Messe in h-Moll, BWV 232, with Sanctus in D-Dur (1724), BWV 232III, and: Messe h-Moll, BWV 232, and: Messe h-Moll: für Singstimmen und Orchester, BWV 232 (review)

Joseph Kerman, writing in the early 1980s, mused that "there is something wrong with a discipline that spends (or spent) so much more of its time establishing texts than thinking about the texts thus established" (Contemplating Music [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985], 48). This strongly stated critique comes in the context of a broader assessment of "Musicology and Positivism: The Postwar Years" (pp. 31–59), which focuses attention on Bach studies in general and on the work of Arthur Mendel in particular. Reviewed here are yet two more new editions demonstrating this continuing textual conundrum as addressed by two of the most accomplished Bach scholars active today.

Kerman concedes "that absolutely central texts were still unavailable in those years [the 1940s and 1950s]" (p. 48). In deed, a page later he lauds the "brilliant achievement of positivistic musicology" accomplished "in an astonishing revision of their chronology [of Bach's compositions]." But, this concession serves as a preamble to an excursus on "what it [positivistic musicology] has chosen not to do" (p. 49).

To the dilemma in Bach scholarship, Kerman observes that "all Bach scholars . . . seem obsessed, even oppressed by the enormous weight of paleographical and graphological apparatus left over from that great positivistic enterprise. What they have not begun to tackle is a critique of the broadly accepted scheme of the evolution of Bach's musical style from his periods in Weimar, Cöthen, and Leipzig. This legacy of [Philipp] Spitta's has not proved so easy to shake as has his flawed chronology. If the chorale cantatas of 1724–5 come before, not after the Passion According to St. Matthew of 1727, what are the consequences of this chronological information for our understanding of these works? And now that we know that parts of the Passion are from ten to twenty years older than the rest, how are we to experience the work as a 'unity'? Perhaps our concept of unity in musical works needs revision; the Bach scholars should be in a position to speak to this" (pp. 53–54).

Today one can easily point to interpretative scholarship on Bach's music. Yet, the editions reviewed here offer evidence that Kerman's assessment of Bach scholarship and publishing remains astonishingly and persistently accurate. Furthermore, Kerman's point about "unity" highlights a key interpretative issue that many editions (especially of the B-Minor Mass, including those reviewed here) attempt to address in one manner or another. The question remains as to whether these editions adequately address (not to mention interpret) compositional "unity."

The notion...