Bladmuziek
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SET-16
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edited by David Aijon Bruno
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A few words of justification are in order lest the present writer is charged with undoing over two hundred years of editing work on Das Wohltemperirte Clavier. This edition, essentially a so-called 'diplomatic' transcription of the only extant autograph copy (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. Bach P 415), grew out of a personal need to work on these pieces from their original notation: even the best modern critical editions ù valuable as they are in their own right, in their eagerness to make things more accessible to modern musicians ù can often, ironically, cloud more than guide the eye.
Although one can now easily consult scans of the autograph in magnificent quality online through the Bach Digital initiative, the color facsimile (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1971) is quite difficult to come by. Thus such a transcription might be of practical value, at the very least as a study companion to the available reproductions. In addition, reading even from an ideal facsimile ofthe autograph is fraught with difficulties, many portions of the original being virtually illegible due to decay and damage.
Yet, reading from this transcription is also not without some difficulty: many early 18th-century notational idiosyncrasies take some getting used to, and seeing them in modern-print versions might shock even seasoned, facsimile-savvy musicians. Painstaking care has gone into striking a healthy balance between representing the most musically relevant aspects of the notation and what it is actually possible to do with current music software. (Plate engraving, to be sure, would have been an ideal medium for this manuscript to find its own life in print; but while that sounds like a fascinating project, we shall probably have to make do with an imperfect computerized realization.) Curved beaming in the autograph, for instance, not only makes for a beautiful, intensely fluid look on the page; it also allows certain notational contortions to go practically unnoticed (e.g., the use of incredibly short stems which in turn make room for many more notes than modern print permits). Certain features such as these could unfortunately not be reproduced. And, whenever following the original proved too troublesome, the decision was made to substitute a more conventional realization; in those cases, endnotes showing the exact notation of the autograph are provided in the Appendix, page 122.
A crucial aspect of this edition is that it focuses solely on the autograph: however interesting, reliable and closely connected to Bach some of the other sources may be, the origin of those differing details (be they embellishments, accidentals, tempo indications, fingerings, or the occasional variants) would then need to be explicitly indicated, further complicating the text. Far from discouraging the study and comparison of different sources, I simply believe in the value of working from a single one at a time ù in this case also the most important one ù and using it as a springboard in that very personal and individual quest for textual coherence. (I have made a small exception in the case of a missing page in the autograph score containing the entire F-sharp major Fugue and the first few measures of the F-sharp minor Prelude: they were transcribed from a manuscript copy also located at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. Bach P 202, which dates from the 1740s.) It goes without saying that in the present publication no performance suggestions of any kind have been added to the text.
Componist(en):
Uitgever('s):
Uitgavenummer:
SET-16
Instrument(en):
ISBN:
9790215318977
Volgnummer:
201015
Overige informatie:
edited by David Aijon Bruno
