Otherwise known as Holographs, Autograph manuscripts are musical documents written in the composer's hand. These documents represent the culmination of the composer's work, and are often consulted alongside sketches to form modern editions. Holographs often lead very complex lives and can produce a convoluted picture that often requires deciphering.
Rather than simply defining and outlining the parameters of autograph manuscripts, it is more effective to approach the concept through a concrete example. One of the most notoriously complex and still-contested holographs is Bach’s B minor Mass.
The autograph score for the B minor Mass includes numerous edits, not only by Bach but also by his second wife and his two youngest sons. The work is further complicated by the degeneration of its ink, which required X-ray scans to decipher the handwriting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_B_minor). Taken together, these layers of physical deterioration and multiple revisions make it difficult to distinguish the composer’s original intentions from later interventions, providing important context for understanding the significance of the editorial work undertaken by his sons.
While there is still some debate over W. F. Bach's edits to the work, it is widely recognised that C. P. E. Bach made extensive corrections to it prior to its 1786 performance in Hamburg (Wollny, 2016, 29). In order for this performance to go ahead, C.P. E had to ensure the work was ready for publication and that all the underlays, clefs, and tempo markings were correct. Most of his edits can be found in the Symbolum Nicenum, where gaps in the score needed to be filled (Wollny, 2016, 29). What is peculiar about this work is that Bach’s own writing involves numerous mistakes and holes, including missing underlays and incorrectly transposed keys. For instance, the Missa was originally written in C minor and thus had to be transposed; the result was somewhat confused, requiring the intervention of C. P. E. Bach at a later date (Butt, 1991, 111-112).
You may now ask, but how could the genius that is Bach make such mistakes? In contemporary musicological research, it is widely held that by the time of the B minor Mass, Bach’s neurological disease had advanced significantly. With this reduction in mental capacity, Bach made far more errors than he had previously, leading his sons to make substantial edits and corrections (Wollny, 2016, 31). The two pieces most affected by this were the Missa and the Symbolum Nicenum.
Although C. P. E. was the primary ‘editor’ of the mass, W. F. Bach made later alterations, which have been theorised by Wollny to have been the result of producing individual parts for publication (Wollny, 2016, 43). W. F. Bach’s contributions are confined to the Symbolum Nicenum, where he was found to have added multiple tempo markings, including the ‘Confiteor’ and the ‘Et expecto’ (Wollny, 2016, 30). These more practical annotations are suggested to have been added to clarify the work's performance instructions. Scholars identified these annotations by cross-referencing W. F. Bach's earlier edits to The Art of Fugue (Wollny, 2016, 40).
Outside of his sons, Bach himself had substantial revisions to the B minor mass before his death. One significant change was the addition of Et incarnatus est ‘between the Et in unum and the Crucifixus’ (Butt, 1991, 112). This was a significant alteration to the work, which required the addition of a four-bar instrumental opening in the Crucifixus to avoid the direct continuation of the vocal line. Such momentous alterations, combined with the correction of multiple errors and gaps in the score, reveal the complex lives of holographs such as the B Minor Mass.
With the splintered life of the B Minor Mass in mind, it is perhaps worth looking for these alterations and edits yourself. Explore Bärenreiter’s edition of the work here: https://www.nkoda.com/publishers/Bärenreiter
