Three hundred years ago, at the beginning of September 1724, the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was putting the finishing touches on his sacred cantata ‘Allein zu dir Herr Jesu Christ’ (‘To Thee Alone, Lord Jesus Christ’, BWV 33). Individual copies of each of the musicians’ parts, based on this manuscript score, were being written out for its inaugural performance during church services on the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, that is, September 3, in the Lutheran church of St Thomas in Leipzig. The intended ensemble was comprised of a four-voice chorus with three soloists (alto, tenor, and bass), 2 oboes, 2 violins, a viola, and basso continuo (usually an organ or harpsichord, often combined with cello, etc.). Sung in German, the cantata’s six movements consist of an initial chorus, a recitative for bass, a lovely alto aria, a recitative for tenor, a duet for tenor and bass, and a choral finale. Purchased in 1965 by Willam Hurd ‘Bill’ Scheide (1914–2014), Princeton University Class of 1936, the complete original autograph score of this cantata is one of the most important Bach manuscripts in the United States.

When students and visitors see Bach’s signed score in the Scheide Library (call # WHS 30.21), the first question asked is usually something along the lines of ‘How did this manuscript come down to us?’ This is indeed a wonderful, fundamental question, one that has important implications for the manuscript’s authenticity, the arc of Bach reception and scholarship, and the history of collecting. The short answer is ‘Through the Bach family for the first century, and through private collectors during the next two’, but there is much more to it; this blog intends to answer the question more fully, adding previously unknown information.

After serving musical appointments at Weimar, Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Cöthen, J. S. Bach became the musical director (Cantor) of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723. In Leipzig he was responsible for musical instruction as well as composing and leading the weekly musical liturgy, at the heart of which was the sacred cantata, a multi-movement musical composition for voices with instrumental accompaniment, generally based on older Protestant hymns. During his first year in Leipzig, Bach made use of a combination of older compositions and some 40 new cantatas, but in the church year 1724-25 he undertook the composition of a completely new cycle of 52 weekly cantatas. The present cantata was based on the German text of a hymn composed in 1540 by Konrad Hubert (1507–1577), a Calvinist theologian in Strasbourg. Over his prolific career Bach eventually composed some 300 cantatas (at least 100 of them have been lost to posterity), including several on secular themes.

The manuscript in question consists of ten paper leaves of musical score inside a paper wrapper, which Bach himself inscribed and signed ‘Dominica 13 post Trinitatis; | Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ | à | 4 Voci, | 2 Hautbois | 2 Violini | Viola | e | Continuo | di | Joh. Seb. Bach’ [the 13^th Sunday after Trinity, To Thee Alone, Lord Jesus Christ, for 4 voices, 2 oboes, 2 violins, viola, and continuo, Johann Sebastian Bach’]. This is not simply a ‘fair copy’ of the finished work, made for performance or safekeeping by posterity, but rather one of Bach’s characteristic composing scores, where the final working out of the original composition of all of the vocal and instrumental parts took place in simultaneous coordination. Thus, it includes several scribbled deletions, corrections, and out-of-place ‘do-overs’. No earlier sketches or drafts are known. In order to be performed, the individual parts had to be copied out by hand from this score, a task normally assigned to the composer’s students (including his sons), working under his supervision and editorial pen. The original performing parts for ‘Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ’ survive at the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig; they were sold by the composer’s widow, Anna Magdalena Bach, to the city of Leipzig shortly after 1750.

How did the Scheide Library’s manuscript come down to posterity? At Bach’s death in 1750 he left it to his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710–1784), along with many other scores and personal documents. Musically talented but eventually unable to support himself dependably as a more or less freelance musician, W. F. Bach is known to have sold some of his father’s scores in 1774. However, the fact that the next owner of the present manuscript was Carl Philipp Heinrich Pistor (1778–1847), the inventor of optical telegraphy, raises the near certainty that it was sold in the 1827 auction of Wilhelm Friedemann’s remaining property in Berlin, where Pistor was a heavy buyer. Pistor’s daughter Elisabeth ‘Betty’ Pistor was a good friend of the famous composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), a great enthusiast for the revival of J. S. Bach’s works. It is probable that Mendelssohn saw and studied this manuscript, as he often did with others, at the Pistor residence. It is certain that it was seen by Mendelssohn’s teacher, Karl Friedrich Zelter, who used dark red ink to fill in the German text of the final chorale movement, which, since it was so well known to the original singers, Bach characteristically had indicated in highly abbreviated form.

Around 1835, Herr Pistor gave the score to his friend Julius Schubring (1806–1889), Pastor of St George in Dessau, whom Mendelssohn admired as a friend and a librettist. On 11 February 1836 Schubring wrote about the cantata in a letter he sent to Mendelssohn in Leipzig (in translation): ‘Another question concerns the Bachiana we discussed. […] What my little property consists of was given to me by Pistor, a manuscript of Bach’s own, Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, 13^th Sunday after Trinity. […] If you don’t have a copy, I can have one made for you’.¹ For purposes of identification, Schubring’s letter included a little handwritten transcription of the first measure of the Oboe I part:

Schubring eventually made the score available to the musicologist Wilhelm Rust, who was able to include an engraved transcription of the edited score in vol. 7 of the Bach-Gesellschaft edition of Bach’s complete works, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Werke (Leipzig, 1857). In 1889 the original score descended to the owner’s son, and eventually to his grandson, Dr Walther Schubring (1881–1969), who allowed the manuscript to be auctioned at J. A. Stargardt Autographenhandlung (Katalog 572), in Marburg, West Germany, on 14 May 1965.

There naturally was tremendous international interest in lot 452, one of the last complete original Bach manuscripts in private hands. No one was more committed to winning it than Bill Scheide, a noted musicologist, Bach specialist, and book collector. He conducted his bidding through Albi Rosenthal, co-proprietor of Otto Haas, London. The only question was, with bidding starting at DM 60,000, how far would he have to go? He knew that the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), which already owned 81 of  Bach’s surviving cantatas, would be the principal competition. On 12 May he received some crucial pre-auction intelligence from Rosenthal via a Western Union telegram:

         VERY HEAVY ARTILLERY MASSING FOR BACH BATTLE MAY HAVE TO EXCEED                   COMMITMENT BY ABOUT TEN PERCENT STOP WILL PROCEDE UNLESS YOU                   CABLE 125 [DM] IRREVOCABLE LIMIT STOP HOPE MY ASSESSMENT PESSIMISTIC           STOP BEST WISHES ALBI ROSENTHAL HOTEL ORTENBERG MARBURG

Doing some quick computations, Scheide agreed to Rosenthal’s suggested 10% increase beyond DM 125,000. In Marburg on 14 May, the bidding among German, Swiss, French, and British competitors quickly rose to DM 130,000 without Rosenthal having entered a bid. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation dropped out after DM 133,000, but an anonymous Swiss bidder kept going. Although Scheide’s maximum was DM 137,500, Rosenthal decided that he would throw in the entirety of his own commission (DM 10,000), if necessary. And some of it was necessary: the auctioneer’s hammer finally fell after his bid of DM 140,000 – the Bach score would be coming to America! In the end, seeing the beautiful manuscript, Scheide was happy that Rosenthal had exceeded his limit, and was pleased to reinstate his full commission. Scheide always made the score available to scholars, and upon his death in 2014, he bequeathed it along with his entire library of rare books and manuscripts to Princeton University Library.

The full digitization of Bach’s score of BWV 33 is available at: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9935097423506421

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¹ Briefwechsel zwischen Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und Julius Schubring, edited by Dr Julius Schubring II (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1892), pp. 105-06: ‘Eine andere Frage betrifft die besprochene Bachiana. […] Was mein kleines Eigenthum betrifft, so ists mir von Pistor geschenkt worden, ein eigenes Manuscript Bachs. Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, Dom. XIII p. trin. […] Wenn Dus nicht hast, kann ich Dirs abschreiben lassen’.