Johann Sebastian Bach (18 page)

The
Figuralstück
, a polyphonic piece with or without instrumental accompaniment, was featured in the main and Vespers services at the Upper Church, the city's principal church, attended by the more privileged citizens and court officials. Here was where the superintendent preached, and also where the princely family members worshipped when they went into town, which they frequently did, especially on feast days. On those latter occasions, court capellmeister Gleitsmann had charge of the church music and usually presented a work of his own composition.
²¹
The Upper Church was also home base for the Arnstadt Lyceum's chorus musicus, directed by the cantor, Ernst Dietrich Heindorff, a respected musician and close friend of the Bach family. Heindorff provided choristers for liturgical functions at the other churches as well, in particular the New Church, which kept its own substantial choir library. This collection contained the traditional sixteenth-century motet repertoire of Heinrich Isaac, Josquin, Jacob Obrecht, Pierre de la Rue, Ludwig Senfl, and others, but also more recent literature, such as Andreas Hammerschmidt's
Musicalische Gespräche über die Evangelia
of 1655, motets for four to seven voices and basso continuo for occasions falling throughout the church year. An even newer anthology, Nicolaus Niedt's
Sonnund Fest-Tags-Lust
of 1698, comprised seventy-three small cantatas covering every Sunday and feast day across the year. Since Niedt was court organist and chancery clerk at Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, this last big publication of seventeenth-century German church music probably received much use at Schwarzburg-Arnstadt as well.

T
ABLE
4.2. Order of the Divine Service at Arnstadt

When Andreas Börner served as interim organist at the New Church, he was also put in charge of its student choir, a responsibility he may have initially retained after Bach became organist in August 1703. Bach, in any case, was not charged with directing the student choir, and during 1705–6 Johann Andreas Rambach, an older student from the Lyceum, was paid to be choral prefect (assistant director) for services at the New Church. Bach's contract lacks any specific details regarding his functions as organist beyond the expectation that he “appear promptly…for the divine services” and that he show himself “industrious and reliable in the office,” and makes no reference whatsoever to any collaboration with the student choir, let alone participation in concerted music presented by the choir.

Two to three years into Bach's tenure of office, however, the issue of his contractual obligations became the subject of two disputes between Bach and the consistory, both related to disciplinary problems. In the first, Bach appeared before the consistory on August 4, 1705,
²²
to complain about a student by the name of Geyersbach. One night, on his way home from the castle and crossing the market square, Bach passed by six students sitting on the
Langenstein
(Long Stone), when one of them, Geyersbach, suddenly

 

went after him with a stick, calling him to account: Why had he made abusive remarks about him? He [Bach] answered that he had made no abusive remarks about him, and that no one could prove it, for he had gone his way very quietly. Geyersbach retorted that while he [Bach] might not have maligned him, he had maligned his bassoon at some time, and whoever insulted his belongings insulted him as well; he had carried on like a dirty dog's etc., etc. And he [Geyersbach] had at once struck out at him. Since he had not been prepared for this, he had been about to draw his dagger, but Geyersbach had fallen into his arms, and the two of them tumbled about until the rest of the students who had been sitting with him…had separated them so that he [Bach] could continue his way home…. Since he did not deserve such treatment and thus was not safe on the street, he humbly requested that said Geyersbach be duly punished, and that he [Bach] be given appropriate satisfaction and accorded respect by the others, so that henceforth they would let him pass without abuse or attack.

 

After hearing Bach's cousin Barbara Catharina, who had accompanied him from the castle and who therefore could serve as a witness, the consistory concluded that Geyersbach “initiated the incident, since he not only addressed Bach first but also was the first to strike out.” On the other hand, it developed that Bach had indeed called Geyersbach a
Zippel Fagottist
(greenhorn bassoonist), and members of the consistory admonished him that “he might very well have refrained from calling Geyersbach a
Zippel Fagottist
; such gives lead in the end to unpleasantness of this kind, especially since he [Bach] had a reputation for not getting along with the students and of claiming that he was engaged only for simple chorale music, and not for concerted pieces, which was wrong, for he must help out in all music making.” Bach answered that “he would not refuse, if only there were a
Director Musices
[music director],” whereupon he was told that “men must live among
imperfecta
; he must get along with the students, and they must not make one another's lives miserable.”

At the time of the incident, Bach was twenty years old, while Geyersbach and his companion, Johann Friedrich Schüttwürfel (also mentioned in the proceedings), were both twenty-three.
²³
Thus, the young organist had to deal with students who were, in some cases, older than himself. The six sitting on the Long Stone had, as amateur musicians, just finished performing a serenade at a christening when Bach passed by—“tobacco pipe in his mouth” according to Geyersbach, “no tobacco pipe in his mouth” according to Barbara Catharina Bach. With or without pipe, Bach's demeanor vis-à-vis the students must have been perceived as arrogant, and the market square brawl only magnifies the troublesome relationship that was bound to emerge between two unequal parties, both serving the New Church: on the one hand, a group of Lyceum students well above age twenty who were able to form a vocal-instrumental ensemble of sorts, and on the other, an ambitious, highly gifted, and, his youth notwithstanding, eminent professional musician who not only had graduated at age seventeen, but had done so from a more prestigious Latin school. No wonder Bach sought to keep the school choir at a distance and tried to fall back on a contract that did not specifically require him to work with the students—even though the church authorities had clearly expected him to lead the choir as Börner, the interim organist, twelve years Bach's senior, had done.

Bach's reluctance if not refusal to work with the student choir came up again, this time in connection with a complaint about his prolonged absence from Arnstadt in the winter of 1705–6 when he visited with Buxtehude in Lübeck.
²⁴
This time, the superintendent himself conducted the consistory's interrogation, which focused initially on the length of the leave of absence that had been approved. Bach “had asked for only four weeks, but had stayed about four times as long.” Bach replied that he had “hoped the organ playing had been so well taken care of by the one he had engaged for the purpose that no complaint could be entered on that account.” He had, in fact, hired his cousin Johann Ernst Bach as a temporary substitute—the same cousin who would later succeed him in Arnstadt—thereby mitigating to some extent the consistory's accusation. This reasoning, however, only goaded the consistory into bringing up two further matters.

First, they reproved Bach “for having hitherto made many curious
variationes
in the chorale, and mingled many strange tones in it, and for the fact that the Congregation has been confused by it.” This charge represented an attack on Bach's manner of preluding for the congregational hymns and not, as the broader context of the exchange demonstrates (first he was playing “too long,” then “too short”), on his accompaniment of congregational singing.
²⁵
Typical chorale intonations of the time followed the models established by Johann Christoph and Johann Michael Bach and Johann Pachelbel, in which the hymn tune was introduced line by line for longer pieces and the initial line only for shorter ones, without modifying the chorale's melodic contours or harmonic implications. Bach departed significantly from this pattern in his large-scale chorale preludes, which are often modeled on the fantasia-like north German chorale elaborations, here dissolving a plain chorale melody into complex embellishments, there modifying its intervallic structure, here leaving behind the chorale's home key, and there introducing other features that the consistory members perceived as “curious variations” and “strange tones.” Yet the temporal reference “hitherto” can hardly refer to an abrupt change in Bach's playing style after his prolonged absence, for only two or three Sundays had passed since his return from Lübeck. The accusation rather expresses an irritation that had preceded the trip, suggesting that Bach was playing large-scale chorale preludes in the mold of his early setting of “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,” BWV 739.

Second, the consistory returned to the old issue—

 

that hitherto no concerted music had been performed, for which he was responsible, because he did not wish to get along with the students; accordingly, he was to declare whether he was willing to play polyphonic as well as monophonic music [
figural
(
iter
)
alß choral
(
iter
)] with the students. For a capellmeister could not be engaged just for this sake. If he did not wish to do so, he should but state that fact
categorice so that other
arrangements could be made and someone engaged who would.

 

At the same session of the consistory, the student Rambach who served as choir prefect was “similarly reproved for the
disordres
that have hitherto taken place in the New Church between the students and the organist.” But Rambach, who was also “reproved for going into the wine cellar…during the sermon,” put the blame on the organist by reporting that Bach “had previously played rather too long, but after his attention had been called to it by the Superintendent, he had at once fallen into the other extreme and made it too short,” which probably caused laughter among the students and hence contributed to the “disorders.” At any rate, the lack of collaboration between the organist and the choir, who had to occupy the same church gallery, became a disturbing matter that was not resolved by the consistory's admonitions issued on February 21, 1706.

Less than nine months later, the consistory proceedings returned to the unhappy subject: “It is pointed out to the organist Bach that he is to declare whether he is willing to make music with the students as he has already been instructed to do, or not; for if he considers it no disgrace to be connected with the Church and to accept his salary, he must also not be ashamed to make music with the students assigned to do so, until other instructions are given. For it is the intention that the latter shall practice, in order one day to be the better fitted for music.”
²⁶
This time the wording sounded like an order, understandable from the consistory's perspective given its firm resolve to establish a well-balanced structure at the New Church for performing the kind of sacred music in which vocal and instrumental elements complemented and supported one another. Bach replied that he would “declare himself in writing concerning this matter.” Whether or not he ever submitted such a written statement (no such document is known), it is clear that after more than three years Bach did not see a realistic basis for a fruitful collaboration with the student choir, even knowing full well that such an arrangement would present new and enriching opportunities. For him, it could not have been the principle as such, but frustrating external conditions that discouraged him from seeking common ground for choir and organ, voices and instruments.

The consistory's assertion that “hitherto no concerted music had been performed…because he did not wish to get along with the students” cannot be entirely accurate. After all, the affair that provoked Bach to call Geyersbach a
Zippel Fagottist
suggests that they were engaged in making concerted music together, which involved the participation of a bassoon. Incidentally, the old German
fagott
is not the same instrument as the
basson
of the late seventeenth-century French orchestra, and although contemporary terminology is not always consistent, it seems plausible that Geyersbach played a dulcian; that is, a prototype of the bassoon, in one piece and tuned to the higher
Chorton
pitch (rather than the French type with joints, in the lower chamber pitch), the kind of instrument that—as the German name
Chorist-Fagott
suggests—played a dominant role as a continuo instrument in late seventeenth-century German church music. What is presumably Bach's earliest surviving cantata, “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich” BWV 150, requires a
Fagotto
in Chorton pitch and assigns it a demanding role in the fifth movement, “Aria Alto, Tenore et Basso con Fagotto”—a part probably beyond the capability of the said
Zippel Fagottist
. This cantata, for which no autograph source survives, may well belong to the second half of Bach's Arnstadt period and may have been destined for the New Church or more likely for elsewhere, such as the chapel at Neideck Castle. What little concerted music was performed by the school choir at the New Church with Bach participating as organist was probably not composed by him.