Johann Sebastian Bach (91 page)

46.
NBR
, no. 137.

47.
NBR
, no. 138.

48.
Facsimiles in Neumann
Texte
, pp. 422–47. An additional booklet, with texts from the Twenty-second to the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity and the First Sunday in Advent, 1724, has been missing from a St. Petersburg collection since 1919; see Hobohm 1973, p. 7.

49.
Details about printrun and sales of regular cantata booklets are not available, but information about a passion booklet printed for a Good Friday performance in 1738 suggests that Bach counted on three hundred salable copies (
BDII,
no. 416). In 1738, he was invoiced by Breitkopf for 5 talers (paper and printing) and sold these copies at a profit of probably 10 talers or more. Telemann's Hamburg correspondence reports on his income from similar sales of cantata booklets; see Georg Philipp Telemann,
Briefwechsel
, ed. Hans Große and Hans Rudolf Jung (Leipzig, 1972), pp. 28–54.

50.
The stipends are documented for 1724–29, 1731, and 1745; see Schulze 1984a.

51.
Cf.
NBR
, no. 142.

52.
Bach's own soprano voice changed in Lüneburg, after his fifteenth birthday. Nineteenth-century improvements in nutrition accelerated physical growth and caused boys' voices to change much earlier. See Behrendt 1983.

53.
NBR
, no. 151.

54.
Schering 1941, p. 150.

55.
For instance, the son of town piper Gleditsch, Christian Wilhelm, who later became an art fiddler, would have been performing with his father for many years; town piper Reiche is known to have had among his adjuncts a Johann Ferdinand Bamberg, who in 1737 unsuccessfully auditioned for a Leipzig town music position (
BDII, no.
405a).

56.
NBR
, no. 234.

57.
See Schulze 1985.

58.
Schulze 1984, p. 52.

59.
NBR
, no. 134.

60.
NBR
, no. 131.

61.
NBR
, no. 183, p. 176.

62.
The schedule for alternating locations of the performances can be determined on the basis of the extant original booklet for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany to Purification, 1724; see Neumann,
Texte
, p. 423.

63.
Detailed descriptions provided by Stiehl 1984. St. Nicholas had a large organ, originally by Johann Lange (1597–98) and substantially rebuilt by Zacharias Thayssner (1693–94): thirty-six stops on three manuals and pedal. St. Thomas also had a large instrument by Lange (1598–99) that was enlarged by Christoph Donat in 1670–71 and renovated by Johann Scheibe in 1721–22. It then also had thirty-six stops on three manuals and pedals. The small (swallow's nest) organ at St. Thomas was originally built in 1489 and enlarged in 1630 by Heinrich Compenius. Scheibe repaired the instrument, which had twenty-one stops on two manuals an pedal, in 1720–21, but in 1741 the organ was torn down. See Dähnert 1980, pp. 180f.

64.
Stiehl 1984, p. 16.

65.
It is conceivable that the number of cantata cycles indicated by the authors of the Obituary is erroneous and that the three nearly intact annual cycles basically represent the composer's cantata output. On this controversial point, see Scheide 1961 and Dürr 1961. Among other points, Scheide refers to an early nineteenth-century report by Friedrich Rochlitz according to which Bach supposedly would “usually” submit three cantata texts to superintendent Deyling, out of which one was chosen.

66.
The only chorale cantata of the 1724–25 cycle with pure hymn text
(per omnes versus)
is BWV 107. See, however, the pertinent examples in Table 8.9.

67.
It is likely that the composition of some large chorale choruses, BWV 138/1 and 95/1 in September 1723 and BWV 73/1 in January 1724, had a stimulating effect on Bach's emerging concept of a chorale cantata cycle.

68.
See Schulze in
WBK3
: 115f.

69.
For an analytical discussion of the chorale cantata cycle, see Krummacher 1995.

70.
Two of them, BWV 128 and 68, open with a chorale chorus. Whether this happened by coincidence or by Bach's request, Ziegler did not pursue the chorale cantata concept.

71.
Versuch in gebundener Schreib-Art
(Leipzig, 1729).

72.
Bach and his wife had concerts in Cöthen; see
NBR
, no. 117.

73.
Dürr 1985, p. 56.

74.
Christoph Wolff, “Bachs Leipziger Kirchenkantaten: Repertoire und Kontext,” in
WBK3, p. 17

75.
BD
II, no. 243; Spitta II, p. 345.

76.
For example, Picander's cantata for the First Sunday in Advent concludes with the chorale “Gottes Sohn ist kommen,” a setting of which (BWV 318) can be found in the 1765 edition of the four-part chorales (no. 21); none of Bach's extant cantatas includes this hymn. Moreover, the style of the harmonization resembles that of Bach's later (post
–Jahrgang III) chorale settings.

77.
NBR
, no. 146.

78.
BD
II, no. 452.

79.
See facsimile in
NBA/KBII/
5, p. 61.

80.
Quote 1717

81.
See also Johann Kuhnau, Magnificat in C major, ed. Evangeline Rimbach. Madison, Wisc., 1980.

82.
We don't know how regularly or often Bach performed his Magnificat on the high feast days of the ecclesiastical year, but we do know that at least occasionally he performed Magnificat settings by other composers; see Cammarota 1986.

83.
In the liturgy of the Good Friday morning service, Walter's
St. John Passionstood in
place of the Gospel lesson and followed the chanting of Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 (instead of the Epistle lesson). The performance of the Passion was framed by two hymns, “Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund” and “O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid” see
BJ1911: 58f.

84.
Glöckner 1990, p. 79.

85.
Schering 1926, pp. 23–25.

86.
NBR
, no. 114.

87.
Schering 1926, pp. 25–33.

88.
NBR
, no. 115. Only over a year later, in June 1725, was Bach reimbursed 3 talers 8 groschen for printing costs and harpsichord repair (
BD
II, no. 190).

89.
In BWV 245, Bach apparently used transverse flutes for the first time in his Leipzig church music.

90.
The five “new” movements in version II of the
St. John Passiondo not represent new
compositions but seem to stem from the 1717 Passion; see BC D1.

91.
None of the available editions of the
St. John Passion, including NBAII/1, properly
differentiate between the unfinished revision and the 1749 version of the work; see BC D 2a–e.

92.
NBR
, no. 208.

93.
See Glöckner 1977.

94.
Reference is made there to “Five Passions, of which one is for double chorus” (
NBR,
no. 306, p. 304).

95.
Spitta II, pp. 340–45.

96.
Leaver 1983.

97.
None of the composers who set the Brockes Passion to music made use of a double choir.

98.
The two extant original performing parts marked “Soprano in Ripieno” suggest that about six singers participated (
NBA/KBII/5, p. 49).

99.
NBR
, no. 114.

100.
See Dürr 1963/64: 47–52.

101.
1736 revision: choir I: SATB (solo,
ripieno, including Evangelist and soliloquentes: An
cilla 1–2, Uxor Pilati, Jesus, Judas, Pontifex 1–2, Petrus, Kaiphas, Pilatus); 2rec, 2trav, 2ob (d'amore, da caccia), 2v, va, va da gamba, bc (vc, vne, org); choir II: SATB (solo,
ripieno
), including Testis 1–2; 2trav, 2ob (d'amore), 2v, va, bc (vc, vne, org); choir III: S in
ripieno. Prior to 1736: one continuo group for choir I/II; lute instead of va da
gamba for nos. 56–57; 1742: va da gamba for nos. 34–35, cemb instead of org for nos. 1–68 (choir II).

102.
When Bach was elected to the post of cantor, consul Steger had requested that he “make compositions that were not theatrical” (
NBR
, no. 98).

C
HAPTER
9

1.
The reference to the “pater organistarum in Germania” occurs within a brief discussion of music of the Protestant Germans; see
BD
III, no. 798. The poem appears in Guido's
Regulae musicae rhythmicae.

2.
NBR
, nos. 343–346.

3.
Bach never even responded to Mattheson's requests in 1719 and 1731 to contribute an autobiography; see Schulze 1981.

4.
Marpurg, who wrote the preface to the second (1752) edition of
The Art of Fugue, refers
in 1750 to a personal encounter with Bach (
BD
III, no. 632) that most likely occurred on his return from Paris, in 1746.

5.
The chorales to follow more than a decade later, in 1765 and 1769, in two volumes:
Johann Sebastian Bachs vierstimmige Choralgesänge. On the manuscript and printed tra
dition, see BC, I/4, pp. 1288–90.

6.
NBR
, no. 376.

7.
NBR
, no. 374.

8.
NBR
, no. 281.

9.
From the preface to the first edition;
NBR
, no. 378.

10.
Prefaces to the
Orgel-Büchlein, Aufrichtige Anleitung, and advertisement for The Art of Fugue: NBR, nos. 69, 92, and 281.

11.
Bach after Niedt (
NBR
, pp. 16f.); see note 12.

12.
J. S. Bach,
Precepts and Principles, facsimile edition, ed. Pamela Poulin (Oxford, 1994).

13.
Niedt,
Musicalische Handleitung, 3 vols. (Hamburg, 1710, 1717, and 1721); facsim
ile edition (Buren, 1976). See also Poulin (note 12), pp. 10f. and 66.

14.
Niedt's text reads: “The thoroughbass is the most complete foundation of music. It is played with both hands on a keyboard instrument in such a way that the left hand plays the prescribed notes, while the right hand strikes consonances and dissonances, so that this results in a well-sounding
Harmonie
for the Honour of God and the permissible delight of the soul” (Pamela Poulin, trans.; F. E. Niedt,
The Musical Guide
[Oxford, 1989], p. 28).

15.
See Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,
Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 9 (Leipzig, 1935; reprint
1984), cols. 891f. The Leipzig-trained Johann Adolph Scheibe, in
Critischer Musikus
(Hamburg, 1737), p. 33, discussed the science of musical composition in terms of “the principles on which the whole harmonic structure is based.”

16.
For example, Johann Christoph Gottsched's “principles of philosophy” (
Erste Gründe der gesamten Weltweisheit[Leipzig, 1733]).

17.
Mizler,
Musikalischer Staarstecher
(Leipzig, 1739–40), p. 9; the following citation, p. 83. See also Leisinger 1994, pp. 75–77.

18.
Music lost, text extant.

19.
Kuhnau's successors as organists were Johann Adam Stolle (1710–13), N. Pitzschel (1713–14), Johann Zetzsche (1714–16), Johann Gottlieb Görner (1716–21; thereafter organist at St. Nicholas's), and Johann Christoph Thiele (1721–74).

20.
Schering 1941, p. 17.

21.
Görner received 2 talers 15 groschen per quarter; see ibid., p. 104.

22.
BD
I, p. 44.

23.
For the extensive documentation of this affair, see
NBR
, nos. 119–20, and BDI, nos. 9–12.

24.
Incidental fees and other income derived from university connections not included. Records of the annual fee collected by Bach (discovered in 1985 in the Leipzig University archives) completely changed the previously held view that Bach had ended his academic service by the beginning of 1726, that is, following his unsuccessful appeal to the king; see Szeskus 1987.

25.
The traditional view (since Spitta II, pp. 210–12) of Görner as a bitter and incompetent rival is purely fictional.

26.
NBR
, no. 279, p. 255.

27.
The basic liturgical framework of the academic service at St. Paul's (Christian Ernst Sicul,
Neo annalium Lipsiensium continuatio,
II [Leipzig, 1715–17], §16): organ prelude; hymn “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr” hymn (selected); hymn “Wir glauben all an einen Gott” sermon on the Gospel lesson; Collect, prayers, announcements, Benediction; hymn (selected). On high feasts and on Sundays during the fair only, a cantata was followed by the hymn stanza “Gott sei uns gnädig.”