Dietel manuscript

The Dietel manuscript,

• Organ and
  Sanctus in B major, BWV Anh. 28.^[41]
• For a performance on Reformation Day 31 October 1734: score of Welt und Teufel tobt ihr noch, another cantata attributed to Fasch (FWV D:W2, FR 1401).[42]^[43]
• A series of cantatas by Nicola Porpora, copied in collaboration with Gerlach, possibly for a performance by the latter as singer.^[44]

In 1734, or possibly 1735, Dietel copied the organ part of

Dietel's manuscript, R 18, contains 149 SATB settings, without instrumental accompaniment or interludes, of chorale tunes.^[1][54] Two settings, Nos. 119 and 134, are identical,^[55][56] thus the collection contains 148 unique settings.^[57] A few settings are related, but not identical:

• Nos. 1 (variant of
  BWV 117/4)^[58] and 100 (BWV 117/4)^[59]
• Nos. 88 (
  deest – similar to BWV 8/6, but with a different harmonic progression)^[61]

All settings are by Bach and/or feature in larger-scale compositions by Bach.[62] Two settings are strictly speaking not by Bach:^[63]

• No. 88 (
  BWV 8/6): Bach's adaptation of a SATB setting by Daniel Vetter, published in 1713.^[64]
• No. 107 (
  p. 70.^[65][66]

In general, Bach based his harmonisations on pre-existing hymn tunes. There are, however, some hymn tunes (or versions thereof) for which there appear to be no earlier extant sources than Bach's compositions. In the Dietel manuscript:

• Zahn No. 3068, in R 18 No. 6 ("Dir, dir, Jehova, will ich singen")^[67]
• Zahn No. 5878a, in R 18 No. 9 ("Ich bin ja, Herr, in deiner Macht")[68]
• Tune of
  BWV 1122 (not in Zahn), R 18 No. 38 ("Denket doch, ihr Menschenkinder")^[69]
• Zahn No. 7417a, in R 18 No. 48 ("Gib dich zufrieden und sei stille")[70]
• Zahn No. 6461 hymn tune ("Warum sollt ich mich denn grämen")^[71][72]

A couple of settings in the Dietel manuscript are SATB versions of voice and continuo settings found in Schemellis Gesangbuch (1736):^[73]

• BWV 299 [2] as found in R 18 No. 6;^[67]
• The four-part version of "
  BWV 441)^[74]

All chorales have a number (however with collation errors),[57] and, except for No. 145, a title referring to a text of a Lutheran hymn, but are otherwise untexted.^[62] The titles in R 18 do not always refer to the hymns from which stanzas are extracted in musically corresponding movements of larger works.^[62] There is no over-all organisational principle for the collation, but some ranges appear to have some logic: for example, the range from Nos. 67 to 96 follows through the liturgical year, more or less consequentially, from the fourth Sunday after Trinity to the first Sunday of Advent.^[56]

Reception

When Gerlach died in Leipzig in 1761 he apparently had no heirs living in the town: a large part of his music collection, for instance the copies of the Porpora cantatas, came in the possession of the music publishers Bernhard Christoph and Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf.^[26][45] The earliest trace of the Dietel manuscript dates from 1764, when the Breitkopf publishing firm offered (manuscript) copies of the chorale collection for sale.^[1][80] The earliest prints of Bach's four-part chorale collections, two volumes published by Birnstiel in 1765 and 1769 respectively, drew from other manuscripts than the Dietel Collection.^[81][82] Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel (C. P. E.), who had collaborated on Birnstiel's 1765 volume, fell out with the publisher and left further plans for a complete edition of his father's four-part chorales to Johann Kirnberger, who negotiated with the Breitkopf firm on the subject.^[82][83] In 1777 Kirnberger wrote to Breitkopf:^[57]

The "150 Stück" (150 pieces) mentioned by Kirnberger refer to the Dietel manuscript.^[57] Kirnberger was also the librarian of the Amalienbibliothek, the library of his employer Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia.^[84] The library contained these manuscripts:

• D-B Am.B 46/II, Fascicle 3, containing 111 four-part chorales, all of which also occur in the Dietel collection.^[85] The fascicle is part of the Am.B 46/II collection, which contains 369 chorales, and its content likely corresponds to the collection of chorales which Kirnberger had acquired from C. P. E. Bach.^[86] The Am.B 46/II copy was likely produced in Berlin (where Kirnberger lived and worked) around the 1770s.^[85][86]
• D-B Am.B 48: a rather straightforward copy of the Dietel manuscript, produced in Leipzig by the Breitkopf firm, that is, the kind of copy they offered for sale in 1764, and the only extant of such copies.^[87][88] It is not known when this copy entered the Amalienbibliothek, but it seems unlikely that Kirnberger would have been unaware of its presence in the library when he wrote his July 1777 letter to Breitkopf (meaning: the Am.B 48 copy likely only arrived in Berlin after that letter).^[87]

When Kirnberger died in 1783, no new edition of Bach's four-part chorales had materialised.^[89] Shortly thereafter, in 1784 and 1785, Breitkopf published the first two volumes of their new edition of these chorales, edited by C. P. E. Bach.^[90] These volumes reflected, to a large extent, the two Birnstiel volumes, that is, none of the chorales contained in them were extracted from the Dietel manuscript: the chorales from that manuscript, or rather, from the Am.B 46/II, Fascicle 3, selection, were only included in the third (1786) and concluding fourth (1787) volumes of Breitkopf's edition.^[81] Within two decades after the publication, Breitkopf disposed of the Dietel manuscript, Otto Carl Friedrich von Voß [de] becoming its new owner.^[1][80] A later owner of the manuscript was Ernst Rudorff, and from 1917 it resided in the Music Library Peters [de] in Leipzig, where it got the shelf mark R 18.^[1][80] Eventually the collection of the Peters library was adopted in the Leipzig City Library [de], from where the R 18 manuscript was transmitted, as a permanent loan, to the Bach Archive in 2014.^[1]

The Dietel manuscript only started to attract stronger attention from scholarship in the second half of the 20th century.^[27][91] In 1991 the New Bach Edition published the entire manuscript, edited by Frieder Rempp [scores]: the edition included several chorales from the manuscript which had not been given a BWV number in the 1950 first edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis.^[77][92] Four chorales from the Dietel manuscript were given a BWV number in the 1122–1125 range in the 1998 edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis.^[93]

References