Manuscript Holds a Key to Bach

A nearly 300-year-old musical manuscript housed at The Carnegie Library contains what is believed to be the earliest examples of Johann Sebastian Bach’s handwriting, officials said today.

The work is an organ prelude and fugue in G minor by the German composer Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707), given to the main Carnegie library in 1895.

The three-leaf manuscript, a copy of the Buxtehude piece by Bach and his older brother, Johann Christoph, was not authenticated until recently by Hans-Joachim Schulze, the director of the Bach-Archive in Leipzig, Germany.

The manuscript, with writing on both sides, is viewed by scholars as important in the understanding of the early musical development of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).

Bach traveled to Luebeck, Germany, in 1705 to meet Buxtehude, a renowned organist who had a major influence on Bach’s compositional style.

The manuscript has been sent to Philadelphia, where it will be examined by conservation experts who will make recommendations for its preservation, a spokeswoman for the library said.

It will be available to musicians and musicologists for study purposes and offered to the public on microfilm or photo copies.

The “Carnegie Manuscript,” termed such by Schulze, suggests that Bach knew Buxtehude’s music much earlier than scholars thought.

At age 10, after the death of his parents, Bach went to Ohrdruf to live with his older brother. It previously was believed that the gifted younger Bach wasn’t permitted by his brother to study a volume of music by contemporary composers, including Buxtehude.

As a result, scholars believed Johann Sebastian copied the collection by moonlight. In 1700, Bach was thought to have left Ohrdruf because of the feud with his brother.

But Don Franklin, who chairs the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh, calls the feud story a myth. Franklin says Bach left his brother’s house to create more room for the family and to attend St. Michael’s choir school in Lueneburg.

“This (manuscript) corroborates that they were learning together,” Franklin said. “(Johann Sebastian) Bach was working on Buxtehude’s music.”

Schulze has estimated that the manuscript, passed down through family members and musical students, could be worth $250,000. It was brought to Pittsburgh in 1834 and authentication was made on the basis of handwriting by Franklin and Schulze, who was a visiting professor at Pitt in the fall of 1989.