Saved from decay – preserved as a facsimile
The autograph score of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor
by Wendelin Göbel
from: Musik & Kirche 4/2007
Many old music manuscripts have fallen victim to decay. This applies particularly to those works of Bach which survive in his hand where ink gall ink erosion has taken an enormous toll. Alongside conservation using the latest technology, facsimiles are one way of preserving the legacy of great works such as the Mass in B minor for future generations. The author reports on the conservation measures which have been taken, and the creation of a facsimile.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor, his vocal-compositional legacy, has survived in the composer’s autograph score. Similarly in Bach’s own hand are the titles of the four sections, through-numbered: No. 1. / Missa; No. 2 / Symbolum Nicenum; No. 3. / Sanctus; No. 4. / Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei et Dona nobis pacem. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach entered the work in the catalogue of his father’s works as ‘the great Catholic mass’. Christoph Wolff points out that the term ‘Catholic’ in relation to the mass relates first and foremost to the phrase ‘una catholica ecclesia’ [‘one catholic church’] in the Nicene Creed, which replaced the Apostles’ Creed on high feast days (and still does). This creed was able to stand for the unity of the Christian church in confessionally-divided Saxony directly after August the Strong’s successful conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1694. The usual present-day title ‘Mass in B minor’ came into being in the circles of the Sing-Akademie in Berlin, which performed parts of the work from 1811 onwards, gradually leading to performances of the complete work. Under this title, the second part of the mass was then published in 1845 by Nägeli in Zürich and Simrock in Bonn: Die hohe Messe / in H-moll [The High Mass/ in B minor].
The manuscript – its journey and process of deterioration
The original score reached its present location after a comparatively short journey beginning with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Hamburg. In 1805 it came into the ownership of Hans Georg Nägeli in Zürich, who at the same time became its first publisher. In 1857, Friedrich Chrysander acquired the manuscript from Hermann Nägeli for the Bach-Gesellschaft [Bach Society], and from 1861 it has been in the Berlin State Library under the shelf mark Mus. ms. P 180.
The manuscript is complete. However, its state of preservation is problematic. As early as 1924 a facsimile edition was published by Insel Verlag, Leipzig. Here, particularly in the last part, serious damage can already be seen, ranging in some places to parts which are scarcely or no longer legible. The main cause of these damaged parts is the iron gall ink used by Bach. Since the second century the ingredients of this have been known to include oak galls, metallic salts, gum arabic and wood vinegar. When used for writing on paper, the acid contained in the ink attacks the paper, depending on its composition.
Only in recent years has it been possible to halt the process of iron gall ink erosion by using scientific conservation measures. These include the manual process of splitting paper. In this, threatened or damaged leaves are dampened in a special bath, so that the paper can be split into recto and verso sides. Subsequently, the wafer-thin half leaves are subjected to a chemically neutralising treatment in order that they can be mounted on intermediate base sheets in their original recto-verso relationship. After a careful drying process, the stabilised leaves and folios are archived in climatised rooms, protected from light. During the process of splitting the paper it is particularly difficult to avoid causing further damage to the already damaged, fragile places in the score. For safety’s sake, a photo-documentary record is therefore made before the splitting process takes place. Those who have seen the manuscript which was conserved 2002-03 can breathe a sigh of relief. Already, the smell of new paper conveys the impression of a new sense of permanence. Instead of earlier attempts to stabilise the manuscript with silk gauze laid over the original, it has again been revealed in its genuine state, and thanks to the base paper it is also in a tangibly physically stable state. It was decided to forego a binding, as the earlier one was certainly not the original. The original manuscript is now kept in a casket, in which the folios lie on top of each other in the order given by Bach in the movement titles.
A protective technique – producing a facsimile
Soon after the invention of photography, facsimiles were created in order to protect valuable manuscripts, but particularly to make them more easily available. Some of the very first facsimiles to be published included the Serie Paléographie musicale: les principeaux manuscripts de chant grégorien, ambrosien, mozarabe, gallican / publ. en facsimilés phototypiques par les Bénédictins de Solesmes …/ Solesmes: Impr. Saint Pierre / 1. 1889–. To the present day, every imaginable care has been taken to fulfil the imperative ‘fac simile’. However difficult it is to narrow down the term facsimile, each and every one has in common the aspect of reproducing an item as faithfully as possible. The route to producing a facsimile is a long and complicated one which not only demands a great deal of technical experience, but also requires many decisions in order to arrive at the goal of recreating the original as precisely as possible so that scholars, interpreters and interested parties can study a manuscript without actually having to consult the fragile original. Of course this is about producing a likeness, rather than mistaking something for the original – as with the legendary grapes painted by Zeuxis, which are said to have looked so life-like that even the birds pecked them.
The facsimile of the Mass in B minor now published by Bärenreiter-Verlag was produced in collaboration with the State Library, Berlin and the Bach Archive, Leipzig, and was edited and provided with a commentary by Christoph Wolff. In contrast with earlier facsimiles of the mass (Insel-Verlag 1924, Bärenreiter-Verlag 1965), the early version of the Sanctus of 1724 has been included for the first time, in addition to the manuscript discussed above.
The facsimile published in 2007 uses all the techniques available today: the original was digitised at the State Library in 2006 using high quality scanners. Current scanning techniques permit the greatest possible careful treatment of the original whilst uniformly illuminating and scanning the object. The images captured are indispensable for a first class facsimile, but require further editing before the work can be printed. This editing of the digitised images is by far the most expensive and difficult part in the production of a facsimile. This can be more easily understood when sample pages, then further on in the process, proofs are compared with the original. Even under normal light, the paper chosen for printing seems to change its colour depending on which direction you view it from, so the seemingly straightforward exercise of choosing a paper which matches the original proves difficult: when printed, the paper should not appear flat or dull, and it shouldn’t fade to a red, blue or yellow hue. At the same time, those places where the manuscript is unclear in the original must be faithfully reproduced in the facsimile, and where the ink is deep black in the original, the print must also echo this and not just look grey. In order to achieve this, several parameters must be set on the computer, in particular the brightness of the individual colours must be correspondingly matched.
The paper for a facsimile must likewise be chosen with care. On the one hand it needs to reproduce all the colours as clearly as possible, and on the other hand it needs to match the original document in terms of feel, in its surface structure and in its own colour. Today, we therefore tend not to use so-called coated paper, that is art printing paper treated with coating, rather a special, high value book printing paper, as made in Italy. Proofs are expensive, as the printer must set up the press in the same way as for running the whole print run, which is equally time-consuming. Nevertheless, with an authentic facsimile, there is no way to avoid preparing such proofs and comparing them with the original, for this is the only way of checking the final printed result, the conjunction of all factors from the scan and its editing up to the exposed printing plate; the information contained on this in turn ensures that the colours of the individual printing plates reproduce a true likeness of the original on the coated paper after drying.
Some facsimiles also reproduce the trim of the original, that is to say, the irregular margins of the original are reproduced, folio for folio with different cutting forms. However, with Bach’s Mass in B minor, a conscious decision was taken against this approach: the margins of the original paper are too finely shaped, frayed or also damaged and Bach’s handwriting is too close to the edge to be worth the risk of losing some of this by trimming each sheet differently. It therefore seemed appropriate to place the individual leaves as they were scanned in the library against the neutral background of the printing paper. Those who see the original today get a similar impression: the work can be studied leaf for leaf on the base paper.
Finally, a word on the binding. There was certainly never a binding for the score authorised by Bach, but the facsimile needed to be published in book form for reasons of practicability; only a binding which suited the style and content of the work came in question, without giving the impression that it was reproducing the original. Thus, an original historical ornamental paper was chosen for the binding of the Mass in B minor from the collection of Karl Vötterle, the founder of Bärenreiter-Verlag: intertwined Baroque vines in a matt gold gleam on a violet background.
An exemplary facsimile does not end with simply the successful reproduction of a manuscript. Just as much care and scholarship is needed for the commentary, which has been written here by Christoph Wolff. What he has written in this commentary in summary about the Mass in B minor also applies to the conservation function of the facsimile:
All in all, the Mass in B minor represents a degree of compositional-technical mastery and intellectual penetration of structural ideas, on such an exemplary level that Bach must have been fully aware of this. In this sense, the great mass, whose text has delivered the old church theological doctrine over the centuries, should certainly also be destined to preserve Bach’s musical-artistic credo for the future.