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<\/a><\/p>\nBrowsing the Internet a bit, we can confirm that indeed this fateful insertion is still causing confusion. Various editions are compared in discussion forums, sometimes featuring the measure, sometimes not. And many a one poses the legitimate question: \u2018Bach or not Bach here?<\/p>\n
Ever since the appearance of the \u2018New Edition of All the Works\u2019, the source situation for the Well-Tempered Clavier has been clearly explained. The most important source for the music text is the autograph where at various stages Bach himself entered corrections. Consequently, it transmits the authoritative form. The autograph of the C-major Prelude consisting of 35 measures thus gets along without the \u2018Schwencke measure\u2019.<\/p>\n
Bach\u2019s autograph was, however, repeatedly copied. These copies then served again as models for other copies so that an extensive network of manuscripts has been preserved; some of these go back to Bach\u2019s autograph directly, some in a roundabout way. One of the copyists was the Hamburg music director Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Schwencke (1767\u20131822). He made a manuscript of the Well-Tempered Clavier I that can be traced back to the autograph only by way of several presently lost intermediate stages. Showing up for the first time in this copy of Schwencke\u2019s is the measure that has become so notorious.<\/p>\n
Whether Schwencke himself added the measure or whether it was already there in one of the lost models can no longer be determined. More important perhaps is the question of how this idea of lengthening the prelude could have come up at all.\u00a0 Is something missing in Bach\u2019s autograph?<\/p>\n
Well, the piece is almost entirely subdivided into regular groups of four measures each. Though only just. One more measure \u2013 and the regularity would be perfect! So Schwencke had the feeling that the three measures, 21\u201323, had to be expanded into four, especially since the harmonic progression from m. 22 is in effect abrupt and audacious after m. 23. Schwencke must have thought that inadvertently this measure had gone astray in transmission and so he added it in the music text. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Bach intended the irregularity and compression of measures 21\u201323; the definiteness of the source situation is not to be shaken.<\/p>\n
Hermann Keller writes in his little book about the Well-Tempered Clavier: \u2018Schwencke was a sophisticated and well-informed musician who was probably not thinking of improving Bach\u2019 (Hermann Keller, Das Wohltemperierte Klavier von Johann Sebastian Bach<\/em>, Kassel, etc.: B\u00e4renreiter, 1965, S. 40). But that obviously was just the case. The supposed improvement found its way into print in the Well-Tempered Clavier; the \u2018Schwencke measure\u2019 has gradually managed to worm its way into the transmission history.<\/p>\n It began in the Bonn publishing house of Simrock (1801 or 1802) with the edition whose editor was probably Schwencke himself. The measure also showed up in the Peters edition of 1837 by Carl Czerny. To be sure, in other editions of the 19th<\/sup> century the provenance of the phantom measure was at times put right. But the big success of the Czerny edition \u2013 which today is also available again through Internet portals such as the \u2018Petrucci Music Library\u2019 \u2013 ensured that the \u2018Schwencke measure\u2019 found wide distribution. Unhelpful in this connection was Charles Gounod\u2019s M\u00e9ditation<\/em> \u2018Ave Maria\u2019<\/a>. This perennial top-seller from the 1850s quoted the Bach prelude of the Czerny edition and saw to it that the \u2018Schwencke measure\u2019 was adopted into the collective cultural memory.<\/p>\n Thus, the \u2018Schwencke measure\u2019 stubbornly survives right up to our day. Our Urtext edition <\/a>of the prelude clearly presents the facts:<\/p>\n <\/em>The footnote asterisk between mm. 22 and 23 refers to the following comment:<\/p>\n In 1783, the copyist Schwencke added after M 22 a measure based on the bass note G, which was adopted by many editions. This supplementary measure is not authentic.<\/em><\/p>\n For this reason no one need be seriously on the lookout for the lost measure!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Those in the know among our readers will be aware … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n