Turning the pages back... August 15, 1999 (08/14/05)

Turning the pages back...

August 15, 1999

Six years ago, it was reported that the long-lost estate of Johann Sebastian Bach's second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, was discovered in Kyiv, where it is preserved as part of the music archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie. Christoph Wolff, William Powell Mason Professor of Music and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, wrote an article about the discovery that appeared in the August 15, 1999, issue of The Ukrainian Weekly. The author of the article had been following several leads to the whereabouts of the material for more than two decades in connection with research on the musical sources of the Bach family.

In order to protect it from being destroyed during the war, the Sing-Akademie's archive, with one of the world's most important collections of 18th century music, including significant and largely unique Bach family materials, had been moved from Berlin to Ullersdorf Castle, Silesia, in 1943. The archive then disappeared and with no information available about its post-war fate, it has been missing for over half a century and long feared destroyed.

Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, an associate of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, who directs a project on Russian and Ukrainian archives, had been searching in Ukraine in connection with her book, "Trophies of War and Empire." The close collaboration between Prof. Wolff and Dr. Grimsted, together with Prof. Hennadii Boriak, deputy director of the Institute of the Archaeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine led to the recent discovery. In July 1999 Prof. Wolff, Dr. Grimsted and Barbara Wolff, music cataloguer of Harvard's Houghton Library, identified and examined the Sing-Akademie collection in the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine in Kyiv.

The Berlin Sing-Akademie, founded in 1791 by Carl Friedrich Fasch (a colleague and friend of the younger Bach) and directed from 1800 to 1832 by Carl Friedrich Zelter, presented a celebrated performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1829 under the direction of Zelter's pupil, the young Felix Mendelssohn. Its music archive contains well over 5,000 items (mostly manuscripts) that have been preserved in excellent conditions. Even before its wartime disappearance, as a private collection without a professional archivist, the materials were largely inaccessible to scholars, and its provisionally catalogued holdings have never been systematically studied.

The estate of C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788), which forms a central portion of the Sing-Akademie archive, includes music by his father and brothers, a collection of works by his father's ancestors called "Old Bach Archive" (many in copies from J. S. Bach's hand) and, most importantly, the bulk of his own compositions in autograph or authorized copies, among them 20 Passions, 50 keyboard concertos and many other vocal and instrumental works. Most of the compositions, including all the Passions, more than two-thirds of the keyboard concertos, many chamber works, were unpublished and had never been available for performance or study. The collection also contained holdings of works by other composers.

Trophy art, library books and archives from Western Europe transferred to the former USSR after World War II were, for the most part, kept hidden throughout the Soviet period. However, since its independence, Ukraine has led former Soviet republics in restitution efforts and signed a cultural agreement with Germany providing for the mutual return of wartime cultural trophies.

The over 5,000 music scores from the Sing-Akademie archive identified in 1999 in Kyiv undoubtedly represent the most valuable trophy collection to have surfaced in Ukraine, noted Prof. Wolff.

Source: "Long-lost estate of J.S. Bach's son discovered in Kyiv," by Christoph Wolff, The Ukrainian Weekly, August 15, 1999, Vol. LXVI, No. 33.

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