Altbachisches Archiv, also Alt-Bachische Archiv (ABA, old-Bachian archive), is a collection of 17th-century vocal music, most of which was written by members of the Bach family.

History

Johann Ambrosius Bach, Johann Sebastian's father, supposedly started to collect compositions by his relatives. Johann Sebastian Bach's obituary starts with an overview of the composers whose works are contained in the Altbachisches Archiv. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Sebastian's son and co-author of his obituary, retained the collection and gave it its name. After his death the largest part of the collection came, via Georg Pölchau [de], in the possession of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. All nine motets of the Sing-Akademie's part of the ABA collection, including BWV 1164, at the time attributed to Johann Christoph Bach, were published in the early 1820s.^[1]

The manuscripts of two compositions contained in the Sing-Akademie's part of the ABA collection were sold to the Royal Library in Berlin (later renamed as Berlin State Library): thus BNB I/B/11 and BWV 1164 were no longer in the Sing-Akademie's archives by the end of the 19th century.^[2] In 1935 Max Schneider, recovering ABA manuscripts scattered in the Sing-Akademie's archive,^[3] published a selection of these compositions, an edition which was reprinted in 1966.^[4] ABA numbers derive from this publication in two volumes.^[4] The original manuscripts of the Sing-Akademie's archive went lost during the Second World War,^[5] only to be rediscovered in Ukraine in 1999, after which they were returned to the Sing-Akademie, which in turn deposited the recovered manuscripts in the Berlin State Library for conservation.^[6][7]

Compositions