Talk:An Wasserflüssen Babylon/Archive 3

Translation/paraphrase/summary of 1983 article by Hans-Joachim Schulze (Bach-Jahrbuch 69)
These are ongoing edits which will be updated as more content is created. Much of the content will be compressed. While that is happening, I would be grateful if that process could proceed without interruption. "Between 26–27 July 1783, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, one of the closest students of J.S. Bach, died in Berlin, where he had worked since leaving Leipzig. Until his last weeks, he had attempted to realise a project for the complete edition of Bach's four-part chorales with the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf. For 6 years Kirnberger had discussed his project with Breitkopf in frequent letters, even offering the manuscript copy gratis and providing his own fees, but with no success."

"Kirnberger is known to have been the third to collaborate on publishing a complete edition of the Bach chorales, following Marpurg and then Emanuel Bach. Marpurg employed the Berlin publisher Birnstiel, which involved BWV 377 and copies from 1758. The project was aborted in 1773, after Marpurg assumed responsibility at the royal lottery. The Birnstiel edition was published in 1765 up to No. 31. Through the two eldest Bach sons, Marpurg had access to manuscript sources even after 1750."

"It is hard to say how Emanuel's plans matched Marpurg's. At any rate, Marpurg's negotiations with Birnstiel broke off, while Emanuel, even if suspicious of Kirnberger's intentions, yielded all the manuscript rights to him in 1771. Following a respectful pause after Kirnberger's death in 1783, Emanuel resumed discussion on the chorales with Breitkopf, with a positive outcome for the first instalment in July 1784. A month later, however, Emanuel decided he no longer wished to be associated with Breitkopf's Leipzig edition and modified his preface to the 1765 Berlin edition."

"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 vocal repertoire became more available."

"The publishers Breitkopf took no risks, with guaranteed subscribers and copies sold out fairly shortly. 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. A new edition for the four-part choral harmonisations was published in Leipzig by Robert Freise in three instalments, 1841–1843, without omitting Becker's own participation in the 1831 edition. 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."

"The task of preparing a detailed critical edition was first undertaken by Ludwig Erk, in his painstaking two-volume Peters edition of 1850 and 1865. His comparison of the original manuscripts and reliable copies with the 1831 Breitkopf edition was devastating, with many examples of errors. Franz Wüllner, however, the editor of the Bach-Gesellschaft responsible for the chorales, judged that Erk had gone too far in his criticism and had himself made mistakes. No serious faults were found in the 1784–1787 edition."

"Erk's Peters edition was still available with a revised version in 1932 by Friedrich Smend, with which he was not entirely happy. It still competed for quality with the complete and practical Breitkopf edition with 389 pieces (Bernhard Friedrich Richter). Nevertheless, at that stage the most exact and scientifically useful edition was that of Charles Sanford Terry, Oxford University Press, in 1929."

"Based on decades of familiarity with the sources of the four-part chorales, Friedrich Smend, in his 1966 Bach-Jahrbuch, significantly advanced the scientific investigation of sources, which previously had been left in a precarious state following Spitta's reported loss of manuscripts. Above all, in 1964 Peter Krause unearthed manuscript R 18 in the Musikbibliothek des Stadt Leipzig, the missing source for volumes III–IV of the 1784–1787 edition. "

"Despite the merits of Smend's commentary, however, it has been criticised because it does not quite tally with known evidence. The assumptions of Smend are evaluated in the technical editorial report [not discussed here]. Staying within the limited scope of this account, the complicated picture underlying Bach's Chorales can be outlined in a few strokes."

"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."

"The fact that manuscript "R 18" originated in this way is entirely conclusive: the special musical notation, the watermarks, the repertoire from the Christmas Oratorio and the exact dating of one of the last chorales to be copied—the final movement of cantata "Was Gott micht mit die Zeit" (BWV 14), composed for 30 January, 1735, that appeared as entry CXXIX in the manuscript."

Schulze's manuscript source "R 18" is tabulated on pages 94–100 of the 149 entries, with a concordance. These correspond to the roman numerals in the manuscript labelled by I–CXXXV and CXXXVII–CL: the number CXXXVI was omitted by the principal copyist, Dietel.

In the preceding article of the Bach-Jahrbuch 69 (1983), pages 51–80, Gerd Waschowski gives a summary of the main published editions of the four-part chorales up to 1932. These are:


 * 1) The Birnstiel edition of 1765/1769.
 * 2) The Breitkopf edition of 1784–1787.
 * 3) The Breitkopf edition of 1832.
 * 4) The Friese edition of 1843.
 * 5) The Peters edition of 1850/1865.
 * 6) The Bach-Gesellschaft edition of 1892.
 * 7) The Breitkopf edition of 1898.
 * 8) The Oxford edition of 1929.
 * 9) The Peters edition of 1932.

Mathsci (talk) 14:34, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Afaics completely unrelated to the topic of Dachstein's "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" hymn. Please take such topics elsewhere where they might have some relevance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:09, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * User:Francis Schonken has no idea what my intention is: it is completely relevant. Mathsci (talk) 17:40, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Modulo some tweaking of the uploads from the Library of Congress (which will take some time given the script I'm using for concatenating zooming tiles—two laptops are needed), I think I now have all the images needed to create the brief self-contained paragraph on Bach 4-part chorales. It is slightly complicated, but the general narrative is quite interesting, educational and even entertaining for the general wikipedia readership. As franglophone's might say, the comments so far have been "à côté de la plaque." Mathsci (talk) 09:02, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Further comments on sources

 * Letters from Kirnberger to Forkel: J.G.H. Bellermann, ‘Briefe von Kirnberger an Forkel’, Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, new ser., vi (1871), 529–34, 550–54, 565–72, 614–18, 628–30, 645–8, 661–4, 677–8 ; vii (1872), 441, 457 (DOK3 and later). The letter from 4 Sept 1779 is not contained in Bellermann's transcription. Mathsci (talk) 07:44, 8 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The re-evaluations of Kirnberger's contributions have been explained in detail by Beverley Jerold in 3 articles from 2012, 2013 and 2014. Because of war damage, only fragmentary documents survive, the main source being from Arnold Schering's 1918 Bach-Jahrbuch. Although letters from Kirnberger to Forkel have survived (with transliterations by Bellermann and translations by Serwer/Jerold, the original laters from Forkel have been lost.


 * Letters from C.P.E. Bach to Breitkopf jr. and Forkel are contained in Ernst Suchalla's edition: some are translated into English in "The Letters of C.P.E. Bach," translated and edited by Stephen L. Clarke. Other English-language extracts can be found in the New Book Reader of David, Mandel & Wolff (NBR).


 * There are also accounts of Marpurg, Kirnberger and C.P.E. Bach on Grove Music Online; however, the re-evaluation of Kirnberger (and Marpurg) needs to be taken into account (particularly for Serwer's 1970's account, taken from his Yale dissertation).


 * The evaluation of Marpurg follows his writings, particular his tracts on the Art of the Fugue and his satirical monthly journal Kritische Briefe (1759-1763). Accounts of Marpurg are contained in Matthew Dirst's two first chapters on J.S. Bach's reception: although interspersed between the two chapters, these discuss Marpurg's his writings on (1) fugue (BWV 144/i, WTC) and the chorales. The brief biographical sketch of Marburg is contained in Grove (and Jerold) revounting his literary encounters France and at the court of Frederick the Great. In particular these compare the difference between Marpurg's aristocratic upbringing and Kirnberger's lowly origins as the son of a cobbler.


 * Biographical details, particularly on the genealogy of the Bach family, were already traced during J.S. Bach's lifetime. The 1754 Nekrolog of C.P.E. Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola, the first biography/obituary of J.S. Bach, was the first to recount details of J.S. Bach's life and work. (Agricola was a law student in Leipzig (1739–1741), where he studied music with J.S. Bach where he became an organist and was engaged as one of Bach's copyist; from 1741 he worked in Berlin, starting as a student of Joachim Quantz; he became an accomplished organist at the court of Frederick the Great, rising to the rank of conductor of the royal orchestra.)


 * Although all Forkel's letters to Kirnberger have been lost, details from Forkel's 1801 biography of Bach survive. Again details om Forkel and his professorial chair as music theory at the University of Göttingen are summarise in Grove Music Online.


 * DB3 (with the method of numbering adopted there) is often the easiest way of tracing through documents and their English translations.


 * The format for the paragraph or paragraphs on four-part chorales will start with the 1983 summary from the director of the Bach Archive, Hans-Joachim Schulze, and his successors Christoph Wolff and Peter Wollny. Because of the complex history of the chorales, the narrative will need to be unpeeled like the layers of an onion.

Mathsci (talk) 09:42, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Off-topic hidden comments
Copying here what was in off-topic hidden comments:

Between 26–27 July 1783, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, one of the closest students of Johann Sebastian Bach, died in Berlin, where he had worked since leaving Leipzig. Until his last weeks, he had attempted to realise a project for the complete edition of Bach's four-part chorales with the Leipzig publisher Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf. As the director of the Bach Archive (1992–2000) and editor of the Neue Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe, Hans-Joachim Schulze has given a detailed account of the complex history of Bach's four-part chorales in the 1983 Bach-Jahrbuch, with the title drawn from the phrase, "150 Stück von den Bachischen Erben"—a quotation from Kirnberger's letter to the younger Breitkopf, dated 1 July 1777. In the letter, Kirnberger discussed 150 chorales from Bach's heirs that Breitkopf had offered for sale, asking whether they were actually by Bach and whether the music was copied accurately. The first collector to attempt to produce a printed edition of the Bach chorales was Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, who started in 1758, employing the Berlin publisher Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel. The project was aborted in 1763 by Marpurg: the first part of the Birnstiel edition was published in 1765 up to No. 31 with a title page and preface by C.P.E. Bach. He 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 installment in July 1784. With no further reasons to delay printing, the first installment began at the end of the year, followed by further annual installments 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.

In all, three personages were therefore responsible for transmitting Bach's choral legacy after his death: all three of them had engaged in musical contact with him prior to 1750. In order of participation these were Marpurg, then C.P.E. Bach and finally Kirnberger.

--Francis Schonken (talk) 06:57, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Return to references system the first major contributor can work with
It has been proposed, at WP:AN, to return to a referencing system with which Gerda Arendt, who is the first major contributor to this article, can work (application of WP:CITEVAR). --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:29, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * For clarity: this should go back to cs1 templates (like the first major contributor left it), no more conversion of cs1 to cs2 before a consensus is reached, tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:45, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, afaics most of the cs2 templates currently used fail to emit useful COinS data, so that would be one more reason to return to the earlier cs1 references, which used COinS data fields. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:49, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict, reply to the initial, only:) The major contributor to this article, especially the referencing, was User:Mathsci, who hasn't edited for a long time. I don't care at all. The referencing may as well be as advanced as can be, if someone kindly explains the differences. Until very recently, I didn't even know that some CS1 and CS2 exist, and now I know but haven't yet understood. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:54, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * CS2 emits COINS. And if you want to return to CS1, then convert ALL to CS1, not just the GroveOnline ones. For now, I've streamlined everything to CS2, since that is the dominant style that evolved naturally. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:52, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * the difference between CS1 and CS2 is that CS1 has dots for seperators and terminates with a period, and while CS2 has commas and has no final functionation. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:56, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Struck second, I was wrong about that one (had confused with another article), sorry about that. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:58, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Re. "if you want to return to CS1, then convert ALL to CS1, not just the GroveOnline ones" – not until it is decided, by consensus, which ones we'll use. So discuss until there is consensus. In the mean while there should be status quo, so that not revert-warring editors get their preference... by edit-warring. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:02, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't care which is used, but the article needs to be consistent. The dominant style was CS2, so I converted to CS2. If people want to convert to CS1, then convert to CS1. But apply that across the board, not just 10 citations out of hundreds. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:17, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Afaik, there's no rule that all need to be either cs1 or cs2. These can be used interchangeably in the same article. What I meant above by "this should go back to cs1 templates", is that we should go back to templates which are cs1 by default (sorry for not formulating that as clearly as I should have), in other words, get rid of the citation format, and convert (or: return) references using that format to cite book, cite journal, etc. (as it used to be before the citation templates were introduced here, not by the first major editor). --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:28, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree to consistently not using citation. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:12, 22 April 2020 (UTC)