Roger, Bach and Walther: Musical Relations between Amsterdam and Weimar

It is a fact known since long that some of Bach’s Vivaldi transcriptions are clearly based on the editions published by Estienne Roger in Amsterdam, while others are apparently not. This brings us to the question: What music (in particular Italian) published by Roger in Amsterdam was known in Weimar or the Thuringia-Saxony environment in general? It appears that Walther’s Musikalisches Lexicon (1732) is an excellent source to answer this question. It was his intention to describe or mention every music edition he came across and from the descriptions it is usually easily to decide whether he had seen a copy himself or based his mention on a catalogue entry only. It appears that there were 29 Roger editions (including some published by Jeanne Roger or their successor Michel-Charles Le Cène) he had seen himself. They fall apart in three groups plus an individual item and for two groups a plausible hypothesis about the way they reached Weimar can be proposed. A group of editions published from 1698 to 1703 may have been bought by Walther at the Frankfurt book fair of autumn 1703, a group of editions published around 1710 may have been acquired by the Weimar court in 1714 via the bookseller Adam Sellius in Halle. A third group, with publications from around 1720, may have arrived in Weimar or Cöthen in the early 1720s. Walther also used catalogues issued by Roger in Amsterdam, such as that of 1712 and now lost catalogues of 1721 and 1729.