Beschreibung:

[Johann Sebastian Bach] Johann Nikolaus Forkel
Autograph letter signed ("JN Forkel") to Herr Uhde in Göttingen
asking his forgiveness for taking so long to send the enclosed sonatas [not included with the lot], and asking him to accept them as a small token of his esteem; in a postscript Forkel requests him to send back the Bach concertos if he no longer listens to them with hungry ears, noting that they will be at his disposal whenever he needs them
...Verzeihen Sie, dass ich es so lange vergessen habe, Ihnen beykommende Sonaten zu senden...Sollten Sie die Bachischen Concerte etwa nicht mehr mit gierigen Ohren hören, so erbitte ich mir sie zurück...
1 page, 4to (25.7 x 18.1cm), integral autograph address panel, papered seal, Göttingen, 29 Sept[ember] 1789, small tears to lower margin, old repair to lower inside corner
together with: Life of John Sebastian Bach; with a critical view of his compositions, London: Printed for T. Boosey and Co., 1820, THE FIRST EDITION OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF FORKEL'S CELEBRATED BIOGRAPHY OF BACH, xi, 116 pages, 3 and 3 leaves, 8vo (22.2 x 14cm), three engraved folding plates, three leaves of advertisements at end, contemporary papered boards, rebacked 
Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818), regarded as the father of modern musicology, was a pioneer in the study of the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach. His Ueber Johann Sebastian Bach's Leben, Kunst and Kunstwerke (1802) is the first major study of the composer. Forkel's mention of some concertos by Bach is probably, however, not a reference to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, but to works by his eldest son Carl Philipp Emanuel, namely the six printed keyboard concertos Wq.43. 
A possible candidate for Forkel's correspondent is Johann Daniel Wilhelm Otto Uhde, the son of the lawyer and amateur composer Johann Otto Uhde (died 1766), a volume of whose concertos, sonatas and cantatas is preserved today in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. We are grateful to Peter Wollny for his kind assistance in our cataloguing of this lot.
PROVENANCE:Sotheby’s, London, 16 May 1997 (lot 98)