Printing Bach: Technology, People, Aesthetics, Economics, and a Tragedy [in progress, publication anticipated mid-2026]. That’s “Printing Bach”, not “Bach’s Publishers”. There are many studies about Bach and his publishers, far fewer about the printing of Bach’s works – and most of them deal with the technology only as it helps elucidate the music. I do the opposite; my focus is the presses, the type, the engraving, the lithography, the ink, the paper, and the buildings – and the people, concepts, and social and cultural institutions that interacted with them. The “Tragedy” part will be about Henri Hinrichsen, the long-time owner of Edition Peters in Leipzig. He served music, his profession, his city, and his country so well before the Nazis persecuted him. The particular tragedy is that he believed too much in his profession, his city, and his country, and waited too long to try to get out. He was murdered at Auschwitz. I have experience in letterpress printing, the photoelectronic printing of the 1970s, and in modern computer-based book production.
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Draft Table of Contents (bold print = done in DRAFT form):
| Preface
Prelude: Fundamentals of Printing from Gutenberg to 1800 1 Early Music Printing: The Interaction of ••Evolving Technology with Changes in Notation and Musical Styles 2 The Development of Music Printing in the Leipzig Region before the Bach Era: Geography, Government, Gold and God 3 Printing and Not Printing Bach during His Lifetime: Feasibility, Fashion and the Bottom Line 4 The Breitkopf-Verlag in the Eighteenth Century: The Schemelli Gesangbuch and “Mosaic” Type for Music 5 Publishing Music without Printing Music: Commercial Manuscript Copying 6 Printing and Publishing Bach 1751-1800: The Four-Part Chorales Interlude I: The Development of Printing Technology in the Nineteenth Century 7 Finding, Printing and Publishing Bach 1800-1850: Incomplete Complete Editions, ••New Publishers, and the Mendelssohn Bach “Revival” 8 Printing and Publishing the Bach-Gesammtausgabe 1850-1926: Short-Term Disappointment, Long-Term Success 9 The “Graphisches Viertel” of Leipzig (Part I): A Printing Paradise Built |
10 C. G. Röder: Leipzig’s Leading Music Printer
11 ••combined chapter about Breitkopf and Peters 12 The “Graphisches Viertel” of Lepizig (Part II): A Printing Paradise Destroyed 13 Bärenreiter-Verlag 1923-1950: The Upstart Startup Gets on Its Feet and Lands on Them Again 14 After the “Zero Hour”: Legal Entanglements, Moves out of Leipzig, Mismanaged State-Owned Publishers in Leipzig, and New Publishers in West Germany 15 Printing and Publishing the Neue Bach-Ausgabe 1954-2007: Bach Makes Strange Political Bedfellows Conclusions: Printing and Publishing Bach’s Music in the Ages of Its Technological Reproducibility Afterword: Research Only Others Can Do …. Appendix: Links to Early Music Printings Featured in This Study Appendix I: Printing-Related Sites in the Leipzig Area Appendix II: Problematics of Engraving and Etching: Terms and Technique Appendix III: German-English Lexicon of Printing ••and Publishing Terms |