Johann Sebastian Bach (2 page)

Johann Sebastian Bach, painting by Elias Gottlob Haußmann, 1748

“Sun of Composers,” by A. F. C. Kollmann, 1799

View of Eisenach, 1650

Johann Ambrosius Bach, c. 1685

Street map of Ohrdruf, c. 1710

Johann Christoph Bach, “Meine Freundin, du bist schön,” title page, c. 1740

J. C. Bach, “Meine Freundin,” solo violin part, before 1695

Street map of Lüneburg, 1654

Interior of St. Michael's Church at Lüneburg, c. 1700

Portrait of Buxtehude and Reinken, 1674

Panorama of Arnstadt, c. 1700

Interior of the New Church (Bachkirche) at Arnstadt, 1999

View of Mühlhausen, 1720

Interior of St. Blasius's Church at Mühlhausen, c. 1880

The ducal palace at Weimar, c. 1760

Duke Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar, 1742

Orgel-Büchlein:
“Gott durch deine Güte,” BWV 600

Interior of the
Himmelsburg,
c. 1660

Cross section of the
Himmelsburg
, c. 1660

Floor plan of the music gallery at the
Himmelsburg

Street map of Cöthen, c. 1730

The princely palace in Cöthen, 1650

Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, c. 1715

Street map of Leipzig, 1723

St. Thomas Square in Leipzig, 1723

Interior of St. Thomas's Church in Leipzig, eastward view

Interior of St. Thomas's Church, westward view

Interior of St. Nicholas's Church, westward view, c. 1785

The Scheibe organ at St. Paul's (University) Church in Leipzig, 1717

Magister Johann Heinrich Ernesti, rector, c. 1720

Magister Matthias Gesner, rector, c. 1745

Magister Johann August Ernesti, rector, 1778

Panorama of Leipzig, 1712

Zimmermann's coffeehouse in Leipzig, 1712

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, c. 1733

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, c. 1733

Watercolor of the St. Thomas School by Felix Mendelssohn, 1838

Façade of the St. Thomas School, 1732

Floor plans of the St. Thomas School

Cantor's apartment before and after renovation, 1732

Autograph score of “Et incarnatus est” from the
Mass in B minor
, c. 1749

Johann Christoph Bach, “Lieber Herr Gott, wecke uns auf,” title page by J. S. Bach and taille part, 1749–50

Map showing places of Bach's activities

Quite a few books on Johann Sebastian Bach have appeared over the past several decades and in particular on the occasion of the last jubilee year 2000. Virtually without exception, either they are devoted to describing the composer's life
and
works or they clearly focus on some aspects of his music. In contrast, the present book was intended as a decidedly biographical presentation, even though the biography of a musician cannot avoid discussing musical aspects and mentioning actual works. Therefore, I had to include essential musical references, but the discussion of specifically musical facts is limited to what is most necessary, and a detailed explanation of the composer's development and musical language is consciously omitted. Instead, the intention was and remains to update the current state of knowledge—what we know about Bach's life and the more immediate context of his being and his workings—which has not been done since Philipp Spitta, that is, for well over 125 years. For this purpose, as many accessible source materials as possible were taken into account and evaluated, but discussing them all, with their often varied interpretations of events, had to be passed up.

The bibliography at the end of the book makes this aim clear, even though the preface to the first edition did not say so explicitly. I have been asked repeatedly why Albert Schweitzer's Bach book of 1908, by far the most widespread and influential work ever on the composer, is not cited in the bibliography. The answer is both simple and unapologetic, because in no way does it involve neglect. Schweitzer, as a declared Wagnerian, given the impermanence of his insights for understanding Bach's expressive musical language, in fact contributed weightily, and thereby essentially dislodged Spitta. However, that certainly does not apply to the area of biography; in that regard, he not only depended on Spitta but also lagged behind him in many ways. On the whole, Spitta's biographical sketch gave authoritative direction for the twentieth century within the framework of a wonderful presentation of Bach's life and work. This orientation also pertains especially to Spitta's emphatic avoidance regarding the human side of Bach, which is difficult to approach and so is usually neglected. Therefore, this book offers an attempt, not restricted to a small part (such as chapter 11), to diminish slightly the prevailing abstract view of Bach.

Only in writing this book, and even more pointedly in the aftermath, did it become clear to me how much the late eighteenth-century tradition of understanding Bach as a musical cult figure goes back to the composer's apparent furtherance and propagation of his self-image. In the end, what we know today is that Bach was a highly self-conscious man—one who was seemingly not shy about styling himself as a kind of star in his surroundings and in the circle of his students. The question of how much the basis for the picture of musical genius—for the view of the unchanging uniqueness of his art—goes back to Bach himself I have pursued elsewhere.
*
Most of all, the retrospective portrayals in the Obituary, which go back to Bach's own reports, offer discernible traces in this regard (cf. the typical opinion of Reinken in his view of Bach's historic mission, pp. 212–13), as does Bach's establishment of his historical place in the framework of the family genealogy and the Old-Bach Archive (pp. 420ff.).

It speaks to the vitality of a branch of research when, in the space of roughly a decade, new knowledge has been uncovered that proves relevant to the biographical representation. Considering the ongoing systematic research in central German church, state, and communal archives that has been undertaken by the Leipzig Bach Archive since 2002, we may be sure that in the future, further pertinent materials will turn up that will require future updating. All new and genuine Bach documentary material collected through 2006–07 has now been published by the Bach Archive in volume V of the
Bach-Dokumente
series:
Dokumente zu Leben, Werk und Nachwirken Johann Sebastian Bachs, 1685–1800
, ed. Hans-Joachim Schulze (Kassel, 2007).

The publication of the present reprint of my book, in addition to allowing for the silent correction of misprints in the main text, provides the opportunity of making material corrections and adding supplementary information that seems to me especially relevant from a biographical perspective. The following paragraphs address this purpose by briefly summarizing the most important new knowledge that has been presented from 1999 through 2011 (supplied with pertinent bibliographic citations) and, where necessary, by relating them to the biographical context. To avoid costly changes, these addenda and corrigenda have not been worked into the main text. Only the dates in the chronologies (pp. 143 and 525ff.) were emended and corrected, respectively.

• Author of the Newton-Bach analogy, 1750 (p. 6):

The author of the open letter of August 28, 1750, signed “A.,” in which the names of Newton and Bach were first connected with each other was until now thought to be Johann Friedrich Agricola. However, the text must be ascribed to Johann Adolph Scheibe, whose name was often concealed under the pseudonym “Alfonso” and who, after the turmoil from his 1737 attack (pp. 1ff.) had died down, wrote only positively about Bach.

Kai Köpp, “Johann Adolph Scheibe als Verfasser zweier anonymer Bach-Dokumente,”
BJ
(2003): 173–96.

• Musical beginnings, Buxtehude, Böhm, and Reinken (pp. 62–65, 212–15):

The most important new findings regarding Bach's youthful years result from the discovery in 2005 of Bach's earliest music manuscript. The so-called Weimar Tablature, a composite manuscript, contains among other pieces a copy of Dieterich Buxtehude's longest, technically most demanding, and compositionally most sophisticated organ chorale—the elaborate fantasy on Luther's hymn “Nun freut euch lieben Christen g'mein” BuxWV 214. The clean and error-free manuscript that originated in Ohrdruf before 1700, is notated in German tablature, and was written by the thirteen- to fourteen-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach provides the first reliable evidence for the unusually high level of proficiency and technical competence of the young student. It also demonstrates his early acquaintance with Buxtehude's organ music while studying under the tutelage of his brother Johann Christoph.

A second manuscript contains the famous and similarly extensive chorale fantasy “An Wasserflüssen Bybylon” by Johann Adam Reinken—now the earliest known source of this unusual composition. Bach's copy indicates at the end “â Dom. Georg: Böhme descriptum ao. 1700 Lunaburgi” (written out at the home of Herr Georg Böhm in the year 1700 in Lüneburg) and proves that the contact with Böhm goes back to the first year in Lüneburg, if not before, and that it was the Lüneburg organist Böhm who apparently put Bach in contact with the Hamburg master Reinken and his music. Moreover, the document clarifies Böhm's important role as mentor, and possibly also as facilitator, of Bach's stipend as choral scholar at the St. Michael's School and suggests that Lüneburg represented a decisive step in the career of the young musician.

For further details, see the extensive commentary in
Weimarer Orgeltabulatur. Die frühesten Notenabschriften Johann Sebastian Bachs sowie Abschriften seines Schülers Johann Martin Schubart mit Werken von Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Adam Reinken und Johann Pachelbel
. Facsimile and transcription, ed. Michael Maul and Peter Wollny.
Faksimile-Reihe Bachscher Werke und Schriftstücke—Neue Folge
, Bd. 4, ed. Bach-Archiv Leipzig (Kassel, 2007).

• On Johann Adam Reinken (pp. 62–65):

Newly discovered archival records regarding Reinken's year of birth prove that he was not ninety-nine when he died in 1722. The ages that Johann Mattheson gives in 1739 rest apparently on conscious exaggeration. Reinken (also spelled Reincken) was born in Deventer (Holland) in 1643. Therefore, at the time of his meeting with the Latin-school student Bach, he was not yet sixty years of age, some six years younger than Buxtehude—although from Bach's perspective he distinctly represented the older generation. At the Hamburg encounter in 1720, he was seventy-seven.

Ulf Grapenthien, “Reincken, Johann Adam,”
Grove Music Online
; also his “Sweelincks Kompositionsregeln aus dem Nachlass Johann Adam Reinckens,”
Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft
18 (2001): 71–110.

• On Johann Effler (p. 69):

C. P. E. Bach could not, in 1775, answer what took his father from Lüneburg to Weimar (p. 67), so Forkel's question has remained unanswered since then. My suspicion—that the Weimar court organist Johann Effler had a hand in Bach's appointment to the Weimar court during the first half of 1703—is now confirmed, on the basis of a previously unknown document. Michael Maul of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig was able to identify a note of Effler's dated March 26, 1678, in the public record office at Weimar that describes Effler's duties as organist at the Dominican church (Predigerkirche) in Erfurt as Johann Pachelbel's predecessor. The note also contains an express statement that “of the best musicians, Herr Bach . . . was taken into their ranks” and that he “handles the clavier whenever they make music.”

During the period 1667–82, Johann Christian Bach was director of the Erfurt town musicians, which also employed his two younger brothers, Johann Aegidius and Johann Nicolaus (cf. p. 17). Their first cousin Johann Ambrosius Bach played in the group, too, from 1667 to 1671, as a violinist. After that, Ambrosius Bach's continued connections with Erfurt (he also married an Erfurt woman) led in 1684—a year before the birth of his son Johann Sebastian—to an offer to become director of the town music company, which he declined.

The direct musical connections that have now been identified bestow a new importance on Effler's relationship with the Bach family. They make it plain that the young Sebastian, at the latest in 1702 on his return from Lüneburg to Thüringen if not earlier, could find an influential patron in the Weimar court organist. Possibly Effler had already played a role as a go-between in Bach's application to Sangerhausen. The contacts were not broken off during Bach's time in Arnstadt and Mühlhäusen, so that Effler in 1708, in arranging for his own successor, recommended Bach to the Duke of Weimar.

In 1704, Johann Effler worked alongside Johann Nicolaus Bach in assessing an organ of the collegiate church in Jena. Here he turned out to be an opponent of meantone temperament who, together with the oldest son of Johann Christoph Bach of Eisenach, demanded an organ tuning that, in addition to the “genus purum” of the customary keys, would enable the harmonically strengthened “genus mixtum,” or “genus diatonico-chromatico-enharmonicum.” Apparently, a modern temperament was preferred in the Bach family circle (see below: About the tuning of the organs in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen).

Michael Maul, “Frühe Urteile über Johann Christoph und Johann Nikolaus Bach,”
BJ
(2004): 157–68.

• About the cantata “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich,” BWV 150 (p. 99–101):

This early cantata has been variously considered of doubtful authenticity. Hans-Joachim Schulze was able to demonstrate that the work originated as one commissioned by the Mühlhausen town councillor Conrad Meckbach, whose name occurs in the cantata text in the form of an acrostic.

Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Räselhafte Auftragswerke Johann Sebastian Bachs. Anmerkungen zu einigen Kantatentexten,”
BJ
(2010): 69–93.

• About the repertoire and context of the early vocal works (p. 101):

On the basis of a recent source discovery in London, the cantata fragment “Meine Seele soll Gott loben,” BWV 223, ascribed to Bach since Spitta, can definitively be stricken from the Bach canon.

Remnants of the old choir library of St. Blasius's Church in Mühlhausen, together with an old inventory, have been tracked down in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. The works of Praetorius, Demantius, Schütz, Hammerschmidt, the elder Ahle, and Briegel contained there were available to Bach, even if we do not know whether or how he used them.

Hans-Joachim Marx, “Finderglück: Eine neue Kantate von J. S. Bach? von G. F. Händel?—Meine Seele soll Gott loben (BWV 223),”
Göttinger Händel-Beiträge
10 (2004): 179–204; Daniel R. Melamed, “Die alte Chorbibliothek der Kirche Divi Blasii zu Mühlhausen,”
BJ
(2002): 209–16.

• About the tuning of the organs in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen (p. 101):

Johann Friedrich Wender, the builder of Bach's organ in Arnstadt, was also responsible for the successful reconstruction in 1687–91 of the organ at St. Blasius's in Mühlhausen under Johann Georg Ahle, Bach's predecessor there, who evidently used tempered tuning early on. In 1690 Ahle wrote an ode to the advantages of well-tempered tuning, developed by Andreas Werckmeister, which allowed for harmonic triads on all semitone steps of the scale. So from the summer of 1703 on, Bach continuously had at his disposal instruments that set practically no harmonic or key limitations, a fact that clearly accelerated his interest in experimenting with extreme chromatics.

Markus Rathey, “Die Temperierung der Divi Blasii-Orgel in Mühlhausen,”
BJ
(2001): 163–72.

• On Maria Barbara Bach (p. 117):

The surviving documents relating to Bach's first wife can hardly be surpassed in their limitations, recording only her baptism, marriage, and death. Nevertheless, Michael Maul of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig found a further small reference to her in the 1708 pew registry of the court church in Weimar. Under women's pews, “Fr[au]. Bachin, Hof-Organistin” is listed as having sat on the right side of the nave in row 8, seat 3, diagonally behind the wife of court capellmeister Johann Samuel Drese.

“Lebenszeichen von Maria Barbara Bach,”
Bach Magazine
4 (2004): 31 (illustrated).

• A newly discovered vocal work from the Weimar period (pp. 129 and 133):