Don't ask me why, but I thought that since he's had things like the Partitas and the Goldberg's published that he also would have saved the autographs as memorabilia.
None of his first publication, the Six Partitas 825-830, or French Ouverture, the Italian Concerto, the Goldberg Variations, etc. Looks like there exist autographs of the Inventions, some of the French Suites, but none of the English Suites, both Books of the WK, KdF, and little else of the keyboard compositions. I was surprised to see how little of the organ works are in autograph. Any idea how they acquired so much of Bach's autographs? Looks like most of the vocal music survives in autograph and almost all in one place: the Berlin Staatsbibliotheck. I just got back into town (and had quite a few discs from three separate orders from two countries waiting on me at the post office-hmmm, this CD buying thing may be getting out of control again) and have been able to look at some of my Bach books in the autograph issue and it turns out in the back of that incredibly useful and seems to be indispensable Oxford Companion to Bach there's sequential BWV list that includes among other things an indication if there is an autograph of the score along with its location.
The following links may be relevant to your question: If the reasearcher cannot even approximately tell the real author, maybe the judgement exclusively based on its style would be too bold? Incidentally, are there any online articles about determining authenticity?Īs it leaves it me puzzled every time I see many Bach's works (or the ones attributed to him) with a simple marking "spurious", "doubtful" or even just "?" (like here in many places ) Remember that Bach's style of music quickly fell out of favor with the general public, so the preservation of his manuscripts did not have such a high priority as it might have had beginning with the time of Mendelssohn who began collecting Bach's autograph scores wherever he could. Bach was definitely the worst offender in this regard. Bach, also, was not always as careful as he should have been with his father's manuscripts, but W.F. Bach would extract an exorbitant price from anyone who would be allowed to take a peak at his father's cantata scores. There was great value attached to such music in handwritten form. You can read about this in most Bach biographies where he spent nights copying out clandestinely works that his uncle had accumulated. Scores of original works in Bach's day were a valuable commodity. Most of them are in libraries or archives and a few are in private hands. There are numerous ways of determining this in addition to analyzing the work for its style. Yet, there is no doubt that this work is by Bach. Within the last few months I gave information on one of the Bach cantatas (I can't recall which one) for which not a single note or mark of articulation is in Bach's own handwriting. Information of this sort in contained in the KB of the NBA and it would take a lot of time to create such a list. I know some of the chamber works are problematic and some of the early organ works, but what else? Just how rare are scores written in Bach's hand? How many works have been passed down written out by others? And just why should this be? Where would Bach's own scores have gone? I've read that his sons are partly to blame for not saving work, but are they in fact mainly to blame? Did they simply throw away his works after he died, like so much scrap paper? Or did fires and floods take some of them as well? Or did perhaps Bach happen not to keep scores of his works? Was it common practice of the day not to preserve works of dead composers? Is there a list of them somewhere on the internet or in some easily accessible reference book? I'm actually away from home now and have been for a few weeks and so can't look on my own shelves. I was just chatting over email with a friend of mine and he asked me which of Bach's works do we lack autograph manuscripts for and I couldn't (with a red-face he could see) name them for him.
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