Echtheit angezweifelt: Style and authenticity in two suites attributed to Bach

Abstract

number of ke board works attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach and thought to date from his yout re of dou tful authenticity. Ques ions have arisen because of p oblems wi h e s rces and with the styl these ie es. T e s rce mat rial for virtually all of Bach's arly k yboard compositions, inclu ing these doub ful attributio s, is of se onda y natu e r th r than a ogr ph. T e s ribes of these copie ofte remain nonymous and, even wh their identity is know , th i connection ith Bach is us lly unclear. Further, he works th ms lves ca be ques d when their st le i perc ived to b significan ly ifferent from t at of Bach's later works. When neith r so rc esear h or styli tic analysis ca a sociate t em unambigu sly wit B h, e authe ticit of ch works can easily be p ced in doubt. Per aps t earliest,and rtainly t e most imp rtant so rces fo Bach's ea ly keyboa d works are wo large manu c ipt anthologies: the M61lersche Ha dsch ift [MH] (DMu .ms.40644) and th Andreas Bach Bu [ABB] (D-Lem Samm ung B cker III.8.4). The two books, l gely the and of one main scribe, toge her c ntain more than 100 keyboard and ensembl works y a va iety of composers, an international repertoire vering a broad s ect um f keyboa d styles nd ge res. With nearly qu rte of he contents a tributed to im, ac is he most fully pr en c m oser i he wo man c ip s. Th these a uscrip s ig n d f om c w ki g in B 's c l h lo g clear. Bach's c c i wit e wo bo ks is i d ca d b t p c , f th f ex t y uthf l B ch ogra s i he H. T e rly date of t s au gr p , t ough t be ' f 1707',' indi t m nus ripts r virt all contempo ar wi h ori i of Ba h works hey c ntain, m ki g em r bably rli st sec ar sou c s we hav fo c 's k ybo d mu ic. Not all the works attributed to Bach in the two manuscripts have, however, been generally accepted as genuine, rather, the authenticity of more than a dozen of these works has long be n doubted. One might assume that the presence of the autograph in the MH would be reason enough for confidence in the attributions of the doubtful works, but until the compiler of the two manuscripts was identified, too little was known about their origins to permit conclusions concerning the authority of these attributions. Various attempts have been made to determine the origin of the two books. It seemed possible that one of