More sources included

Fifty years after the much-used Henle edition by Rudolf Steglich, it was high time that Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard partitas were reissued by the same publisher. Too much has happened since then in Bach research and editorial practice. While Steglich relied for the most part on a copy of the original print of all six pieces from 1731 and suggested changes here and there without reference to the source, Ullrich Scheideler now also included the manuscript tradition and above all the additions made by Bach's circle in some copies of the original print. In these late sources, the scribes not only corrected obvious oversights and errors in the print by hand, but also suggested musical improvements and added highly interesting ornaments in terms of performance practice. Unfortunately, Scheideler does not prioritize these suggestions, which leads to musically questionable decisions here and there. No problem: those interested can now easily access the sources selected here and countless others on the Internet to make their own choice.

Overall, however, the disputed passages are so marginal that one could decide in favor of one or the other of these two Henle editions. What the later edition has over the older one, however, is the printing of alternative versions, on the one hand ornamented versions, but on the other hand above all finally a contrapuntally correct motif inversion in the second part of the Giga of the A minor partita (No. 3). In this respect, the purchase of the current edition would be worthwhile if it were not for the annoying fingerings from the pen of a schoolmasterly pianist who obviously understands little about Bach's "applicaturas" and baroque articulation and prefers to spare the fifth finger of the right hand. Fortunately, the inside title of the volume refers to an edition without fingerings: HN 1518.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Six Partitas BWV 825-830,
edited by Ullrich Scheideler; with fingerings: HN 518; without fingerings: HN 1518; € 22.00 each, G. Henle, Munich 2021