Johann Sebastian Bach (34 page)

The following year, Bach was asked to present a musical Passion at the palace church in Gotha, where the capellmeister to the duke of Saxe-Gotha lay dying. On Good Friday, March 26, Bach substituted for the fatally ill Christian Friedrich Witt. He received 12 talers for this guest performance, and although “20 bound [text] booklets for the Passion to be performed this year were delivered to the princely chapel,”
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no copies have survived, leaving us in the dark about the exact nature of the text as well as the music. However, a later reference to a Passion composed by Bach in 1717 corroborates the Gotha documents,
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and at least some musical portions of this Gotha or Weimar Passion (BC D1) were probably absorbed into the second version of the
St. John Passion
of 1725.
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Bach's guest performance in Gotha also raises the question of his possible candidacy for the capellmeistership at the ducal court.

But another ploy was in the works, and it would have been surprising if Bach had not learned about it sooner or later. Duke Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar came up with the idea of offering Georg Philipp Telemann a kind of “super-capellmeistership” at three Saxe-Thuringian courts: the capellmeistership at Saxe-Eisenach (which Telemann had held from 1708 to 1712) was still unoccupied, while Saxe-Weimar had become vacant in December 1716 and Saxe-Gotha in April 1717.
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But Telemann eventually declined, preferring to stay as music director in Frankfurt. In the meantime, Bach had traveled to Cöthen that summer, and while there, he signed an agreement on August 5 to accept the post of capellmeister to the prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, collecting 50 talers as “most gracious recompense upon taking up the appointment.”
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Bach himself could hardly have initiated the contact with the Cöthen court, well outside the Saxe-Thuringian realm. More likely, the whole scheme was directed by Duke Ernst August, who would have been eager to block Johann Wilhelm Drese's appointment as Weimar capellmeister and, at the same time, to find a suitable station for Bach elsewhere, since he realized that he would not be able to force Bach's appointment for the Weimar post against the will of his cousin, the co-reigning duke. The
General Capellmeister
solution with Telemann was arguably devised to circumvent the Drese appointment in Weimar and to make up for the loss of Bach. While that ingenious plan ultimately failed, having placed Bach with the duke's brother-in-law, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, was a good deal for both. For Prince Leopold, hiring Bach was a real coup, and for Bach, the newly expanded Cöthen court capelle provided a much more attractive and promising situation than Weimar, Gotha, or Eisenach had. Actually, Telemann must have understood that as well. He might also have gotten an earful about the quarreling dukes in Weimar from a reliable source—none other than his friend Bach.

The watershed year 1717 also saw the first printed reference to Bach—another sign of his growing reputation. Johann Mattheson relates in
Das beschützte Orchestre
that he had “seen things by the famous organist of Weimar, Mr. Joh. Sebastian Bach, both for the church and for the fist [that is, vocal and keyboard pieces], that are certainly such as must make one esteem the man highly.”
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At around the time when this short yet significant statement was published, Bach's fame received a further boost by one of the most notable events in his life, an aborted contest at the electoral court in Dresden with the keyboard virtuoso Louis Marchand of Paris. The captivating story of the contest was first published during Bach's lifetime and by the end of the eighteenth century had become one of the most popular musical anecdotes circulating in Germany.
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It was frequently embellished and cited as proof of the supremacy of German over French music or an example of German profundity versus French superficiality. The earliest literary reference to the incident was made in 1739 by Johann Abraham Birnbaum, who claimed that Bach had “fully maintained the honor of Germans, as well as his own honor.” But Birnbaum was in fact making a different point: he was defending Bach's musicianship against accusations by Johann Adolph Scheibe, who ranked Handel's keyboard art over that of Bach and, in the course of the argument, declared that there was no Frenchman of particular adroitness on both clavier and organ. It is here that Birnbaum calls up his hero Bach, who is said to have held his own against “the greatest master in all France on the clavier and organ.”

As Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach put it in 1788, his father was not “a challenging musical braggard” and “anything but proud of his qualities and never let anyone feel his superiority. The affair with Marchand became known mainly through others; he himself told the story but seldom, and then only when urged.”
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The event is not independently documented, so its details cannot be verified. Dresden, however, had previously been the site of another famous keyboard contest arranged in the mid-1650s by the then electoral crown prince Johann Georg II, Augustus the Strong's grandfather, for the prize of a golden chain; the contestants were Johann Jacob Froberger, organist at the Viennese imperial court, and Matthias Weckmann, court organist in Dresden.
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Louis Marchand is indeed known to have traveled to Dresden in 1717, but his performances there could not have taken place before October because the state mourning period after the death of the queen mother extended through St. Michael's Day, September 29. According to undated treasury records, Marchand received for his playing at the court two medals worth 100 ducats
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—the only documentary evidence of his presence in Dresden. On the other hand, the substance of the legendary affair is transmitted consistently enough to warrant the authenticity of a story whose most comprehensive account is found in the Obituary:

 

The year 1717 gave our Bach, already so famous, a new opportunity to achieve still further honor. Marchand, the clavier player and organist famous in France, had come to Dresden and let himself be heard by the King with exceptional success, and was so fortunate as to be offered a highly paid post in the Royal service. The concertmaster in Dresden at the time, [Jean-Baptiste] Volumier, wrote to Bach, whose merits were not unknown to him, at Weymar, and invited him to come forthwith to Dresden, in order to engage in a musical contest for superiority with the haughty Marchand. Bach willingly accepted the invitation and journeyed to Dresden. Volumier received him with joy and arranged an opportunity for him to hear his opponent first from a place of concealment. Bach thereupon invited Marchand to a contest, in a courteous letter in which he declared himself ready to execute
ex tempore
whatever musical tasks Marchand should set him and, in turn, expressed his expectation that Marchand would show the same willingness—certainly a proof of great daring. Marchand showed himself quite ready to accept the invitation. The time and place were set, not without the foreknowledge of the King. Bach appeared at the appointed time at the scene of the contest, in the home of [Joachim Friedrich Count Flemming,] a leading minister of state, where a large company of persons of high rank and of both sexes was assembled. There was a long wait for Marchand. Finally, the host sent to Marchand's quarters to remind him, in case he should have forgotten, that it was now time for him to show himself a man. But it was learned, to the great astonishment of everyone, that Monsieur Marchand had, very early in the morning of that same day, left Dresden by a special coach. Bach, who thus remained sole master of the scene of the contest, accordingly had plentiful opportunity to exhibit the talents with which he was armed against his opponent. And this he did, to the astonishment of all present. The King had intended to present him on this occasion with 500 talers; but through the dishonesty of a certain servant, who believed that he could use this gift to better advantage, he was deprived of it, and had to take back with him, as the sole reward of his efforts, the honor he had won…. For the rest, our Bach willingly credited Marchand with the reputation of fine and very proper playing. Whether, however, Marchand's Musettes for Christmas Eve, the composition and playing of which is said to have contributed most to his fame in Paris, would have been able to hold the field before connoisseurs against Bach's multiple fugues: that may be decided by those who heard both men in their prime.
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The affair, which took place in the electoral Saxon capital, was apparently organized by Bach's counterpart at the Dresden court capelle, concertmaster Woulmyer, a Flemish violinist who generally went by the frenchified name Volumier. The latter probably invited Bach on behalf of his colleagues at the court capelle who may have been annoyed by Marchand's notorious arrogance and eccentric behavior, which was attested to even in his obituary of 1732.
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Quite possibly, the whole plot was devised in the hope of sabotaging a court appointment for Marchand. At any rate, Bach was assigned the role of challenger in that he sent Marchand a letter, apparently “at the suggestion and command of some important personages of the court there,”
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likely among them the influential host of the planned contest, General von Flemming. (Count Flemming, incidentally, served from 1724 to 1740 as governor of Leipzig and became one of Bach's most supportive aristocratic patrons there; Bach composed several congratulatory birthday pieces for him: the
Dramma per musica
BWV 249b of 1725 as well as the later cantatas BWV Anh. 10 and BWV 210a.)

How great a disappointment it must have been for Bach, the Dresden court musicians, and the assembled guests that the actual contest never took place should not be underestimated. Listening to the two virtuoso opponents separately could not compare to the thrilling atmosphere of a musical match in which two star performers would challenge each other “to execute
ex tempore
whatever musical tasks [they] should set [themselves].” What they might have performed can only be guessed, but they would surely have focused on their own best technical skills and stylistic specialties. Here Bach would have found himself in a far more advantageous position, for he was not only thoroughly familiar with the contemporary French keyboard repertoire and stylistic idioms, but he specifically knew works by Marchand (the Möller Manuscript, one of his Ohrdruf brother's anthologies, contained a Suite in D minor from Marchand's published
Pièces de claveçin, Livre Premier
of 1702). Bach's own keyboard suites reflected, from the very beginning, a deliberate attempt to integrate genuine French elements into this quintessential courtly-French genre. Moreover, in his consistent application of French terminology in the most mature and elaborate set of keyboard suites from the Weimar period, the so-called
English Suites
(the title of BWV 806a reads “Prelude avec les Suites | composeé | par | Giov: Bast: Bach”), Bach does more than pay mere lip service to their French stylistic orientation. At the same time, he also blends in Italian concerto elements (for instance, in the Prélude to BWV 808), satisfies his own predilection for fugal textures (especially in the concluding Gigue movements), and indulges in a variety of polyphonic writing that penetrates the structure of virtually every suite movement. It is conceivable and even likely that his Dresden performance included material from the
English Suites
, but Bach might also have includ Chromatic Fantasy and Fugueed bravura pieces of the kind represented by the
 
, BWV 903, which require unparalleled keyboard skills.

In any keyboard technique, genre, or style, Bach would have been in familiar territory. Marchand, on the other hand, could capitalize only on a much narrower range of musical experience, if his compositional output and its homogenous French design are taken as a guide. Italian or German music would not have been easily accessible in France, and, as Marchand's works demonstrate, his travels did not bring about any compositional transformation or any stylistic adjustment resulting from foreign influence. At the same time, Marchand would hardly have confined himself to the lightweight kind of music contained in the
Nouvelle suitte d'airs pour deux tambourins, musettes ou vielles par Mr Marchand
, pieces composed by another member of the extended Marchand family of musicians though mistakenly attributed in the Obituary to Louis.
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Bach was definitely ready to meet a different and more challenging Marchand, the one he knew from the
Pièces de claveçin
and the one he credited “with the reputation of fine and very proper playing.”

No sources focusing on the Bach-Marchand affair provide any information on what other contacts Bach may have made during his brief visit to the Saxon capital at a time of significant change for its flourishing music scene.
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The electoral prince Friedrich August had returned in late September 1717 from a year's sojourn in Venice and brought back with him a complete Italian opera troupe, headed by Antonio Lotti, the newly appointed Dresden court capellmeister, and his deputy, Johann David Heinichen—the only German musician engaged by the electoral prince in Venice. Provisionally established in the fancy-dress hall, the new opera venture was opened on October 25, 1717, with Lotti's
Giove in Argo
, a pastoral melodrama in three acts. Bach would have taken note of the production preparations, though he probably did not meet Lotti or we would have heard about it from Carl Philipp Emanuel or from other sources.
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He did see not only concertmaster Woulmyer, but most likely also the violinist Johann Georg Pisendel (who had previously visited with him in Weimar) and probably also Heinichen, an alumnus of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, with whom he maintained good relations until Heinichen's untimely death in 1729.