Cantata BWV 159 - Provenance

Thomas Braatz wrote (February 15, 2002):
BWV 159 - Provenance:

The autograph score and parts were lost together will all the other source materials of the year-long cantata cycle known as the Picander Cantata Cycle (1728-29). These had belonged to Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and nobody seems to know why these cantatas disappeared so completely without a trace. The only reason, why we are able to hear this cantata in a version probably quite true to the original is that Christian Friedrich Penzel had made a copy from the original (c. 1770.) Very likely he had to pay W.F. Bach dearly to “take a peek!” Penzel’s copy is most important source for the printed editions of the BG (Vol 32) (July 1886) and the NBA I/8. Of some special interest is the situation regarding the famous bass aria (mvt. 4). It is missing in the Penzel score! He left space for it, but never completed it (perhaps the time allotted for his ‘peek’ at the scores had run out?) Luckily he had been able to copy all the mvts. for the set of parts. The missing aria in the Penzel copy of the score was filled in by one of the later owners of the score: Franz Hauser, a collector of Bach’s works. As a famous bass soloist, Hauser must have been disturbed by the missing bass aria in the score, thus he reconstructed the score from the parts almost a century later and filled in what Penzel hat omitted for some unknown reason.

1^st Performance:

February 27, 1729 (Dürr) The final appoggiatura in mvt. 1 could well be a stylistic modernization undertaken by Penzel (1770) as this was not normally customary in Bach’s scores (comment by NBA editors, 1998.)

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Last update: ýAugust 6, 2003 ý07:39:08