ABSTRACT The early accounts of the keyboard contest that took place in Dresden in 1717 between J.S. Bach and Louis Marchand are widely divergent, despite Birnbaum (1739), C.P.E. Bach and Agricola (1754), Adlung (1758), Hawkins (1776), Marpurg (1786), and Forkel (1802) all claiming the authority of either Bach or his sons. These discrepancies enabled later biographers to craft their narratives selectively according to their own allegiances. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Bach biography typically followed Bach/Agricola’s and Forkel’s retellings, in which Marchand fled Dresden on the day of the event before it could take place. However, in life-writing on Marchand, the story instead appeared in Marpurg’s more sympathetic version, which held that one concert took place—with Marchand implicitly judged to be Bach’s equal—prior to his taking flight. This rendering was apparently favored in France, where the episode’s potential for being appropriated to illustrate Austrogermanic musical superiority against French philistinism would have generated significant unease. Examination of variant narratives therefore reveals much about how national ideologies can steer a biographical episode in particular directions, as well as how an influential author’s endeavors to straighten the historical record can unwittingly send myth-making along fresh trajectories.

中文翻译：

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巴赫 1717 年与路易斯·马尔尚比赛的叙事中的神话制作和民族政治

摘要 JS Bach 和 Louis Marchand 于 1717 年在德累斯顿举行的键盘比赛的早期描述存在很大分歧，尽管 Birnbaum (1739)、CPE Bach 和 Agricola (1754)、Adlung (1758)、Hawkins (1776)、Marpurg (1786) 和 Forkel (1802) 都声称拥有巴赫或其儿子的权威。这些差异使后来的传记作者能够根据自己的忠诚有选择地制作他们的叙述。在整个 19 世纪的大部分时间里，巴赫传记通常遵循巴赫/阿格里科拉和福克尔的复述，其中马尔尚在事件发生前一天逃离德累斯顿。然而，在马尔尚的生活写作中，故事反而出现在马尔普格更同情的版本中，举行了一场音乐会——马尔尚含蓄地被认为与巴赫是平等的——在他起飞之前。这种渲染显然在法国受到青睐，因为该剧集被挪用来说明奥日耳曼音乐在对抗法国庸俗主义方面的优势的潜力会引起极大的不安。因此，对不同叙事的研究揭示了很多关于民族意识形态如何将传记情节引向特定方向的信息，以及一位有影响力的作家如何努力纠正历史记录，如何在不知不觉中将神话制作推向新的轨迹。