Cantata BWV 112 - Provenance

Thomas Braatz wrote (April 22, 2002):
BWV 112 - Provenance:

Both the autograph score and the original set of parts still exist. The latter have their usual history of being donated to the St. Thomas School in Leipzig by Anna Magdalena in 1750 soon after Bach’s death. They are now in the Stadtarchiv [City Archive] of Leipzig. The autograph score has a rather unusual history: It probably became part of Wilhelm Friedemann’s inheritance, and we all know by now what that can mean because he wanted to get as much money as he could for them in order to pay his debts. As a result, it did not really matter much to whom he sold these cantatas as long as he received the required cash for them. In 1827 it was offered for sale by an unnamed individual (a beer buddy or someone who advanced some money for gambling?) at an auction in Berlin. One of those interested in purchasing it was Carl Friedrich Zelter, whose offer was surpassed by Karl Philipp Heinrich Pistor (1778-1847) whose name also appears as an owner of other cantata scores. According to the BGA, Vol. 24, p. XVII, the manuscript was in the possession of Mrs. Marie Hoffmeister (1817-1890), who lived in Wienrode near Blankenburg in the Harz Mountain region. She was the daughter of a zoology professor, Heinrich Lichtenstein in Berlin, who, according to Mendel Lichtenstein was very likely the last student that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had in Hamburg. Heinrich Lichtenstein’s daughter, Marie (Lichtenstein) Hoffmeister was the godmother and piano teacher of Ernst Rudorff. It is very probable that she received the autograph score as a wedding present (she married Dr. August Hoffmeister (1815-1895)) from Pistor and his daughter, Betty, who was married to Adolf Rudorff. After Alfred Dörffel was able to ascertain the ownership of the score for the BGA in 1876 as belonging to Marie Hoffmeister, it must relatively soon thereafter, in 1886, have returned to the Rudorff family. Ernst Rudorff made a list (still unpublished) of his Bachiana among which BWV 112 was mentioned. Between 1886 and 1916, the year of Rudorff’s death, the manuscript must have been sold. If it had been sold together with two of his other scores (BWV 115 and BWV 116), then it is probable that Dr. Max Abraham (1831-1900) may have acquired it, in which case his nephew and successor, Henri Hinrichsen, would have inherited it in 1900, or another possibility could be that Hinrichsen acquired it directly from Rudorff or purchased it directly from the estate after Rudorff’s death.
After WWII Henri Hinrichsen’s son, Walter, brought the autograph score to the USA, where eventually it was purchased in New York in 1950 by Mrs. Mary Flagler Cary. Since 1967 the manuscript has become part of the Mary Flagler Carys Music Collection and is housed in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

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Last update: ýMarch 21, 2005 ý10:39:32