I've been working on Bach's French Suite #5, and until lately have avoided listening to recordings. Yesterday I listened to a few on YouTube, including one by András Schiff, and noted a discrepancy between what I heard and what's in my score.

I've been using Bach-Gesellschaft, which has this in measure 15:



The other edition available on IMSLP is Czerny, which has the passage as I'm hearing it on recordings:



(Note: I've cropped off the beginning of the previous measure. Just to clarify, in both editions the last note in the bass in that measure 14 is D#.)

Can anyone shed light on this discrepancy? Is Bach-Gesellschaft generally considered to be incorrect here, or is this a case where there the autograph is unclear and the choice is left to the pianist?


Thanks!

According to the Bischoff edition, there are different sources that give the alternate readings. The first edition and another source has the sharp, while the Anna Magdalena Bach notebook and a couple of others do not.

The Henle edition has the 2nd example, with this annotation clarification in the back

'Suite 5: G major
Bourree: Bars 15 and 30 are found in the final version stemming from Gerber.'

Forrest

Thank you both!

And IMO the chromatic descending line is more interesting

Baerenreiter (NBA) shows G natural (first exmaple) in the A version (earlier Altnickol tradition) and G# (second example) in the B version ("younger" embellished version).