The following is a copy of a posting sent to the phonogram dicussion group:
Date sent: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 07:53:45 -0500
From: "STEVE CORNETT" <[log in to unmask]>
Musical Archive Of J.S. Bach Son Found In Ukraine CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
(Reuters) - The musical archive of Johann Sebastian Bach's second son,
feared lost after World War II, was found in June by scholars from
Harvard University and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences at a state-run
museum in Kiev, Dean Christoph Wolff of Harvard said Wednesday. The
archive of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach includes about 500 works by Bach
family members, including numerous works by C.P.E. Bach that have never
been published or available for performance or study, Wolff said. C.P.E.
Bach, who lived from 1714 to 1788, began his career studying law but
became an accomplished musician, serving as court musician to Prussia's
Frederick the Great. His principle duty for 28 years was to accompany
the monarch's performances on the flute. The collection, part of a
5,000-piece archive of 18th century music, was evacuated in 1943 by the
Germans from Berlin to Silesia (now part of Poland), beyond the range of
Allied bombers. After the war, the Red Army took the Bach collection,
and numerous other items of value, back to Russia, Wolff said. For
decades, the Bach archive, like other war booty, was hidden away under
custody of the Soviet KGB. Rumors had placed the Bach collection in
Moscow, and finally Kiev, where in 1973 the archive was moved from
the Kiev Conservatory to Ukraine's Central State Archive-Museum of
Literature and Art. "We had a letter from around 1950 which described in
no specific terms that some 5,000 musical manuscripts had been deposited
somewhere in the Ukraine," Wolff said in an interview. "The question
was where." The collection forms part of the 5,000-item music archive of
the Berlin Sing-Akademie, a performance group that owned the collection
and still exists, Wolff said. The archive "is in excellent condition,"
said Wolff, who searched for the collection for more than two decades.
"At first, I couldn't believe it," Wolff said, when years of clues
finally led to the collection. "But I very quickly realized a treasure
was at hand." Since gaining independence from the former Soviet Union,
Ukraine has signed a pact with Germany providing for the mutual return
of wartime cultural trophies, Wolff said. He said the Sing-Akademie
collection is the most valuable war trophy to be unearthed thus far
in the Ukraine, and is impossible to value: "It is priceless and
irreplaceable." The Sing-Akademie wants the collection back, and is thus
far working through Harvard and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences so as
not to upset a delicate negotiation process, said Wolff, adding that the
next step is to microfilm the collection. "As long as the material is
and remains accessible to the public, I think we have achieved a great
deal," he said.
Bob Draper
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