Scholz copied pieces for his own use, partly adapting them to the organs in two Nuremberg churches: St Lawrence’s and St Sebaldus’s.

See more of BWV 578 in digitale Sammlungen

Zanaida was the second opera to be composed by Johann Christian Bach for the King’s Theatre in London after Orione. Acclaimed by the audience, these works led to his breakthrough as an internationally renowned opera composer.

The autograph score was long thought to be lost, but is now part of the collection owned by Elias N. Kulukundis from New York, who since the 1960s has assembled one of the most significant collections on the Bach family. The key items in the collection are manuscripts and prints of music along with letters and other documents relating to J.S. Bach’s sons Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian Bach. It has been on permanent loan to the Bach Archive since December 2010.

Zwei Medaillen beziehen sich auf Ereignisse und Personen aus Johann Sebastian Bachs Wirkungszeit am Weimarer Hof. Bei der feierlichen Einweihung der neuerbauten Jacobskirche am 6. November 1713 musizierten der Hoforganist Bach und die übrigen Mitglieder der Weimarer Hofkapelle.

Die 1715 entstandene Medaille auf den Tod des Bruders des Herzogs Wilhelm Ernst zu Sachsen Weimar (1683-1728), Johann Ernst III. (s. unten), zeigt den Prinzen Johann Ernst IV. von Sachsen-Weimar vis-à-vis seiner Geschwister sowie der schon früher verstorbenen Witwe Johann Ernsts. Der musikbegabte Prinz komponierte selbst und Bach bearbeitete einige seiner Werke für Orgel.

Beide Medaillen wurden 2015 mit Unterstützung der Vereinigung der Freunde des Bach-Archivs Leipzig e.V. erworben. Seit ihrem Bestehen fördert die Vereinigung die Arbeit und Sammlungserweiterung des Bach-Archivs.

Zur Sammlung Münzen und Medaillen gelangen sie hier

Johann Sebastian Bach, Stimmensatz zum Schlusschor »Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder« aus der Matthäus-Passion BWV 244

Die insgesamt acht Stimmbücher zum doppelchörigen Schlusschor der Matthäus-Passion fertigte um 1770 ein Kopist namens Holstein in Berlin vermutlich für die Aufführung bei einem privaten Konzert der »Musikübenden Gesellschaft« an. Dies würde belegen, dass schon lange vor der Wiederaufführung der Matthäus-Passion 1829 durch den zwanzigjährigen Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy zumindest ein Teil des Werkes erklang. Weitere Forschungen müssen nun klären, ob wichtige Details zur Bach-Rezeption neu bewertet werden müssen.

Im Dezember 2019 konnte das Bach-Archiv diese musikgeschichtlich wichtigen Handschriften mit Unterstützung von Prof. Dr. Arend Oetker und des Packard Humanities Institute auf einer Londoner Auktion ersteigern.

War die Matthäuspassion nie vergessen? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Lange galt diese Handschrift als autograph, konnte aber später einem unbekannten Schreiber zugeordnet werden. Dieser war dadurch aufgefallen, dass seine Schriftzüge denen Bachs in vielen Details sehr ähnlich sind. Umfangreiche Forschungen und Vergleiche mit Handschriften aus Archiven in Thüringen ergaben, dass es sich bei dem Schreiber um Bachs Weimarer Schüler und Amtsnachfolger Johann Caspar Vogler handelt.

Zu den Sammlungen im Bach-Archiv gehören Handschriften aus dem historischen Verlagsarchiv von Breitkopf & Härtel. Breitkopf hatte nach 1750 durch verschiedene Notenankäufe, auch von Mitgliedern der Bach-Familie, ein großes Lager an Musikalien angelegt. Viele dienten als sogenannte Stammhandschriften, von denen auf Bestellung handschriftliche Kopien hergestellt wurden.

Die Fuge e-Moll BWV 533/2 in den digitalen Sammlungen

Bruno Griesel, red chalk on paper, 2016

This expressive portrait of Georg Christoph Biller, the long-standing cantor of St Thomas’s Church, was drawn by distinguished Leipzig artist Bruno Griesel (born in 1960). Originally privately owned, it was gifted to the Leipzig Bach Archive on 26 October 2020 to mark Biller’s 65th birthday on 20 September 2020.