Bodleian Libraries acquire rare Bach manuscript

Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries have today announced the acquisition of the autograph of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata for Ascension Day: ‘Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein’ (BWV 128). The manuscript will be on public display from today as part of the Write, Cut, Rewrite exhibition in the Weston Library’s Treasury.

The manuscript, also known as ‘the Kohn manuscript’ after Leipzig-born collector Ralph Kohn, is one of only four by JS Bach in the UK. It has been accepted by the Government in lieu of £3,650,000 in Inheritance tax and allocated to the Bodleian. In a press release published today the Bodleian Libraries describe the document as having ‘been exceptionally well cared for’ and is ‘one of the best-preserved autographs of Johann Sebastian Bach’.

Martin Holmes, the Alfred Brendel curator of music at the Bodleian Libraries, said: ‘It must be every music librarian’s dream to be given custody of a Bach autograph and the library is honoured to have been entrusted with this magnificent manuscript. Only two other institutions in the UK have Bach autographs in their collections and the Bodleian is proud to be the third.’

The most extensive collections of Bach’s manuscripts are in Berlin and Leipzig, and most of the surviving cantata manuscripts are in institutions in Germany, Poland and the USA. The three other Bach autographs in the UK are held at the British Library and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Now on display until 5 January 2025, the Kohn manuscript was previously exhibited in the UK at Buckingham Palace in the early 2000s to coincide with a performance of the cantata for the then Prince of Wales. The cantata manuscript will be digitised and made available through Digital Bodleian, the Library’s platform for sharing its digitised collections, and through the Bach Digital online portal.

The 16-page work is part of a sequence of cantatas composed for Eastertide 1725 with texts by Marianne von Ziegler – Bach’s only known female librettist. The Kohn manuscript also includes annotations by Bach's eldest son, Wilehelm Friedemann. A performance commemorating the 300^th anniversary of the cantata’s original performance for the feast of the Ascension in May 1725 is also being planned.