Bach Carl Philipp Emanuel - The letters of C.P.E. Bach

These projects provoked further investigations into Bach's correspondence during his Hamburg years, through which I became persuaded of the need for a complete edition of his letters. The present volume seeks to make all the letters accessible in English translation in an authoritative edition. Two letters (nos. 4 and 35), and part of another (no. 22), appear here that are not included in Suchalla's Briefe and Dokumente. I have tried to provide enough commentary to clarify Back's meaning, and to identify people and works, and I refer to the commentary of Suchalla and others for additional interpretations.

The Introduction summarizes my sense of the contents and significance of the letters. The last word has not been said; these letters open many doors to further research. All but four of the surviving letters date from the last twenty-five years of Bach's life, while he was in his fifties, sixties, and seventies, firmly established as one of Europe's most famous composers. Perhaps more correspondence from earlier in his lifetime will surface in the future. Almost 80 per cent of the letters are addressed to five people: his printer in Leipzig, Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf; his friend and agent in Gottingen, Johann Nikolaus Forkel; the Viennese music publisher, Artaria: the organist in Schwerin and collector of Bach's music, Johann Jacob Heinrich Westphal; and Georg Philipp Telemann's grandson, Georg Michael, who was serving as one of the interim music directors in Hamburg before Bach's arrival in 1768. The remaining correspondents encompass an array of interesting musical and literary personalities such as Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, Johann Kaspar Lavater, and Johann Philipp Kirnberger.

Five of the letters (nos. 4, 10, 117. 232, and 270) must still be listed as addressed to unknown recipients. Basic biographical facts about all recipients, and others frequently mentioned in the letters, appear in the Glossary of Names, with particular references made to their connections with Bach. Only a few letters addressed to Bach himself survive. In Letter 280 he mentions plans to destroy letters he had received in an attempt to save precious space in his home, which may in part explain this circumstance.

Letters addressed to Bach are identified with lower-case subscripts in this edition, and are inserted next to the corresponding letters from Bach. Although Breitkopf's responses to Bach are lost, he often scribbled drafts of his replies on the letters he had received from Bach (see Plate 6). Suchalla publishes these drafts in the commentaries to his editions. References to the drafts are made here when they help to clarify the meaning of Bach's own letters. Bach's original letters are scattered in various public and private collections, almost exclusively in Germany, Austria, and the United States. The largest number by far is in the Hessische Landes- and Hochschulbibliothek in Darmstadt, which acquired most of the letters to Breitkopf in 1951 from the Breitkopf & Hartel archive.

Most of the letters to Forkel are in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz; the Stadtbibliothek and Nationalbibliothek in Vienna own most of those addressed to Artaria; and the Historisches Museum Kothen/Anhalt has half of those to J. J. H. Westphal. Thanks to the generosity of libraries and individuals, I have been able to see the originals or consult photocopies of all but a few of Bach's surviving letters. My transcriptions of the originals differ from those of Suchalla in only a few places, which are identified in footnotes.

Locations of autographs are given at the end of each letter, and I have also listed all complete citations and facsimile reproductions I am aware of, as well as significant excerpts in the secondary literature (after the abbreviation ' Lit: ). A few letters survive in a hand other than Bach's. For example, Letter 105 addressed to Charles Burney. and Letter 269 addressed to Alexander Reinagle, were both written in French by someone other than Bach. Letters 203, 212, and 260 were written by Bach's daughter, Anna Carolina Philippina. In these cases it is likely that Bach actually composed the letters himself or, at the very least, approved of the contents.

The originals of several letters that appear or are mentioned in this edition are now lost. Some were published previously before becoming lost, while others are known only from references in auction catalogues. Excerpts from auction catalogues are included here. Lost letters will undoubtedly continue to become available. Such is the fate of any attempt at a complete edition of letters. Bach is not always perfectly coherent in his letters.

He switches subjects in the middle of paragraphs on occasion, and he frequently scribbles last-minute thoughts in the margins (see Plates 2, 4, and 5: 1 have identified afterthoughts as such when they affect the meaning of a letter). Bach underlined words and phrases for emphasis (see Plate 4), and this edition retains the underlinings as Bach wrote them. Bach's indications of numbers, usually digits rather than spelled out, are also reproduced exactly. His misspellings of proper names and places are corrected without comment, except when the misspelling is integral to the meaning of a letter (for example, no. 145). Bach almost always dated his letters: his abbreviations of months and years are written out here.

On the few occasions when he did not date a letter to Breitkopf, Breitkopf's own logs of the date a letter was mailed, the date it was received, and the date it was answered are helpful (see Plate 6). Bach frequently refers to'Johannis, the Feast of St John the Baptist, which was celebrated on 24 June, and 'Michaelis', the feast of St Michael the Archangel, celebrated on 29 September. Bach's letters often accompanied handwritten or printed music, distribution lists for copies of prints, lists of subscribers, newspaper clippings, or additional letters for forwarding. These enclosures are not given here. I refer to the appropriate pages in Suchalla's Briefe and Dokumente when the items are reproduced there, particularly distribution lists for Breitkopf, or printed announcements from one of the local newspapers in Hamburg. Suchalla also reprints the subscription lists for fourteen of Bach's prints in his Briefe and Dokumente.

The letters are sprinkled with humorous word plays and foreign expressions, which are explained in footnotes. Latin words and phrases are common, reflecting Bach's seven years of university training in Leipzig and Frankfurt an der Oder. I have kept the Latin in the texts of the letters to capture the flavour of Bach's style, and put translations, where necessary, in footnotes. Discussions of financial matters are pervasive. The money Bach used almost exclusively was the reichsthaler, official currency of the Holy Roman Empire. Each reichsthaler was divided into twenty-four groschen.