Lot 82: BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN.

MANUSCRIPT PART-BOOKS PREPARED FOR MENDELSSOHN'S PERFORMANCES OF THE ST MATTHEW PASSION IN 1829, INCORPORATING HIS CUTS AND ALTERATIONS TO THE SCORE
comprising eight nineteenth-century manuscript volumes, for the Soprano (3), Tenore (3) and Basso (2) parts from Chorus I, with individual title pages ("Passions=Musik von J.S. Bach/ Soprano Coro 1υmo / Nυo. 1 [...18...19]" etc), each marked "von J.S. Bach" and numbered on the title-page in a contemporary hand, the music in various professional hands, containing 35 numbered sections, written in brown ink on six staves per page, with cues for the endings of recitatives underlined in red ink, each part including an additional Chorale in the 'Zweiter Theil' (No. 19υa, "Wer hat dich so geschlagen") in the hand of Mendelssohn's scribe Eduard Henschke, on a new leaf stitched into place, [c.1829]

8 volumes, oblong 4to (c.20 x 24cms), laid paper with chain lines but no discernible watermark, the inserted leaves for the Chorale 19υa on different paper, up to 30 pages each, early pagination in pencil (not counting the additional leaf), unbound, soprano part no.1 lacking 2 leaves, numbers 34-35 in the tenor parts misnumbered, some staining to titles

Martin Geck, Die Wiederentdeckung der Matthäuspassion im 19. Jahrhundert (Regensburg 1967). R. L. Todd, Mendelssohn. A Life in Music (Oxford, 2003). R. Wehner, MWV Anhang B, p.499; M. Crum and P.W. Jones, Catalogue of the Mendelssohn papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 3 vols (Tutzing, 1980-1989), where the inscriptions "von J.S. Bach" are attributed to Mendelssohn.