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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Although Johann Christian Bach is best known today as a composer of operas and symphonies, his earliest large-scale works were keyboard concertos. In fact, the only incontestably authentic works that date from before his move to Italy in 1754 are the five concertos in autograph score that are now bound together as Bach Mus. MS P 390 in the Staaatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin (D-brd-B). Since these manuscripts were included in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's estate list at his death in 1788, it is assumed that the works were composed before Christian left for Italy, and most probably after he came to live in Berlin with his older half-brother following their father's death in 1750. These five works have recently appeared, in an edition by Richard Maunder, in the Complete Works of Christian Bach now being published by the Garland Press. Those with some knowledge of the youngest Bach's keyboard concertos may be somewhat surprised to find, however, that the volume of the earliest concertos contains not only the five works that make up the autograph manuscript P 390 but a sixth concerto as well. This work, in f minor, has a relatively extensive and confused manuscript tradition, and has not always been accepted as authentic. Since the editor offers only a brief statement supporting its inclusion in the critical edition, further comment is perhaps in order.
See The Catalog of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Estate; A Facsimile of the Edition by Schniebes, Hamburg, 1790, ed. Rachel W. Wade (Lotidon, 1981), 83, item 3. In the still standard catalogue of J.C. Bach's works, Charles Sanford Terry's John Christian Bach (Oxford, 1929; 2nd edn, ed. H.C. Robbins Landon, 1967), the five concertos of P 390 are listed on pp.298–9.Google Scholar
2 The Collected Works of Johann Christian Bach, 1735–1782, gen. ed. Ernest Warburton (New York and London: Garland Publishing), 32: Keyboard Concertos I. Six Early Concertos, ed. Richard Maunder (1985), xii and xiii. In his 1967 revision of Terry's catalogue, which included this work as the last concerto (301, no.17), H.C. Robbins Landon made no specific comments about any of the keyboard concertos but stated merely that ‘there is considerable doubt about the authenticity of these many clavier concertos: recently there has been some attempt to attribute some to Friedemann Bach; in any case, it is highly unlikely that all these works are really by Johann Christian, particularly in view of the “severe style” in which many of them are written’ (op. cit., liv). Helmut Wirth, in the worklist following his article on Christian Bach in MGG (i (Kassel, 1949–51), cols. 984–51) similarly places it at the end of the list of concertos, together with a quotation from the St 482 cover label (see below), implying that he tends to accept its testimony. In The New Grove worklist by Ernest Warburton ((London, 1980), i, 875), this f minor concerto is listed as ‘doubtful'.Google Scholar
3 The most complete information on these sources is provided by Hans-Bernd Schmitz, Die Klavierkonzerte Johann Christian Bachs (diss. Würzburg, 1981), 40–5, and by Rachel W. Wade, The Keyboard Concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1981), 274–6. In 1928 Hans Uldall reported finding this f minor concerto attributed to C.P.E. Bach in the Berlin Singakademie (D II 1472z): Das Klavierkonzert der Berliner Schule (Leipzig, 1928), 66. The Breitkopf listing is the second work in the third of four three-concerto sets offered in 1763: The Breitkopf Thematic Catalogue, ed. Barry S. Brook (New York, 1966), 132.Google Scholar
4 Neither Martin Falck, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: Sien Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig, 1913), nor Friedrich Blume in MGG, i (Kassel, 1949–51), col. 1054, mentions the f minor concerto in their worklists for Wilhelm Friedemann. In The New Grove, Eugene Helm includes it as a ‘doubtful’ work in his lists for both Friedemann and Emanuel Bach, and points out—apparently as a preferable alternative—Terry's listing on the basis of the St 482 cover label; but Ernest Warburton, in the worklist for Christian, also calls it ‘doubtful', and cites the 1763 Breitkopf attribution to Philipp Emanuel. A fourth Bach brother, Johann Christoph Friedrich, might even be thought to be implicated because of the thematic similarity between this f minor concerto and his keyboard concerto in E flat, written in 1792, for which autograph parts survive in Berlin (D-brd-Bach mus ms. St 273). This opening theme type is not unique to the Bachs, however; it appears throughout the eighteenth century, as, for example in the first movement of Mozart's ‘Haffner’ symphony, K.385.Google Scholar
5 Schmitz, Die Klavierkonzerte Johann Christian Bachs, 44; Wade, The Keyboard Concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, 275. The attribution is written on a label on an ‘old’ cover (Schmitz, 44). An added notation on the St 483 cembalo part title page, ‘von Joh. Cretien bearb. in Berlin unter E. Aufsicht', was judged by Hans Engel also to be an ‘alter Vermerk’ that was possibly in the hand of Grave, a former owner of the manuscript who had some correspondence with Emanuel Bach: ‘Notiz zum Klavierkonzert in f von J. Chr. Bach', Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 13 (1930–31), 154.Google Scholar
6 Wade, The Keyboard Concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, 275.Google Scholar
7 Notice however the bass line in the last two notated measures of the sketch, which together with the viola and the inner violin notes produces a fussy harmonic and rhythmic detail that is typical of Christian's early concertos, but which has been eliminated in the revised version. It is interesting that the violin lines in the sketch are written with an implied C-clef, which was generally associated with amateur keyboard players but was apparently more congenial than the more professional G-clef to this young composer. The use of C-clef in the solo part in three of the five extant copies (all except the one copied by Altnikol—a professional musician—and the one with an apparently direct connection to the Breitkopf firm) may conceivably stem from Christian's original score.Google Scholar
8 Op. cit., 40. This conclusion is based on the watermark, which is found among manuscripts presumed to be Breitkopf's; it is very similar to the watermarks on the Leipzig and Weimar sources (ibid., 43–5). According to Schmitz, the Weimar solo part is labelled ‘C.P.E. Bach/No. 8/8. Bgn'; this notation suggest a direct connection with Breitkopf, since this work was the eighth of the twelve listed in the 1763 catalogue (the specification of the number of pages is also typical of manuscripts used in Breitkopf’ s copying business).Google Scholar