Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  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):

  The original source (printed text with autograph manuscript score) of a completely unknown vocal work unexpectedly turned up at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar. It concerns an aria for soprano, two violins, viola, and continuo composed by Bach on the occasion of the fifty-second birthday of his employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, on October 20, 1713. Bach set to music a twelve-stanza German poem by the theologian Johann Anton Mylius (1657–1724) on the duke’s motto, “Omnia cum Deo, et nihil sine eo” (Everything with God, and nothing without Him). The music is composed in the form of a strophic aria with ritornello, a genre popular in late seventeenth-century Germany but not previously found among Bach’s compositions. The work, written for a prominent occasion, confirms Bach’s privileged position at the Weimar court even before his promotion from court organist to concertmaster in 1714.

  Michael Maul, “ ‘Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn’—eine neu aufgefundene Aria von Johann Sebastian Bach,” BJ (2005): 7–34; edition within the series Faksimile-Reihe Bachscher Werke und Schriftstücke—Neue Folge, ed. Bach-Archiv Leipzig (Kassel, 2005). The aria will be listed in the Schmieder catalogue under BWV 1127.

  • Weimar instrumental works (pp. 133ff.):

  The early history of the Sonata for Organ, BWV 528, which goes back to a hypothetical trio sonata in G minor for oboe, viola da gamba, and continuo from around 1714, offers one of the few plausible traces of Bach’s chamber music in Weimar.

  Pieter Dirksen, “Ein verschollenes Weimarer Kammermusikwerk Johann Sebastian Bachs? Zur Vorgeschichte der Sonate e-Moll für Orgel (BWV 528),” BJ (2003): 7–36.

  • On the examination of the organ in Gera (p. 143):

  Newly discovered documents bring about substantial revisions to Bach’s commissions as organ examiner in the Thuringian city of Gera. They pertain to three (not two) organs built by Johann Georg Finke. Moreover, Bach’s visit to Gera previously assigned to 1724 must now be moved to the period May 30 to June 6, 1725. Bach was accompanied by two people, presumably Anna Magdalena Bach and the barely fifteen-year-old Wilhelm Friedemann. The trip was probably connected with a visiting performance at the Osterstein Palace, the residence of Heinrich XVIII, Count of Reuss. Bach had already performed at the Reuss palace at Schleiz in 1721. He traveled from Schleiz via Gera back to Cöthen in August 1721, and on that occasion examined the organ at the palace church as well as the progress made in building the organ in the Church of the Savior; he even saw to it that the large commission for the organ in the municipal church would also go to Finke.

  In 1725, Bach received a top honorarium of 30 rthl. for his certification of the two organs, in the municipal church and the Church of the Savior. On June 3, 1725, the first Sunday after Trinity, the large three-manual organ in the municipal church of St. John’s in Gera was dedicated by Bach. Generous expenses for overnight lodgings and entertainment (including supplies of wine, brandy, coffee, tea, sugar, and tobacco) testify to his special VIP treatment.

  In Leipzig Bach’s new cantata cycle was supposed to begin on the first Sunday after Trinity in 1725, as it had the previous two years. Because of Bach’s absence at the beginning of June, the irregular rhythm of the third cycle (see pp. 281ff.) was already destined from the start. Its opening cantata (BWV 39) was composed in the following year and performed on June 23, 1726.

  Michael Maul, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Besuche in der Residenzstadt Gera,” BJ (2004): 101–20. For further updated details on Bach’s organ examinations, see Christoph Wolff and Markus Zepf, The Organs of J. S. Bach: A Handbook, trans. Lynn Edwards Butler (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield, 2012).

  • On Augustin Reinhard Stricker (pp. 194ff.):

  New research on Bach’s Cöthen predecessor Augustin Reinhard Stricker provides important information about his lost German opera Alexander und Roxane, magnificently produced on the occasion of the wedding of King Friedrich I and Sophia Louise of Mecklenburg-Grabau in December 1708 (repeated in January 1709) at the Berlin court. Stricker, at the time chamber musician, tenor, and composer of the Prussian court capelle, sang the principal role of Neptune, god of the seas. Additionally, the cast of characters included “Dancers in the Entrée of the Amours and Plaisirs: The Prince of Cöthen, the Elder [Leopold]. The Prince of Cöthen, the Younger [August Ludwig].” Moreover, listed among the super-numeraries in Neptune’s suite as well as in the ballet scenes is Margrave Christian Friedrich of Brandenburg, the king’s brother and later dedicatee of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

  Bach’s later employer, at the time fourteen years of age and a pupil of the Berlin Ritterakademie, apparently received dance instruction along with his brother and participated actively in musical performances. His acquaintance with Stricker, who moved to Cöthen as capellmeister in the summer of 1714, goes back as far as the opera performances of 1708–09.

  Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Von Weimar nach Köthen: Risiken und Chancen eines Amtswechsels,” Cöthener Bach Hefte 11 (2003): 9–27.

  • About Cöthen performances of cantatas BWV 21 and 199 (pp. 199, 213ff.):

  Among the anonymous copyists of the original performance material of the cantata “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis,” BWV 21, Johann Jeremias Göbel has now been identified. Göbel was cantor of the Reformed (Calvinist) municipal school and therefore responsible for the music at the Reformed “Cathedral Church” (St. Jacob’s Church) in Cöthen. This circumstance evinces for the first time that, on specific occasions, Bach also provided music for worship services in the main Reformed church of the principality, and not just in 1729 at the funeral of Prince Leopold. Conceivably, the occasion for the performance of BWV 21 was a Day of Repentance ceremony held in Cöthen every five years. One such service occurred during Bach’s employment in Cöthen on May 1, 1721.

  The discovery of the autograph violin part for the soprano solo cantata “Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut,” BWV 199, rounds out our information about the Cöthen version of the work. We now know that it was performed around or after 1720 without oboe, with viola da gamba (instead of solo viola), and in the key of D minor (at low pitch, ca. Hz 392; see below: About Leipzig arrangements of Cöthen cantatas).

  Michael Maul and Peter Wollny, “Quellenkundliches zu Bach-Aufführungen in Köthen, Ronneburg und Leipzig zwischen 1720 und 1760,” BJ (2003): 97–141; Tatjana Schabalina, “Ein weiteres Autograph Johann Sebastian Bachs in Rußland: Neues zur Entstehungsgeschichte der verschiedenen Fassungen von BWV 199,” BJ (2004): 11–40.

  • On a guest performance i
n Zerbst (pp. 208, 217ff.):

  A recent publication turned up the text to Bach’s festive birthday music for Prince Johann August of Anhalt-Zerbst on August 9, 1722, which reveals the outline of the lost secular cantata. Probably on the same day, the tenth Sunday after Trinity, a corresponding festive church cantata for the count’s birthday was performed, but no traces of it have survived. Commissions for works and performances were apparently connected with a provisional joint administration of the capellmeister’s office, which Bach looked after from nearby Cöthen before Johann Friedrich Fasch took over the position in September 1722. One member of the Zerbst court orchestra was Johann Caspar Wilcke, Jr., brother of Anna Magdalena Bach, who had already made frequent appearances as a singer even before her marriage to the Cöthen capellmeister.

  Barbara Reul, “ ‘O vergnügte Stunden / da mein Hertzog funden seinen Lebenstag’: Ein unbekannter Textdruck zu einer Geburtstagskantate J. S. Bachs für den Fürsten Johann August von Anhalt-Zerbst,” BJ (1999): 7–18; Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Johann Sebastian Bach und Zerbst 1722: Randnotizen zu einer verlorenen Gastmusik,” BJ (2004): 209–14.

  • On the 1720 trip to Hamburg (pp. 211–15):

  The archival documents that deal with appointing the organist at St. Jacobi Church yield details of the procedures and prove that Bach had already come to a decision after his concert at St. Catharine’s and before the audition of the other candidates. But they also point out that the expectation of a financial payment from Bach was hardly decisive for his rejectionist attitude.

  Philipp Tonner, “Bachs Bewerbung in Hamburg—eine Frage des Geldes?” Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 18 (2001): 207–31.

  • About Leipzig arrangements of Cöthen cantatas (pp. 242ff., Tables 8.7 and 8.13):

  Bach’s official inauguration was originally planned for Pentecost 1723 but had to be postponed by two weeks for unknown reasons. Yet after signing his provisional contract on April 19, Bach first prepared himself for the earlier inauguration and scheduled performances of the cantata “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten,” BWV 59, for Whitsunday as well as “Erhöhtes Fleisch und Blut,” BWV 173; and “Erwünschtes Freudenlicht,” BWV 184, for the second and third days of Pentecost, respectively; given the time pressure, all were parodies of vocal works from the Cöthen period. However, when the date of the inauguration was moved to the first Sunday after Trinity, Bach broke off working on BWV 59 (see pp. 242ff.). It remains to be seen whether this cantata, in its four-movement form, was performed on Whitsunday, May 16, 1723, at the “Old Service” in St. Paul’s, the university church. In any case, Bach postponed the completion of the three Pentecostal cantatas to the following year, when they were performed at the Leipzig main churches (p. 273).