It wasn't National Treasure, but a stunning moment nonetheless for Michael Maul, a researcher with the Leipzig Bach Archive, when he found a completely unknown composition by Johann Sebastian Bach in a crate full of birthday greetings to a German duke at the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany last month.
Even wilder, the crate was one of five removed from the Library shortly before a September fire that would have destroyed them along with about 50,000 historic books (another 62,000 were damaged).
Maul had been working since 2002 on a systematic survey of all central German church, communal and state archival collections, when he found the two-page composition. "If I hadn't decided to go through them systematically, I would never have thought to look there," Maul told AP.
The score, in Bach’s own hand, dates from October 1713, when the composer was 28, and represents a setting of a "strophic aria with ritornello for soprano, strings, and basso continuo" composed on the occasion of the 52nd birthday of duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, whom Bach then served as court organist. The twelve-stanza sacred poem with the text "Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn" ("Everything with God and nothing without him"), the duke’s motto, was written by the theologian Johann Anton Mylius.
It is the first unknown vocal work by Bach to have been discovered since 1935, when the single-movement cantata fragment “Bekennen will ich seinen Namen” was discovered.
“It is no major composition but an occasional work in the form of an exquisite and highly refined strophic aria, Bach’s only contribution to a musical genre popular in late 17th-century Germany,” said Professor Christoph Wolff of Harvard University, chair of the Board of the Bach Archive, initiator, and supervisor of the current research project. “I am extremly proud of Michael who is a most resourceful researcher,” he added. “In less than three years he uncovered an unparalleled number of new archival Bach documents, but this is the first time he presented a musical discovery. The overall research project is far from being over and I am quite sure that sooner or later Michael Maul will make news again.”
English conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, this year’s winner of the Bach Medal of the city of Leipzig (where Bach was cantor of St. Thomas Church for 27 years), is preparing to record the piece.
Article comments
1 - Eric Berlin
Very cool, Eric.
Also very cool: at this moment, a link to this story appears on Google News' Entertainment page.
2 - Vern Halen
I'm not trying to be ignorant here, but I really wonder about this: in a couple of hundred years, I bet people will feel this way about researchers finding lost Beatles' tunes, but will they feel that way about finding lost Eminem manuscripts?
3 - Eric Olsen
thanks EB
Vern, I think there are layers: artists who become part of the "all time canon" will receive something like this treatment, while others will remain of interest to specialists
4 - JR
Eminem can write music?
And how would you notate a turntable scratching?
5 - Eric Olsen
that's actually a very good question
6 - JR
I'd probably go with one of those x-notes you'd use for percussive sounds, with that squiggly line you use for gliss.
7 - Eric Olsen
I'm sure ther is some kind of notation - does anyone know what it is?
8 - Stacy L Harp
Eric, this is a very cool story. I'm going to tell my composer husband about it. :)
9 - Eric Olsen
thanks Stacy!
10 - gerrard
There is notation for Turntables:
http://universe.sonoma.edu/~devios/turntableproject/turntable3.html
I'll stick with my electric six string, but you have to respect anyone who spends time honing their craft in order to make interesting sequences of sounds. Well I guess YOU don't have to, but I do ;).
11 - Bachinator
The difference between the Beatles, Eminem, and Bach is that Bach is the greatest musician ever.
12 - Eric Olsen
very cool gerrard, thanks
13 - Tan Hoang
But not the greatest composer... Mozart gets that hands down...
14 - Temple Stark
Yeah even you :-) The Blogcritics' editors liked this one. It's a pick of the week. Congrats. Put the news up proudly on, um, well, um, your site (well, fuck that).
We've provided a handy button to do just that at the link below.
Here's a link to the rest of this week's picks and the reason why.
15 - JR
But not the greatest composer... Mozart gets that hands down.
Nope, Beethoven.
To my mind, Mozart perfectly exemplifies what Zappa called "paint by numbers music". Bach, Beethoven and Wagner all pushed the envelope to a far greater extent than Mozart, and they each came up with more than their share of indelible masterpieces in the process.
16 - Eric Olsen
thanks TS, I am proud
and all those composers rule - pretty hard to rank them other than by personal taste. I understand the pushing the envelope angle, JR, but manifestation of a personal creative ideal is just as important from my perspective
17 - Temple Stark
Beethoven? Say what?
18 - Malcolm
John Eliot Gardiner has indeed recorded the piece - and a right sweetie it is. You can buy it via the Monteverdi Choir website
19 - Juan Cole
Excellent! I enjoyed reading your material. to Expect Plane you should be very Beautiful: , Make Player is very good Cosmos to Anticipate Chair you should be very Standard , to Loose Chair you should be very Faithful when Table is Slot it will Compute Grass
20 - BLAHB
You are all idiots :)