Carl Staplin plays key role in discovery of rare 18th century Bach manuscript


A Drake music professor played a major role in discovering a manuscript, presumably written by J.S. Bach, which recently found its way onto the World Wide Web.

Carl Staplin, head of the keyboard area, was attending a conference in July when he found out the manuscript, now in the possession of Washington University in St. Louis, is close to being authenticated as an original Bach work and is featured on the University's web page.

"It's a case of the 18th century meeting the 20th century via technology," Staplin said. "Imagine my surprise when I found out that a manuscript with which I had a brief encounter more than 30 years ago could now be accessed on the Internet."

The saga began in 1965 when Staplin was working on his doctorate at Washington University. Ernst Krohn, a musicologist, showed him the manuscript, Christus, der uns selig macht, which he had acquired from an American soldier after World War II. Staplin was intrigued, but admits he had some questions about its authenticity.

"To me, it appeared quite different from other pieces Bach had written," said Staplin. Still, he performed the work in concert in 1965, and referred to it in his dissertation on Bach's chorale preludes.

Fast forward to 1991. Staplin was examining some Bach organ works that had only recently been discovered by Christoph Wolff of Harvard University, one of the world's foremost Bach scholars. Staplin was immediately struck by the style similarities of these pieces to the manuscript he saw in 1965.

Staplin sent a photocopy of the work to Wolff and initiated a search to locate the original manuscript, which took three years to find. But the wait was worth it.

Wolff says that Washington University's manuscript is one of only two copies in the world. He has ascertained that the handwriting is extremely similar to that of an 18th-century copyist who transcribed some of Bach's works. Many Bach orginals have been lost and are now available only in copy form. The piece will be included in the next edition of Neue Bach Ausgabe, the most complete compiliation of Bach's works. Staplin says he is excited to have been a part of the authenticity process. He is writing an article establishing priority of his 1965 discovery, as well as a performing edition of the work.