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Bach Bibliography | |
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is one of the most
thoroughly researched composers of Western Art music from diverse
points of view. Even for the scholars working in the field of "Bach
Studies", it is often felt to be a formidable task to move on to a
"different" subject, since so much has already been discussed in the
past. Thus the first task -- finding out the state of the current
research in the field -- can be a daunting task.
Due to the way the bibliographical studies have been carried out and
published
in the past (see the history of
bibliographical research
below for further details), it is unlikely that Bach scholars will ever
see a comprehensive, definitive single-volume book in this subject in
the
future. In fact, it is an extremely impractical to manage the
information in a
single printed source, for new articles and books appear very
frequently,
and the amount of information has become too large for browsing. This
electronic publication
project is precisely aimed at maintaining the most up-to-date
information,
with advanced search facilities not previously available.
The bibliographical study on J. S. Bach is well-founded.
It began with the compilation of contemporary references sources in the
second issue of the Bach-Jahrbuch (1905) compiled
by Max Schneider. He then listed some 480 Bach references, mainly of
German literature, which were published in the period of 1800 and 1904.
Five years later he supplemented some 320 items as "New Material" in
the seventh issue (1910). They consist of some older references escaped
from
his earlier listing, the most recently published works and reprints.
Since
then it became the tradition of the Bach-Jahrbuch
that the compiled
list of contemporary Bach references has been published every five
years.
The most recent list appeared in 2000.
From about 1950 onwards, the other sources of reference are also
compiled
independently: The Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums and
later
RILM abstracts added new indices and abstracts that
were not available
previously. It was also around this time that the earliest Bach
references
of pre-1800 documents were comprehensively catalogued and extracted as
Bach Dokumente 3 vols, the supplementary publication
to the Neue
Bach Ausgabe (1963 ff). Important references of time of Bach
revival (1800-1850) are extracted in Bach Dokumente 6.
Compared with the number of references in more recent issues of the Bach-Jahrbuch, the number of references searched by Max Schneider, which covers more than a century, seems far too small. (Compare, for example, with the fortieth issue of the Bach-Jahrbuch (1953) lists 941 items for the references published between 1945-1952.) There are still many journals published between 1800 and 1950 that are in need of systematically combing through, the work of which is still ongoing.
Another area that is currently being looked into in the Bach Bibliography is the editions of music published before c.1950. Printed edition often do not bear the date of publication, and there are often numerous imprints with varying contents, even published with the same title-page or with the same plate number. There are also editions with freshly-engraved title-page with the main body of sheet music with unaltered.
Closer inspection on the listing often reveals some interesting images of Bach of the day, reflecting the time and places in which his works were received. Certain knowledge of this particular field of bibliography is indeed highly desirable so as to be able to evaluate a particular literature appropriately on the basis of its historical context.
Since October 2011, the Bach Bibliography has become one of the projects managed and steered by the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. While its library catalogue 'Libero' functions as a conventional library catalogue of what Bach-Archiv library holds, the Bach Bibliography is the 'virtual' research resource catalogue -- what Bach scholars might need for their work on daily basis. Its aim is is to provide searching facilities for scholarly community world-wide the most up-to-date and most comprehensive bibliography of J. S. Bach in most useful and efficient way possible.
While the database is maintained by a team, we would like to receive your contributions -- additions of new items or corrections of mistakes in the database. If you are willing to help, please click here to read about how you can contribute.
The database is interfaced with advanced search facilities, just like any other on-line library catalogues. Users can search by keyword in any specific or unspecific fields (such as author, title, year) in various combinations. There are also several 'active links' to sort records or carry out related searches.
Currently, the database output has limit of listing 300 records at a time. To reduce the number of hits, you can add more keywords in different fields to reduce the size of output. For example, you can type keywords in the field called "Music" or "Aspect" of music in discussion, which are extra information supplied when the records are created. These fields becomes especially powerful if users want to find out specific group of references, such as the discussions of "cantata" with "authenticity", of "St. Matthew Passion" with "theological" aspect, or even of "keyboard suites" with "analytical" contents.
Currently the database contains ca. 52,000 reference items (the exact number and the date of the last upload are always displayed in the homepage). Since the aim of this database project is to provide scholarly information to the community of academics, the following guidelines are used for the selection of references:
The items not considered for inclusion are:
Reviews are normally included as a part of the "referred" reference item under "review" field. Exceptions may apply if the review is either unusually substantial or significant.
Last modified: 24 January 2011