Recently Identified Borrowings in the Hamburg Vocal Music of C. P. E. Bach

Abstract

Abstract:This article discusses the identification, made by the author between 2013 and 2019, of six borrowed movements in the Hamburg vocal works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Four of these borrowings are from works by other composers: an aria from a Passion by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, which Bach had already used in his 1772 St. John Passion, then reworked for his 1779 St. Luke Passion; an aria from a New Year’s cantata by Georg Benda, also adapted for the 1779 St. Luke Passion; a duet from a cantata attributed to Johann Gottlieb Graun, which Bach reworked for the 1773 pastoral installation cantata Einführungsmusik Winkler; and an aria from the oratorio La passione di Gesù Cristo by J. G. Graun, which Bach adapted for the 1782 Einführungsmusik Jänisch. (This borrowing raises some questions, since La passione does not appear in either of the catalogues associated with the disposition of Bach’s library after his death.) The remaining two borrowings were derived from one of Bach’s own works, the Trauungs-Cantate: an aria, adapted for the 1769 Einführungsmusik Palm; and an accompanied recitative–chorus, adapted for the 1772 Michaelmas cantata Ich will den Namen des Herrn preisen.After an overview of Bach’s borrowing practices, the article summarizes the discovery of each borrowed movement in chronological order of identification. The conclusion is twofold. On one level, it can now be shown that Bach used all but one movement of his Trauungs-Cantate for his Hamburg vocal music. That work thus joins the Magnificat as a trove of movements ripe for adaptation, almost none of which Bach left untouched. On a broader level, the continued discovery of borrowings is central to understanding Bach’s working procedures, the type of repertoire that he borrowed, how he altered that repertoire, and the importance of pastiche to the life of a professional musician in eighteenth-century Germany.