Is your copy of Bach's Complete Works "complete" ?

Hi All,

After finding a couple incomplete last tracks (the music stops abruptly), I'm in the process of listening to all 170 CDs "last track". Painstaking and frustrating. Like listening in "shuffle" mode.

So far I have found 4 CDs with the last bars missing, one with severe flutter in the last few seconds of recording (on organ) and one broken last track (the music stops then restarts).

Zweitausendeins have been very responsive when I initially had one CD missing (and one duplicate) and a few CD cases broken in the post. We'll see how they respond to this one.

Has anyone listened to all 170 CDs yet and experienced the same problem ?

Cheers

 

'Fraid not. Haven't had much time recently, so a devil of a long way to go. Ask me this time next year...

P.S. So far, no problems whatsoever. Hopefully not just luck.

 

Which Edition is this? Mind you I've been collecting individual works and am only up to 77 albums.

 

All the ones I've played have been fine. Do you have a specific example?

Paul

 

I suppose we are talking about the Hanssler complete Bach Edition, which was released in the Bach year 2000.
It contained 171 CDs in 140 volumes (some of the volumes were doubleCDs).

It was re-released 2004 by a Czech firm in 43 volumes with four CDs in each volume (four-pack casettes) and only three CDs in the last volume. This has been sold dirt cheap, - real value for money.

I have listened only to a small part of it yet - it seems
completely overwhelming to get through, but
I have not had any trace of problems with the last tracks on the CDs as yet.

Is it the CDs with the longest playing time that cause problems for Sir Galahad? The real problem may instead be the CD-deck and not the CDs.

Venlig hilsen

 

I've just this very minute had my first hiccup. It occurs on CD2 of MM4202-2 (Keyboard works), on track 22 (last track) of Fantasia & Fugue in C Minor BWV906 - the track seems to come to an abrupt end. The CD is indeed longish - 77m 40s. Anyone else find this one?

 

You have all been cheated since many, many works by Bach were lost after his death.
Therefore no "complete" Bach's Complete Works exists - they are all incomplete.

 

Bat

Very funny indeed. I certainly intended
"Complete surviving works".

And how do you know, how many
of Bachs works were lost? My personal opinion is,
that the lost part is relatively small, and that
the most important works have survived.
Except the fifty or so cantatas we know are lost.

Venlig hilsen

 

Tones
No problems with BWV 906 here.
Venlig hilsen

 

Hi All,

Sorry for not responding sooner, I was away for the week-end.

Zweitaudendeins replied right away and said they will replace all the defective CDs. They also suggest I try another CD player, which I will try to do later today.

I'll also reply to all your posts later today, but right now I've got to get back to the salt mine.

SG

 

Pe-zulu,
I once read from somewhere that more works were lost than survived. Bach probably composed four passions, of which two were lost. Extrapolated from that, we can say that
about half of his output was lost.

 

Let us assume that the eldest son WF Bach got half of the compositions and CPE and JC got the other half. If half of what WF got was lost, then at least 25 % of total amount was lost. Could someone come up with a mathematical formula for this?

 

One of his sons also said that his father composed "many Magnificats". We only have THE Magnificat.

 

The other thing was, of course, that the sons thought their father was an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy and probably used some compositions to light the fire.

 

No, the sons probably got much of the same music in different manuscripts, e.g. WTC .
And the printed music was not lost.
There is more magnificatsettings saved though to some extent with the same music.
And did Bach himself write the music to the Lucaspassion or did he merely arrange it from other sources, as he did with some of the cantatas.
And the pupils (Kirnberger,Petzel) made lots of copies of the important works, and Bach had pupils most of the time.
The sons and the pupils generally recognized the value
of their fathers music, also WFB who edited some of it
in his own name. It is not true f.x. that the Brandenburgs were saved by chance, some of the pupils have left manuscriptcopies of the concertos.
The truth is that nobody knows what is lost, but it is a myth
around JSBach to confirm his superhuman status that much was lost, but in all probability the main part and especially the most important part is saved.
Venlig hilsen

 

Yes that's the one.

And yes, I just tried one of the "defective" CDs on another CD player, and the problem is gone. Trouble is, I just invested in a new, better CDP, and it's the one that's giving me trouble

 

Well, all 6 CDs I've had the problem with so far are longish too. Seems like some CD players can't play the really long CDs till the end ?

 

Your new CDP is faulty. It may be as simple as an adjustment that's required. Or not...

One work around would be to rip the CDs in question and copy the results on to two CDRs.

Paul

 

My S500 seems quite often to have a very brief single skip about 70 minutes into a CD. It's definitely the player rather than the disc, and if you track backwards and play the same passage again it's fine the second time through - I was guessing the laser rail maybe needs a little lubrication or something, but it sounds like the problem you've got is more serious than that.

 

Thanks for the input PH, I'll try the tracking backward trick next time I have the problem. It's no big problem anyway, as I do not have that many very long CDs. And the trend is to go digital anyway. Having all your music on HD sounds cool. Fancy playing St Matthew in shuffle mode ?