Over a decade ago I announced the inauguration of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works (CPEB:CW) (Eighteenth-Century Music 2/2 (2005), 374–376). In addition to giving an outline of the edition's organization, which has been slightly revised over the years (for current details, see <www.cpebach.org> under ‘Contents of Series and Volumes’), I listed some of the challenges facing the editors. Eleven years further on, I am happy to report that most of the issues have been resolved, even as more have arisen. Nicholas Cook, whom I quoted in 2005, is certainly right about critical editions being hard, but we hope to prove him wrong about their being impossible.
In 2014 we celebrated the three hundredth birthday of C. P. E. Bach with conferences in Leipzig, Hamburg, Magdeburg and Frankfurt/Oder; a special exhibition at Houghton Library and the Edna Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University (see Harvard Library Bulletin 24/3 (2013), 1–69); and many concerts and new recordings. The same year marked the publication of part 2 (vocal music) of the Bach-Repertorium series Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke, by Wolfram Enßlin and Uwe Wolf with Christine Blanken (Stuttgart: Carus, 2014); part 1 (covering the instrumental music) is expected in 2018. Naturally, our task would have been easier if all this work had been done before we started CPEB:CW, but it gives me some satisfaction knowing that the edition has been an impetus for much new work on this important composer.
By the time this report appears in print, we will have published around eighty volumes out of a total of 115. (In 1999, before the Sing-Akademie archives were recovered in Kiev and returned to Berlin, we had projected only about seventy volumes in total!) Three series are now complete, namely, the chamber music (series II), the songs and vocal chamber music (series VI) and the theoretical writings (series VII, a critical edition with commentary by Tobias Plebuch of the Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen). Also available are the complete symphonies (III/1–III/3), the flute, oboe and violoncello concertos (III/4–III/6), the Magnificat (Wq215, in two versions in V/1), the installation cantatas (five fascicles in V/3) and the surviving librettos in facsimile (three fascicles in VIII/3). I am especially proud of some of the volumes in series VIII: Christoph Wolff's facsimile edition with commentary of the ‘Polyhymnia Portfolio’ (VIII/2) and Annette Richards's catalogue of Bach's portrait collection (VIII/4). Still awaiting publication are more solo keyboard music in series I, keyboard concertos and sonatinas in series III, and oratorios, Passions and cantatas in series IV and V, before we bring the edition to a close with historical catalogues (VIII/5), a catalogue of sources and scribes (VIII/6) and indices (VIII/7).
More recently, we have been forced to address the multitude of Bach's borrowings in his vocal music for the city churches in Hamburg, where he served the last two decades of his life. Virtually all of these borrowings have now been identified, thanks in part to the editorial staff at CPEB:CW and the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. (Appendices to certain volumes in series IV and V often contain one or more ‘Vorlagen’, that is, the original versions of arias and choruses that Bach adapted, more often than not with a parody text.) It is fascinating to see Bach as an editor and arranger of works by his contemporaries, especially Georg Benda, Gottfried August Homilius and the brothers Graun, but also his brothers W. F. Bach and J. C. F. Bach, his father J. S. Bach and godfather Georg Philipp Telemann.
But why did Bach spend time looking for arias to fit a text or dramatic situation instead of writing new settings himself? He did take special pride in writing his own accompanied recitatives, and in a few Passions one or two such movements are the only original music he contributed. Clearly, he could write excellent choruses (like the ‘Sicut erat’ fugue at the end of the Magnificat, later reworked as ‘Herr, es ist dir keiner gleich’ in his Easter cantata Wq243), and in his last decade he relied increasingly on arranging his ‘Gellert Songs’ as arias or choruses. One obvious explanation is that the duties of music director in Hamburg were very different from what he was accustomed to as royal accompanist at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin and Potsdam. Reading Charles Burney, who spent a week with Bach in 1772, one gets the distinct feeling that the composer didn't feel it was worth the effort to present his best work. On the other hand, he continued to write and publish his music (often ‘im Verlag des Autors’) until his death in December 1788.
Our goal is to complete the edition by 2020, though I must admit that there are days when this seems impossible. Work would go faster if the music itself and the editorial issues it raises weren't so complex. Of course, this is what makes the work interesting (and occasionally exciting) for me and my colleagues – Laura Buch, Jason B. Grant and Mark W. Knoll. Indeed, at times we can practically see the composer at work, often making revisions and refinements over weeks or months or years, while in other cases we know that there must have been sketches or drafts that are now lost forever. But it has been an adventure and an education.
