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As an example of the 134 x's placed by copyists (remember that Bach personally copied most of the parts {the Dresden set} himself) into the autograph score of BWV 232, this magnified image from one page of the score shows the placement of only one of these markings which can appear above or below a staff (usually below) and there can be as many as seven x's in a row or even four in a cluster (two above and two directly below the other two. The typical placement is one 'x' below the staff. Bach did not use such marks himself. His autograph cantata scores do not give evidence of x's being used as copyist markings. This was particularly true when he did most of his own copying as in the case of some of his late cantatas. The NBA KB editors do not attempt to speculate when these marks might have been made. They could easily have been entered by later copyists, beginning with Johann Philipp Kirnberger, who made another copy of the score between 1739-1741. C.P.E. Bach performed sections of the mass in 1786 for which purpose he revised the score and had parts copied from it. Around this same time another copy of the score was made (purchased by Charles Burney and is possibly the copy acquired later by the British museum). After 1800 plans were being made for publishing this work. Hans Georg Nägeli, a music publisher in Zürich, acquired the autograph score in 1806 with the plan to eventually publish it. In preparation for this, a set of performance parts would also need to be prepared (another possibility for needing to add these copyist markings); however, the Nägeli story is much more complicated and cannot be covered here. |
