Johann Sebastian Bach (64 page)

D
IRECTOR OF THE
C
OLLEGIUM
M
USICUM AND
R
OYAL
C
OURT
C
OMPOSER

The first reference to what became a new and major chapter in Bach's Leipzig period can be found in the postscript to a letter he wrote on March 20, 1729, to his former student Christoph Gottlob Wecker, now cantor at Schweidnitz in Silesia: “The latest is that the dear Lord has now also provided for honest Mr. Schott, and bestowed on him the post of Cantor in Gotha, wherefore he will say his farewells next week, as I am willing to take over his
Collegium
.”
²⁷
From 1720, Georg Balthasar Schott had been organist of the New Church in Leipzig and, as the custom had been since Telemann's time, also director of the city's most prestigious Collegium Musicum. Throughout the seventeenth century, musically active university students had formed private societies that played an increasingly important role in Leipzig's public musical life, as they were often led by the city's most prominent professionals, such as Adam Krieger, Johann Rosenmüller, Sebastian Knüpfer, Johann Pezel, and Johann Kuhnau. In 1701, the young and energetic law student and first organist of the recently rebuilt New Church, Georg Philipp Telemann, founded a new Collegium that, he wrote, “often assembled up to 40 students.”
²⁸
He was succeeded by Melchior Hoffmann, who directed the organization for ten years beginning in 1705. A Leipzig chronicler reported in 1716 that Hoffmann's Collegium had numbered between fifty and sixty members, performed twice weekly, and produced many virtuosos who later gained important positions as cantors, organists, and court musicians
²⁹
—no exaggeration, since celebrities such as the Gotha capellmeister Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, the Dresden concertmaster Johann Georg Pisendel, and the international opera star and bass singer Johann Gottfried Riemschneider had all performed under Hoffmann. After Hoffmann's premature death in 1715, his Collegium was briefly led by Johann Gottfried Vogler, who handed it over around 1718 to Schott and took charge of a smaller Collegium, founded on Telemann's model by Johann Friedrich Fasch and directed, during Bach's time, by Johann Gottlieb Görner (Table 8.2).

The activities of the “Schottische” Collegium Musicum received a significant boost in 1723 when it began a close collaboration with Gottfried Zimmermann, proprietor and operator of the city's largest and most prominent coffeehouse. Located on Catharinenstrasse, Leipzig's most prestigious avenue off the main market square, the mansion (destroyed in World War II) contained a hall suitable for performances by large ensembles, including trumpets and timpani, and for an audience of up to 150. Zimmermann established a series of weekly two-hour concerts throughout the year, held outdoors in his coffee garden during the summer months. Although he did not sell tickets, we can assume that he attracted an audience who, before and after the concerts, would patronize his restaurant—a bourgeois emulation of the courtly practice of
musique de table
. He must have fared quite well with his concert series because he acquired several musical instruments specifically to support the Collegium, among them at least two violins, one viola, two bassoons, and two violones
³⁰
—indicating that he was prepared to accommodate large ensembles needing a strong basso continuo group that included two bassoons and two double basses.

In late March 1729, Bach assumed the directorship of the Collegium, immediately renamed the “Bachische” Collegium Musicum. The transition was likely a smooth one, as Schott had previously collaborated with him and, from his earliest days in Leipzig, Bach had benefited from the pool of qualified Collegium musicians for performances at St. Nicholas's and St. Thomas's. Moreover, throughout the 1720s, Schott had served as Bach's main substitute whenever the latter was out of town or otherwise prevented from performing his duties
³¹
(a function taken over after Schott's departure by Carl Gotthelf Gerlach), another sign of the close collaborative relationship between Bach and the music directors at the New Church. Not surprisingly, the newly arrived capellmeister and famous virtuoso Bach soon participated in performances by Schott's Collegium, an organization that prided itself on being the training ground for Germany's finest church, town, and court musicians. In one case, on March 12, 1727, Bach led forty musicians in his
Abend-Music
“Entfernet euch, ihr heitern Sterne,” BWV Anh. 9 (music lost), as part of the birthday celebration for King August II (Augustus the Strong), an event held in the king's presence that also included three hundred torch-carrying students.
³²
The Collegium would surely have taken part in other student-sponsored performances as well, such as that of cantata BWV 193a (music lost) on the king's name day, August 3, 1727, the
Funeral Ode
BWV 198 for the queen later that year, and congratulatory pieces for university professors, including BWV 36c and 205 in 1725 and BWV 207 in 1726. Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber's report that in 1724, before he became a student of Bach's, “he had heard much excellent church music and many a concert under Bach's direction”
³³
suggests that the capellmeister, as the city's most eminent musician, was invited to be the Collegium's principal guest conductor and frequent soloist from the beginning of his Leipzig tenure.
³⁴

There is no question that the Collegium directorship amounted to a major commitment: Bach was now responsible, in addition to his regular church music obligations, for preparing and carrying out a weekly series of performances throughout the year. The schedule of these
ordinaire Concerten
, presented in a well-coordinated way by the city's two Collegia, was made even more demanding by the additional commitments of the thrice-yearly trade fairs (Table 10.2). Lorenz Christoph Mizler's 1736
Announcement of the Musical Concerts at Leipzig
represents but one reference to what had become a crucial cell for the development of public concert life in Germany:

 

Both of the public musical Concerts or Assemblies that are held here weekly are still flourishing steadily. The one is conducted by Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach, Capellmeister to the Court of Weissenfels and music director at St. Thomas's and at St. Nicholas's in this city…. The other is conducted by Mr. Johann Gottlieb Görner, music director at St. Paul's and organist at St. Thomas's….

The participants in these musical concerts are chiefly students here, and there are always good musicians among them, so that sometimes they become, as is known, famous virtuosos. Any musician is permitted to make himself publicly heard at these musical concerts, and most often, too, there are such listeners as know how to judge the qualities of an able musician.
³⁵

 

Complementing Mizler's description, Johann Heinrich Zedler's 1739
Grosses Universal Lexicon
defines a Collegium Musicum as “a gathering of certain musical connoisseurs who, for the benefit of their own exercise in both vocal and instrumental music and under the guidance of a certain director, get together on particular days and in particular locations and perform musical pieces. Such Collegia are to be found in various places. In Leipzig, the Bachian Collegium Musicum is more famous than all others.”
³⁶

T
ABLE
10.2. Weekly Concert Series
(Ordinaire Concerten) of
the Leipzig Collegia Musica

 

During the summer of 1737, after more than eight years as Collegium director, Bach temporarily withdrew from its leadership and handed it over to his colleague at the New Church, Carl Gotthelf Gerlach, who had previously substituted for him on occasion.
³⁷
The reasons for this arrangement are unknown, but the demands of the weekly concert schedule may have interfered with other plans or simply been too heavy for the fifty-two-year-old Bach.
³⁸
Nevertheless, he remained closely associated with the Collegium and even conducted one of its
extraordinaire Concerten
on April 28, 1738, with a performance of the cantata “Willkommen! Ihr herrschenden Götter der Erden,” BWV Anh. 13, on a libretto provided by Johann Christoph Gottsched. It is particularly regrettable that the music for this work has not survived, because Lorenz Christoph Mizler refers to it in his refutation of Johann Adolph Scheibe's attacks on Bach's style when he writes that “anyone who heard the music that was performed by the students at the Easter Fair in Leipzig last year…, which was composed by Capellmeister Bach, must admit that it was written entirely in accordance with the latest taste, and was approved by everyone. So well does the Capellmeister know how to suit himself to his listeners.”
³⁹

Gerlach's interim leadership ended on October 2, 1739, the Leipzig newspapers having announced the previous day that “the Royal-Polish and Electoral-Saxon Court Composer Bach has resumed the directorship of the Collegium Musicum.”
⁴⁰
Bach continued as Collegium director at least until the
cafétier
Zimmermann's death in May 1741 and possibly for several more years; Gerlach took over permanently in 1746. By then, however, the situation had changed, for in 1743 sixteen Leipzig aristocrats and merchants established the “Grand Concerts” (
Grosse Concert
), a series that by 1750 drew audiences of two to three hundred.
⁴¹
Gerlach himself was involved in this new organization, which apparently attracted the best personnel from both academic Collegia (whose activities ended in the 1750s). Considering his stature and commanding position in Leipzig, Bach was surely involved in the Grand Concerts, though more likely as a critical commentator than as a supporter or participant.
⁴²
As an ambitious father, he would have welcomed this venue for his two youngest sons.

The “Bachische” Collegium Musicum existed for at least twelve years, from 1729 to 1741. A major focus for Bach in the 1730s, the group affected his work in at least three important ways: (1) it allowed him to perform a diversified repertoire of contemporary music that interested him; (2) it provided opportunities for composing works to be performed at the regular weekly series and at special concerts; and (3) it supported his ongoing church music projects. The Collegium also offered a rich sphere of activity for his sons and students. For example, in a testimonial of 1737 for Bernhard Dietrich Ludewig, later town organist in Schmölln, Bach writes that Ludewig “in various years frequented my Collegium Musicum with diligence, untiringly participated in the same, playing various instruments as well as making himself heard many times
vocaliter
.”
⁴³
No particulars are known about the specific membership, which already in Hoffmann's time numbered fifty to sixty, but the Collegium must have been dominated by university students and certainly included all of Bach's private students among them. Throughout Bach's directorship, Gerlach participated as alto singer, violinist, and harpsichordist, perhaps even as a kind of assistant director.
⁴⁴
Also, former students still residing in Leipzig and members of the academic community at large, such as Johann Abraham Birnbaum and Louise Adelgunde Gottsched, may have regularly participated. Town musicians may have joined the ensemble: Johann Friedrich Caroli, appointed art fiddler in 1730, matriculated at Leipzig University in 1719 and doubtless played in at least one of the academic Collegia. Johann Polykarp Büchner, bass singer at the Weissenfels court, seems to have joined the Collegium in the late 1730s—an additional example of professional musicians playing a role there.
⁴⁵
Finally, the concerts often featured debuts and returns of well-known guest artists, including the Dresden capellmeister Johann Adolph Hasse, his wife, the diva Faustina Bordoni, and the lutenist-composer Silvius Leopold Weiss, among many others, who came to visit Bach in Leipzig during the 1730s.

Vocal and instrumental pieces by a great variety of composers must have been included in the weekly series of “ordinary” concerts, but it is impossible to reconstruct, even in the broadest outlines, any of the more than five hundred two-hour programs for which Bach was responsible. Pertinent performing materials from the 1730s are extremely sparse; among the traceable compositions are four orchestral overtures by Johann Bernhard Bach; the cantata “Armida abbandonata” by George Frideric Handel; the Concerto Grosso in F minor, Op. 1, No. 8, by Pietro Locatelli; three Italian cantatas (“Dal primo foco in cui penai,” “Sopra un colle fiorito,” and “Ecco l'infausto lido”) by Nicola Porpora; and the cantata “Se amor con un contento” by Alessandro Scarlatti.
⁴⁶
Additionally, “Mr. Bach de Leipzig” is found among the subscribers to Telemann's
Nouveaux Quatuors
(flute quartets), published in Paris in 1738,
⁴⁷
which suggests that he wanted the pieces for the Collegium series. Although these few works and composers cannot be considered representative at all, they confirm that the repertoire was both instrumental and vocal, that Italian solo cantatas played a role, and that the newest kind of music (such as the Porpora cantatas and the Telemann quartets) was introduced.
⁴⁸