Johann Sebastian Bach (48 page)

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8.4. Order of the Vespers Service at the Leipzig Main Churches

Otherwise, the only regular stipend available to hire extra musicians, amounting to about 12 talers per annum, was provided by the city council for one or two students from the university to assist in Bach's church performances; it was used especially to fill a need for bass singers in 1726–27, 1729, and 1745.
⁵⁰
But most of the vocal concertists were found among the
alumni
assigned to the first choir, an elite group consisting of the best twelve to sixteen singers. Their entry ages as resident choral scholars varied, but they usually began as thirteen-or fourteen-year-old sopranos,
⁵¹
invariably with prior singing experience in other Latin school choirs, and they stayed for a maximum of eight years, usually two years per class. Because in the eighteenth century the change of voice occurred later than it does today,
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many of the boys could sing soprano for several more years. On entry, Bach judged his best singers to have a “good voice,” “fine voice,” “strong voice,” or “good strong voice,” and whoever had “a fine proficiency” or “hit the notes very prettily” was thus deemed secure in matters of intonation and sight reading, experienced in performance practices, and adept in proper musical expression.

The size of his vocal ensemble is defined by Bach in an important memorandum to the city council dated August 23, 1730 (“Short but Most Necessary Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music”),
⁵³
which states that the fifty-five
alumni
of the school

 

are divided into 4 choirs, for the 4 churches in which they must partly perform concerted music with instruments, partly sing motets, and partly sing chorales. In the three churches, namely St. Thomas's, St. Nicholas's, and the New Church, the pupils must all be musical. St. Peter's receives the residue, namely those who do not understand music and can only just barely sing a chorale.

Every musical choir should contain at least 3 sopranos, 3 altos, 3 tenors, and as many basses, so that even if one happens to fall ill (as very often happens, particularly at this time of the year, as the prescriptions by the school physician for the apothecary must show), at least a double-chorus motet may be sung. (N.B. Though it would be still better if the group were such that one could have 4 subjects on each voice and thus could provide every choir with 16 persons.)

 

Earlier in the same document, Bach specifies that

 

in order that the choruses of church pieces may be performed as is fitting, the vocalists must in turn be divided into 2 sorts, namely concertists and ripienists. The concertists are ordinarily 4 in number; sometimes also 5, 6, 7, even 8; that is, if one wishes to perform music for two choirs. The ripienists, too, must be at least 8, namely two for each part.

 

The instrumental ensemble available to Bach consisted of a core group of eight—that is, the salaried members of the town music company (four town pipers, three art fiddlers, and one associate)—which had remained stable in size for several generations and as such was entirely insufficient for the performance of cantatas (see Table 8.5).
⁵⁴
The number, however, is misleading, for in order to take advantage of their privileges of performing (outside their church and municipal obligations) for a fee at private civic functions, most town musicians maintained their own sub-band of family members, pupils, and associates.
⁵⁵
Although the regular income of the town musicians was not that high in absolute terms, they were the best-paid musicians in the city, with many opportunities for additional income beyond their fixed salary; as a result, every vacancy gave rise to a generous supply of applicants. Auditions were held and judged by Bach in his capacity as their immediate supervisor and on behalf of the city council, his voice also counting at promotions from art fiddler to town piper. Various testimonials written by Bach demonstrate the seriousness with which he was involved in the affairs of the town musicians. For example, when the aging town piper Gentzmer needed an official adjunct in 1745, Bach examined Carl Friedrich Pfaffe, who for three years had served as an associate, and testified that he “has taken his trial examination in the presence of the other Town Musicians; whereupon it was found that he performed quite well and to the applause of all those present on all the instruments that are customarily employed by the Town Pipers—namely Violin,
Haubois, Flute Travers., Trompette, Waldhorn
, and the remaining bass instruments—and he was found quite suited to the post of assistant that he seeks.”
⁵⁶

The astonishing range of skills that were expected of town musicians, especially at the rank of town piper, bespeaks the high degree of flexibility Bach enjoyed in making instrumental assignments. And the stability of the core group meant that Bach could shape his ensemble and its playing style very much to his liking. He actually experienced no change in personnel until 1730, when Christian Ernst Meyer accepted the post of tower watchman at St. Thomas's (though he may still have been available to perform church music); the first major disruption occurred only when Bach's virtuoso trumpeter, Gottfried Reiche, died in 1734. In general, Bach's opportunities to appoint musicians of his choice to the ensemble were limited. Nevertheless, the overall resourcefulness of the company with its full complement of adjuncts and apprentices must have been considerable, judging by the combined inventories of instruments in the estates of the town pipers Rother, Gleditsch, and Oschatz: 2 trumpets, 2 timpani, 3 horns, 2 cornettos, 2 recorders, 4 oboes, 1 transverse flute, 1 piccolo flute, 6 violins, 2 violoncellos, and 1 violone (never mind that both St. Thomas's and St. Nicholas's each possessed its own set of church instruments).
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8.5. The Leipzig Town Music Company, 1723–50

Bach himself, having grown up in a town piper's household, would have been intensely aware of the potential and pitfalls to be encountered in a town music ensemble, and kept a wary eye on its quality and reliability. His Leipzig troupe, with a regular head count of about ten to fifteen, included adjuncts and apprentices who normally served as tutti players. More often than not, therefore, he would have needed to add expert instrumentalists to play solo parts and to serve as principals. These had to be recruited from among his own private pupils (both Thomana students and outsiders) and from the student body at the university, where he could always find able musicians who would perform for a regular fee or even for free—either in the hope of being paid for a future engagement or to earn a reduction in Bach's fee for their lessons, or simply because they wanted to take part. A list of documented participants from 1723 to 1730 alone speaks for itself, as many of them would later pursue musical careers: Johann Christian Weyrauch, Georg Gottfried Wagner, Johann Friedrich Caroli, Friedrich Gottlieb Wild, Johann Christoph Samuel Lipsius, Ephraim Jacob Otto, Bernhard Friedrich Völkner, Christoph Gottlob Wecker, Carl Gotthelf Gerlach, Johann Friedrich Wachsmann, and Johann Christoph Hoffmann.
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Bach's testimonial for Wild, written in 1727, reports that

 

during the four years that he has lived here at the University, [he] has always shown himself to be diligent and hardworking, in such a manner that he not only has helped to adorn our church music with his well-learned accomplishments on the
Flaute traversiere
and
Clavecin
but also has taken special instruction from me in the clavier, thorough bass, and the fundamental rules of composition based thereon, so that he may on any occasion be heard with particular approval by musicians of attainment.
⁵⁹

 

Two years later, he wrote about Wecker “that his knowledge in
Musicis
has made him a welcome guest everywhere, particularly since he has a good command of various instruments and no less can well afford to make himself heard
vocaliter
, and equally he has been able to give creditable assistance in my church and other music.”
⁶⁰

Bach's performances not only needed a sufficient number of performers, they also required that the musicians be extremely well trained, because he expected of them much more than they were used to providing. He expressly characterized this challenge when he wrote in 1736 that “the concerted pieces that are performed by the First Choir, which are mostly of my own composition, are incomparably harder and more intricate.”
⁶¹
In addition to the technical demands, there was the problem posed by sheer quantity—having to deal week after week with one difficult piece after another, a relentless challenge no previous cantor had put before his musicians. Nevertheless, Bach carefully designed his performance schedule in such a way that he achieved a reasonable balance of what he could demand from himself and from others.

A brief consideration of the packed performance calendar for Bach's first Christmas season in Leipzig reveals, on the one hand, his interest in presenting an extraordinary citywide musical program, and on the other, his awareness of what was doable and what was not (see Table 8.6). To begin with, he started on the first Sunday in Advent and on Christmas Day with repeat performances of Weimar cantatas (including BWV 63), so that he had more time before Christmas to compose new works, among them the Magnificat in E-flat major, BWV 243a, his first large-scale vocal work for Leipzig, and the cantatas BWV 40, 64, 190, 153, 65, and 154—all to be prepared and then performed within a span of two weeks. The lavish and differentiated scoring for the works on the high feast days is immediately apparent: BWV 63 is Bach's biggest Weimar score, the Magnificat is his heretofore biggest Leipzig score and the only five-voiced concerted piece before the
Mass in B minor
, and the cantatas BWV 40, 190, and 65 are carefully scaled. At the same time, he designed the cantatas for the lesser feasts in such a way as not to strain the choir unduly. For example, the difficult opening chorus of the cantata BWV 64 for the third day of Christmas has instruments (cornetto and trombones) supporting the choristers by doubling their parts, an expedient that would compensate for the lack of rehearsal time. Similarly, the cantata BWV 153 for the Sunday after New Year's Day and BWV 154 for the Sunday after Epiphany require the choir to sing only simple four-part chorales.

The performances took place in the west end (rear) choir lofts of St. Thomas's and St. Nicholas's, both spacious, three-aisled, late-Gothic-hall churches whose interior design, however, was so drastically changed in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the original architectural features of the organ and choir lofts are no longer visible. At St. Nicholas's, the choir loft on the west wall of the church opened toward the center aisle, with the organ loft situated next to it, opening toward the south aisle; a connecting gallery bridged the gap between the two and provided space primarily for the instrumentalists (see illustration, p. 268). At St. Thomas's, the organ and choir lofts on the west wall formed more of a unified structure that opened toward the center aisle (see illustrations, pp. 266–67). The organ in the last bay of the center aisle was positioned above and behind the choir loft, which filled the penultimate bay, level with the first (stone) gallery that extended over both south and north flanks of the church and afforded space for visitors. The second (wooden) gallery above the first, on both south and north flanks, augmented the space for visitors but did not run across the west wall. Instead, two separate “town piper galleries”—on the level of the organ loft and above the choir loft—bridged the space between the third-to-last and second-to-last column pairs, providing a continuous instrumental gallery surrounding the choir loft on three sides.
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In other words, singers in the choir loft facing the altar had the organ behind them (one level up) and the instrument galleries to the left and right (one level up as well). The two town piper galleries, built in 1632, provided stands for ten players on either side: for the art fiddlers (string players) on the south and the town pipers (wind players) on the north; continuo players, trumpeters, and drummer would be positioned to the left and right of the organ's Rückpositiv. The galleries were enlarged in May 1739 at the expense of Burgomaster Jacob Born and certainly in consultation with Bach, but the extent of the expansion is not known.
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It must be assumed however, that the galleries now provided space for substantially more instrumentalists than the original twenty. Before this expansion, additional players were either squeezed into the available gallery space or joined the singers in the choir loft one level below, probably behind them. The singers apparently placed their music stands close to the railing of the loft so that their voices would project directly into the nave of the church.