18th-century prints of Bach's four-part chorales
In the period following Johann Sebastian Bach's death in 1750, apart from the publication of The Art of Fugue in the early 1750s, the only further publications prior to the 1790s were the settings of Bach's four-part chorales. In 1758 Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg was the first to start preparing a published edition of Bach's four-part chorales, but in 1763 was prevented by royal duties. C. P. E. Bach, who owned the original manuscripts, then set about the same task, producing two volumes in 1765 and 1769. Dissatisfied with his publisher Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel, he surrendered the manuscript rights in 1771 to Johann Kirnberger and his patron Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia. From 1777 onwards, Kirnberger unsuccessfully made requests to Birnstiel and a new publisher, Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf, to publish the chorales. Following Kirnberger's death in 1783, C.P.E. Bach approached Breitkopf, who published them in four volumes between 1784 and 1787.
Birnstiel's first volume (1765): title page.
Engraving of F.W. Marpurg by Berol after a drawing by Kauke, 1758
Pastel portrait of C.P.E. Bach, Hamburg, c 1780
Portrait of J.P. Kirnberger by C.F.R. Lisiewski, 1780
Daniel Vetter was an organist and composer of the German Baroque era.
Extract of frontispiece of the first volume of Daniel Vetter's Musicalische Kirch- und Hauß-Ergötzlichkeit (1716 reprint), containing an image of the composer
Daniel Vetter's four-part chorale "Liebster Gott", the final pages of the second volume of his musical anthology, published in 1713
Christmas Carol "Puer natus", No. 15 from Vetter's Musicalische Kirch- und Hauß-Ergötzlichkeit
Variation on "Puer natus", No. 16 from Vetter's collection
