Organizing the complete works of C. P. E. Bach

Abstract

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, an editorial and publishing project of The Packard Humanities Institute, began planning the critical edition in the late 1990s and published its first volumes in 2005. One of the principal problems of the Edition is how to organize more than a thousand works, ranging from short keyboard pieces and songs to major oratorios, cantatas and Passions. C. P. E. Bach, like most of his contemporaries, frequently borrowed music from himself or other composers and also revised his works for different media. The contents of volumes have changed as new discoveries are made, especially the recovery of the Sing-Akademie archive, which was inaccessible from 1943 until 1999.