The Altbachisches Archiv

In the summer of 1999 Christoph Wolff announced the most exciting musicological find of the decade: the library of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, lost since World War II, had been rediscovered in Kiev. The library is richest in the works of 18 th-century composers such as C. P. E. Bach, W. F. Bach, C. H. Graun and J. G. Graun. But it also contains a few older sources, notably a small bundle of 17th-century manuscripts assembled by Johann Sebastian Bach as representing the sacred vocal music of his forebears, particularly his older cousins Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703) and Johann Michael Bach (1648-94). Dubbed the Altbachisches Archiv, this collection had been known before its disappearance, thanks to an edition published in 1935 by Max Schneider. Although Schneider's edition was used as the basis for some performances and recordings, it was unsatisfactory in several aspects: it did not include all the pieces in the Archiv, and it did not analyse the numerous annotations on the manuscripts. For many years, therefore, the Archiv remained a shadowy presence in Bach research, its provenance and significance still not fully understood. Since its reappearance, however, much light has been shed on the collection by Peter Wollny, who brings to this task a dual expertise in 17th-century vocal repertories and also in the music of the Bach family. Wollny is also the musicological advisor for this recording of the complete Altbachisches Archiv (Harmonia Mundi HMU 901783.84 , rec 2002) by Cantus Cölln and Concerto Palatino, under the direction of Konrad Junghänel. With this 2-CD set, we are now able to appreciate the collection for its musical as well as its historical significance.

Wollny's palaeographic work sheds new light on the genesis and early history of the collection. Previously it had been assumed that the manuscripts had originated within the Bach family and had been passed down to Johann Sebastian via the estate of his father or through his first wife. Wollny counters this assumption, showing instead that many of the manuscripts were made as performing material by the Arnstadt cantor Ernst Dietrich Heindorff (1651-1724). Both Johann Michael and Johann Christoph Bach had close links with Arnstadt, and those links presumably enabled Heindorff to obtain copies of their music. After Heindorff's death the Bach pieces in his library were somehow acquired by Johann Sebastian, along with some separately transmitted sources of pieces commemorating family occasions. For Johann Sebastian the Archiv not only represented a precious family heirloom; in the 1740s he also made performing materials of some of Johann Christoph Bach's funeral motets, perhaps for his own musical duties at Leipzig funerals, but possibly also as a contemplation of his own mortality, or even (as Christoph Wolff has speculated in the case of the motet Lieber Herr Gott, wecke uns auf) for his own funeral. The Archiv was then inherited by C. P. E. Bach, who performed some of the pieces in Hamburg, and also used it as a source of information for scholars such as Johann Nikolaus Forkel.

The interest of the Archiv is twofold. First, it can be studied for insights into the Bach family and their compositional style. Johann Sebastian probably made such a use of the collection, for he acquired it at the same time that he made a detailed genealogy of his ancestors, and in his last years he seems to have measured his own musical achievement against that of his forebears. The obituary of J. S. Bach (1754) and the biography by Forkel (1802) also cite pieces in the Archiv as evidence of the creative powers of the family. Listening to this recording, too, we might be tempted to hear an aural genealogy for some of the characteristics of Johann Sebastian's music. Several of the pieces by Johann Christoph use rich and daring harmonies—for instance, the successive seventh chords of the dialogue Herr, wende dich und sei mir gnädig or the chains of suspensions in Der Gerechte, ob er gleich zu zeitlich stirbt. Here there may be a precedent for Johann Sebastian's love of harmonic exploration, as...