Preface

V
chen. Hierin und in der von Abschrift
zu Abschrift variierenden Art der Aus-
schmückung zeigt sich der freie Ge-
brauch der Zeit im Umgang mit den
Verzierungszeichen. Insofern dürfen
die Ornamente sowohl des Autographs
(Normalstich) wie auch die der Ab-
schriften (Kleinstich) als Vorschläge
für die eigene Gestaltung aufgefasst
werden. Die Zeichen tr, e und w stehen
bei Bach gleichbedeutend für den ge-
wöhnlichen Triller. Die am Ende des
Vorwortes folgende Verzierungstabelle
(Ausschnitt), die Bach im Klavierbüch-
lein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach nie-
dergeschrieben hat, erläutert einige für
Bach wesentliche Ornamente.
Wichtigere Textprobleme werden in
den Bemerkungen am Ende dieses Ban-
des angesprochen. Weiterhin teilen wir
alle wesentlichen von Bach im Auto-
graph getilgten und durch Änderungen
verworfenen Lesarten in den Bemerkun-
gen mit. Für bereitwillig zur Verfügung
gestellte Quellen sei den oben genannten
Bibliotheken gedankt.
München, Frühjahr 1997
Ernst-Günter Heinemann
Preface
Part 1 of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-
Tempered Clavier has survived in a
complete autograph fair copy dating
from the year 1722. The title translates
roughly as follows: The Well-Tempered
Clavier, or preludes and fugues in every
key, including those with the major
third and those with the minor third, for
the use and benefit of inquisitive young
musicians and for the special diversion
of those already well-versed in this
study, set down and composed by Jo-
hann Sebastian Bach, chapel-master
and director of chamber music to the
Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, in the year
1722. This title, which, incidentally,
only applies to Part 1, raises high claims
for Bach’s collection, which sets out to
be both a manual of instruction and a
challenge to accomplished performers.
Bach composed this work at a time
when efforts were being made to devise
the system of tempered tuning still used
on keyboard instruments today. This
system allows performers to play in eve-
ry key, whereas instruments tuned in ac-
cordance with earlier systems permitted
only a limited number of keys. It is thus
fully understandable that Bach was in-
terested in exploring the entire range of
major and minor keys.
The high value Bach attached to Part
1 of his Well-Tempered Clavier is appar-
ent in the painstaking care he spent on
his exemplary autograph manuscript.
Time and again he placed this manu-
script at the disposal of his pupils so
that they could make personal hand-
written copies of it. Even during Bach’s
lifetime the work was highly regarded
by connoisseurs. All the same, its highly
retrospective nature (the fugue was al-
ready considered an outdated form) ran
counter to the musical fashions of the
day. This also explains why the collec-
tion did not appear in print until some
fifty years after Bach’s death, by which
time, however, the work had already
been disseminated in innumerable hand-
written copies.
The primary source for every new
edition of Part 1 of the Well-Tempered
Clavier is Bach’s autograph manuscript.
For a long time the full significance of
this manuscript remained shrouded in
obscurity. By an ill stroke of fortune,
three of the most important manuscript
copies that deliberately sought to imi-
tate the layout and handwriting of
Bach’s original were long thought to be
autographs as well. This mistake had
dire consequences: editors saw them-
selves confronted with a total of four
allegedly autograph manuscripts that
differed from each other in myriad de-
tails, and every deviation was thought
to represent a legitimate alternative
reading. Not until the days of modern
Bach research, primarily that of Walther
Dehnhard and Alfred Dürr, was this
state of affairs revealed in its true light.
The three putative autographs proved to
be copyist’s manuscripts based on the
sole authentic original in Bach’s own
hand. The seemingly enigmatic discrep-
ancies in the text were now easily ac-
counted for.
Bach, as already mentioned, wrote
out his work in fair copy in 1722. A
number of handwritten copies were
made from that manuscript, thereby
preserving the text at the first stage of
its evolution. In the years up to around
1732 Bach entered a number of initial
changes in his autograph. In this revised
state, the manuscript again served as a
model for copies that preserve a second
stage of the text. Probably some time af-
ter 1736 Bach once again subjected his
manuscript to a revision which in turn
left its mark on the copies made from it,
thereby preserving a third stage of the
text. Finally, in the 1740s, he entered a
third and final series of emendations
that represent the work in its final re-
daction, or stage 4. The alleged variants
in the sources thus turn out to be read-
ings rejected by Bach himself and ren-
dered obsolete by his final definitive
version.
There is thus only one uncontested
principal source for our edition: Bach’s
autograph manuscript. Its present loca-
tion is the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer
Kulturbesitz in Berlin, Music Collection
with Mendelssohn Archive (Mus.ms.
Bach P 415); it has also been published
in facsimile. We have also consulted sev-
eral of the pupils’ copies, among them
the three mistakenly thought to be auto-
graphs. These include the Christian
Gottlob Meißner MS (Gemeente Muse-
um, The Hague, 69 D 14) and a group
of MSS likewise located at the Staatsbib-
liothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Ber-
lin: the Anonymous 5 MS (Mus.ms. Bach
P 401), the Anna Magdalena Bach and
Johann Friedrich Agricola MS (Mus.ms.
Bach P 202), the Johann Gottfried Wal-
ther MS (Mus.ms. Bach P 1074) and the
Johann Christoph Altnickol MS (Mus.
ms. Bach P 402). Of these, the Meißner
and Walther MSS preserve the first stage
of the text, while Anna Magdalena Bach
and Altnickol present stages 2 and 3, re-
spectively. Anonymous 5 derives from a