Trailing the sources : in pursuit of a European picture of Bach reception in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

• Main Author: Kovacevic, Tanja
• Published: Queen's University Belfast 2013
• Subjects: 780.92
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.602557

Assuming a bottom-up, source-based approach through a series of case studies on hitherto unknown or little known manuscript copies of the works of J. S. Bach, the thesis explores the various modes of transmission of these works and how they translate into our modern-day knowledge of Bach reception. The first case study examines a number of manuscripts of Bach's Solos for Unaccompanied Violin (BWV 1001-1006) from around the world, looks at their provenances, some of which are linked to eminent musical figures such as Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758- 1832) and Louis Spohr (1784-1859), establishes a textual link between them, and traces the origin of this branch of transmission to Bach's autograph. The second study focuses on a single source-a set of manuscript parts of the second Kyrie from Bach's B-minor Mass (BWV 232/3) used in the work's first performance in Prague in 1845, and in conjunction with historical and contextual evidence, its relationship with other sources, and some seemingly unimportant information, examines the roles of its protagonists, the Prague Organ School and its director Carl Franz Pitsch, in Bach reception in Prague. The last study examines the far-reaching influence of the Verein der Kunstfreunde fur Kirchenmusik in Bohmen and the Prague Organ School, through two manuscripts containing copies of Bach's keyboard works, which accompanied their owner, the Slovenian composer of Czech origin Anton Foerster, on his journey from Bohemia to Slovenia . It also demonstrates how Bach's secular oeuvre, through its initial use as study material, eventually found a niche within the Catholic liturgy, thereby crossing over into the realm of the spiritual. Despite the ostensible randomness of the subjects of the case studies-an unavoidable side-effect of the bottom-up approach-some extraordinary threads between them have started to emerge.