Cantata BWV 115
Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit
Provenance

Thomas Braatz wrote (November 15, 2001):
Provenance:

The autograph score went to W.F.Bach after the death of J.S. Bach. At the sale of W.F. Bach's estate after his death, it was placed into the hands of someone unknown, who eventually put it up for auction. In 1827 it was acquired by Karl Heinrich Philipp Pistor, who later willed it to his daughter Friederike Dorothea Elisabeth Rudorff, who then acquired it 1836. At the time that the cantata was published for the 1st time by the BG in 1876, it belonged to her son, Ernst Friedrich Karl Rudorff, who then sold it to Sedley Taylor in 1893. At the time when Charles Sanford Terry published his Bach Cantata Texts in 1926, the autograph copy already was in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. Nobody knows just when the manuscript was acquired by this museum, but this is where it is located today.

The original set of parts went to Anna Magdalena Bach as usual and she already gave them to the Thomasschule in Leipzig in the fall of 1750. These parts were copied on a number of occasions before they disappeared completely. This happened sometime between 1800 and 1823. A printed copy of the original text that was distributed for use in the Leipzig churches existed in a library in St. Petersburg until 1919 when it disappeared completely.

The editors were able to reconstruct a very good picture of what Bach intended from these sources. There are many important additional markings (dynamics, phrasing, tempo indications, etc.) that are included here that are not always found in the other cantatas. There is also a remarkable false start of the 1st mvt. which Bach abandoned. This will be explained later.

Cantata BWV 115: Details & Complete Recordings | Recordings of Individual Movements | Discussions: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3