Ohrdruf, a small town at the foot of the Thuringian Forest, twenty-five miles southeast of Eisenach, was the site of an ancient settlement. In 727, a group of Scottish-Irish missionary monks under Boniface had established a small Benedictine monastery with a chapel, St. Michael’s, by the Ohra River. This structure, the oldest house of God in all of Thuringia, became the foundation on which a larger church was built in the early 1400s, a century before Ohrdruf accepted the Lutheran Reformation in 1525. Little is left of the historic church; on November 27, 1753, a devastating fire swept through the town, and St. Michael’s fell victim to the flames. In the late seventeenth century, Ohrdruf had about 2,500 inhabitants and, with its Ehrenstein Castle (see illustration, p. 32)—a four-winged, sixteenth-century structure near St. Michael’s in the center of town—served as the secondary residence of the counts of Hohenlohe-Gleichen (whose main landed property lay around Öhringen in southern Germany). Wechmar, the place Veit Bach (white-bread baker from Hungary and progenitor of the family of musicians) once settled and the hometown of his son, Hans Bach (2), seven miles northeast of Ohrdruf, belonged to the same county, an enclave engulfed by the duchy of Saxe-Gotha. So by moving in 1690 to Ohrdruf, Christoph Bach in a sense returned to his family’s place of origin, although until then no musician from the Bach family had ever served in the town. Only the wife of Ambrosius Bach’s twin brother, Christoph had come from there, and Heinrich Bach’s (6) daughter Anna Elisabeth was married to the Ohrdruf cantor Johann Heinrich Kühn.
The organist post at St. Michael’s was a respectable one, for the church, which contained two organs, was both the town’s and the county’s main house of worship. The incumbent was obligated to play at the Siechhofskirche, the hospital chapel, too, and most likely at the chapel of Ehrenstein Castle whenever members of the ruling family were in town and private services were held for them. Johann Christoph’s initial annual salary amounted to forty-five florins, plus in-kind compensation (grain and wood). In 1696, his salary was increased to seventy florins, and further in-kind payments were added in light of his having declined an attractive offer from Gotha to succeed his former teacher Pachelbel as town organist. The larger of the two Ohrdruf organs (with twenty-one stops on Oberwerk, Rückpositiv, and pedal), built only in 1675 and expanded in 1688,11 was relatively new and must have appeared quite alluring to the eighteen-year-old organist upon his appointment. However, the instrument, built by Heinrich Brunner of Sandersleben, was incomplete and suffered from serious defects, and the necessary repairs were delayed for years, despite the Ohrdruf town council’s threat to seize the organ builder’s assets. Pachelbel, visiting from Gotha, provided a detailed report on the organ’s unsatisfactory state of repair in February 1693. Three years later, the organ builder Christian Rothe of Salzungen wrote an expert evaluation, but it took another ten years to finish the repairs. (An apprentice to Rothe at the time, Heinrich Nicolaus Trebs, would later become a close colleague of Bach in Weimar.) In sum, St. Michael’s instruments required considerable attention by the organist to be kept in playing condition. That this should be the case precisely during Sebastian’s Ohrdruf years was important, for the boy, who clearly had a knack for musical instruments and their technology, was given an ideal opportunity to gain firsthand experience in organ building.
On October 23, 1694, Johann Christoph had married Johanna Dorothea Vonhoff, daughter of an Ohrdruf town councillor. The Eisenach cantor Andreas Christian Dedekind reported that he, along with Pachelbel, Ambrosius Bach, and Ambrosius’s cousin Johann Veit Hoffmann, performed at a wedding in Ohrdruf in the fall of 1694—surely Christoph’s, and the only occasion for the young Sebastian to have seen his elder brother’s master teacher. The musical program at the ceremony conceivably included the Eisenach Johann Christoph Bach’s (13) wedding piece “Meine Freundin, du bist schön,” a dramatized compilation of texts from the Song of Songs, scored for 4 soloists, chorus, solo violin, 3 violas, and continuo. The only surviving manuscript of the piece happens to be in the hand of Ambrosius Bach, the groom’s father and an accomplished violinist (see illustration, p. 38). On July 21, 1695, the first child, Tobias Friedrich, was born to the Ohrdruf organist and his wife; the second, Christina Sophia, followed in 1697. Altogether the couple had six sons and three daughters, the youngest of whom, Johann Sebastian, died as a child. Several of the sons later found employment as musicians in Ohrdruf—two of them, Johann Bernhard and Johann Heinrich, after having studied for several years with their uncle Sebastian in Weimar and in Leipzig.
When the household of Christoph and Dorothea Bach absorbed Jacob and Sebastian in 1695, their family was still small; but considering the modest income of the Ohrdruf organist, the obligation to house, feed, and teach the thirteen-and nine-year-old brothers must have caused considerable hardship. In fact, Sebastian’s school record reveals that Christoph was not able to provide unassisted support, and Sebastian’s Ohrdruf sojourn depended largely on the availability of free board. The same must have applied to Jacob, although he did not stay in Ohrdruf for more than a year; by July 1696, at only fourteen years of age, he returned to Eisenach as an apprentice to Johann Heinrich Halle, his father’s successor as director of the town music company.
The brothers Jacob and Sebastian enrolled in the Ohrdruf Lyceum Illustre Gleichense, probably in late July 1695, after the Lyceum’s annual final examinations. This distinguished institution, which attracted students from afar, was founded around 1560 by Georg II, count of Gleichen. Sebastian, who had graduated from the quarta of the Eisenach St. George’s School, entered the tertia and finished his first year, in July 1696, as no. 4, outranking many older classmates. When he graduated from the tertia the following year, the youth—at age twelve the youngest student in his class—had reached no. 1. The two years in the secunda confirm his extraordinary academic standing, ranking fifth in July 1698 and second in July 1699, when he was promoted to the prima at age fourteen, a full four years below the average age of that class. Sebastian had progressed from the quinta through the secunda within eight years, an educational accomplishment unprecedented in his family: neither his father nor grandfather had ever received this kind of schooling, and all three of his brothers left Latin school after completing only the tertia, at age fourteen or fifteen.
For most of Sebastian’s Ohrdruf school years, the Lyceum was headed by a young rector, M. Johann Christoph Kiesewetter, who was appointed in June 1696 and whose energy and foresight put the school back on track after it had suffered some organizational and disciplinary problems near the end of his predecessor’s tenure. Most of the disturbances were attributed to a single individual, the cantor Johann Heinrich Arnold—in Kiesewetter’s words, “pest of the school, scandal of the church, and carcinome of the city.” Arnold was fired and replaced in January 1698 by Elias Herda, who had previously taught in Gotha. That Herda’s audition committee included Johann Christoph Bach indicates the status he had reached in just a few years’ time. He also selected the vocal piece to be conducted by Herda and afterward informed the Ohrdruf superintendent, Melchior Kromayer: “We will hardly get a better one.”12
For most of his time in Ohrdruf, Sebastian was a choral scholar under cantor Herda. The chorus musicus generated a steady income stream for its members, primarily through Currende singing in the streets, three times a year. In 1697, for example, a total of 242 talers 4 groschen 10 pfennigs was distributed primarily among the twenty to twenty-five choristers. Fees varied by class and function. A prefect, or assistant conductor, could earn about 20 talers per annum, an altogether respectable sum in comparison, for instance, with Christoph Bach’s initial annual salary as organist (45 florins = 39 talers 9 groschen). Sebastian’s earnings as a choral scholar in Ohrdruf would have been below that of a prefect, but he may well have been paid as a vocal soloist (concertist). This way Sebastian could contribute to the household expenses—clearly a must. He also critically depended on the so-called hospitia or hospitia liberalia, instituted by patrician or affluent families for gifted a
nd needy Latin school students who would receive free board and a stipend for tutoring their sons.13 As a matter of fact, his departure from Ohrdruf in the spring of 1700 was prompted by the unexpected loss of such hospitia.
During his two years in the tertia of the Lyceum, Sebastian was taught by cantor Arnold, who apparently was a gifted scholar despite his moral shortcomings. The subject matter in the tertia included Latin exercises based on Reyher’s Dialogi seu Colloquia puerilia (Gotha, 1653) and beginning Greek reading exercises; in the secunda, Leonhard Hutter’s Compendium locorum theologicorum (Wittenberg, 1610; with numerous later editions), a systematic summary of Christian doctrine derived from the Bible and early Lutheran theological writings, as well as the biographies of Roman leaders by Roman historian Cornelius Nepos and letters by Cicero. The plan for the prima prescribed the historical writings of Roman author Curtius Rufus; Idea historiae universalis (Lüneburg, 1672), an influential book on world history and geography by the seventeenth-century scholar Johannes Buno; and the Latin comedies of Terence. Arithmetic was taught in all classes. Conrector Johann Jeremias Böttiger instructed the secunda, and the students of the prima worked with the rector, a distinguished scholar and pedagogue.
Rector Kiesewetter may have had connections with the Bach family in Arnstadt, having attended the gymnasium there and later having been elected pastor at the New Church in Arnstadt, a post he turned down in favor of the rectorship in nearby Ohrdruf. In 1712, Kiesewetter was appointed rector of the prestigious gymnasium in Weimar, where he would renew acquaintance with Bach. He had followed his former student’s career from Ohrdruf, at one point noting in the school register that Bach had been “appointed organist at St. Sophia’s [New] Church in Arnstadt, thereafter in Mühlhausen.”14
Sebastian did not quite complete the first year of the prima at the Lyceum. About four months before the annual examinations in July, he and his schoolmate Georg Erdmann left Ohrdruf to complete their education at St. Michael’s School in Lüneburg, far away from their Thuringian homeland. According to the exit note in the school register, Sebastian “set out for Lüneburg on March 15, 1700, in the absence of hospitia.” The young Lyceum cantor Elias Herda had been a choral scholar at St. Michael’s in Lüneburg from 1689 to 1695, and apparently maintained good connections to his former school. He must have heard of vacancies at St. Michael’s and suggested his students Bach and Erdmann for positions as choral scholars that would furnish them with the stipends necessary to complete their schooling. Rector Kiesewetter would certainly have provided academic recommendations, especially for Bach, who clearly outranked Erdmann. At this important juncture, Christoph more than likely may have preferred that the fourteen-year-old consider doing what he and their other two brothers had done at that age—enter professional life as musicians. Balthasar had been apprenticed to his father in Eisenach, and Jacob went to apprentice with his father’s successor there; Christoph himself, as he wrote in an autobiographical note of December 1700, “attended school until my 15th year, [after which] my father, seeing that I was more inclined toward music than toward studies, sent me to Erfurt, to Mr. Johann Pachelbel, then organist at the Predigerkirche, in order to master the keyboard, and I remained under his guidance for three years.”15
Quite conceivably Christoph, in recognizing Sebastian’s great musical gifts and remarkable keyboard skills, urged him to study with his own teacher and old family friend, Pachelbel, now organist at St. Sebaldus Church in the free imperial city of Nuremberg, some 160 miles southeast of Ohrdruf. At the same time, he must have realized that his little brother, unlike himself, was clearly inclined toward academic studies. And so he may not have wanted to discourage him from following a path that was anything but well trodden for Ambrosius Bach’s sons; that is, from completing the upper classes of the gymnasium and earning the qualification for university study.16 Regardless of how the dynamics among Herda, Kiesewetter, Christoph, and Sebastian actually played out, Sebastian’s move to faraway Lüneburg was surely of his own free will. In making for himself a decision with such incalculable consequences, the boy demonstrated an astonishing degree of independence and confidence, for he was the only one of Ambrosius’s children and among the first of Hans Bach’s (2) great-grandchildren to break out of the family’s ancestral territory between Erfurt, Eisenach, and Schweinfurt. Yet the pursuit of academic goals could hardly have been the sole driving force for this adventurous undertaking, and among other possible motivating factors, two stand out: a desire for emancipation and autonomy (a strongly independent mind remained a salient feature of his character), and an apparently boundless curiosity about the grand organs of northern Germany (presaging a lifelong dedication to the organ, organ music, and organ playing).
SEBASTIAN’S MUSICAL BEGINNINGS
The decision to complete academic studies and pass up a musical apprenticeship indicates the priorities Sebastian set for himself. Although he would hardly have given serious thought to a nonmusical profession, his excellent performance as a Latin school student would have led his teachers to encourage him to strive for higher goals than becoming a town piper or organist. The school post of cantor ordinarily required university study, and Bach may well have contemplated this option, and perhaps even a theological career. There were certainly enough models of musical “academics” whose educational background provided them with a broader set of opportunities, not to mention a deeper understanding of music. In the Bach family circle alone, Johann Pachelbel had greatly benefited from gymnasium and university studies, as had Georg Böhm. The latter, from the village Hohenkirchen near Ohrdruf, had attended both the gymnasium in Gotha and Jena University together with Johann Bernhard Vonhoff. Vonhoff, later town councillor in Ohrdruf, happened to be the father-in-law of Johann Christoph, Sebastian’s brother, so it is conceivable that this connection also played a role in Sebastian’s move to Lüneburg, where Böhm was organist at St. John’s.
When Sebastian set out for St. Michael’s School in Lüneburg, his musical preparation was exceptional, comprehensive, and in every respect well rounded. He had received or simply picked up in Eisenach basic training on the standard town piper instruments, in particular the violin, his father’s primary instrument. Sebastian would later play violin and viola regularly, and most likely cello. He must have been taught the violin by his father—the violinist and court capellmeister Daniel Eberlin having left Eisenach in 1692—and the Stainer violin listed among the instruments in Bach’s estate was perhaps an inheritance from Ambrosius.17 At any rate, Sebastian would have taken at least a violin along to Lüneburg, as he could easily anticipate all kinds of opportunities for its use. Whatever other instruments he might have inherited from his father’s collection he would probably have left in Ohrdruf in the custody of his brother, along with any other household goods from the parental home.
The mere fact that Sebastian was offered a post as choral scholar at St. Michael’s indicates a solid choral background. Moreover, the reference in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Obituary to “his uncommonly fine soprano voice” not only identifies the vocal range and his place in the Eisenach and Ohrdruf school choirs, it also suggests that the combination of long experience—possibly extending over eight years, from 1692 to 1700—and a beautiful voice secured for him, at least for most of the Ohrdruf years, the assignment of solo parts in the chorus musicus. Over the years, Sebastian became versed in both the choraliter and figuraliter styles—that is, liturgical plainsong and polyphonic music. Since the rich trove of Lutheran hymns, sung with or without organ accompaniment or set polyphonically, played such a crucial role in the musical and educational practice of the Lutheran German lands, Sebastian early on became intimately familiar with this vast and varied collection of tunes and sacred poetry. He grew up with the Eisenach hymnal of 1673 (Neues vollständiges Eisenachisches Gesangbuch), which contained, in its thousand-plus pages, no fewer than 612 hymns. The polyphonic choral literature in use then generally focused on a published repertoire of Latin and German motets from
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while the concerted repertoire (arias, concertos, motets, and cantatas) requiring the participation of obbligato instruments would have been drawn primarily from manuscript sources. The choral libraries of Eisenach and Ohrdruf most likely contained works by the prolific Gotha court capellmeister Wolfgang Carl Briegel, and surely by the Eisenach cantor Dedekind as well as members of the Bach family, especially Johann (4), Heinrich (6), Christoph (13) and Michael (14).18
The most decisive role in Sebastian’s musical upbringing must be assigned to his elder brother Christoph. Not only did he provide a home for his youngest brother, he furthered Sebastian’s professional musical development during the most formative years of his life. In fact, in the Obituary, Christoph is the only teacher mentioned. Characteristically, however, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach assigns the active role in the relationship to Sebastian himself: “under his brother’s guidance he laid the foundations for his playing of the clavier.”19 In other words, his brother only guided. Cousin Johann Gottfried Walther presents in his 1732 Musicalisches Lexicon a more objective statement when he writes that Sebastian “learned the first principia on the clavier from his eldest brother, Mr. Johann Christoph Bach.”20 Christoph may not have been the first to recognize the extraordinary keyboard talents of Sebastian, who must already have shown a special ability during his Eisenach years, particularly under the influence of his uncle Christoph, the town organist. But the elder brother’s tutelage apparently helped the young Sebastian really concentrate on the keyboard.
“The foundations for his playing of the clavier” and “the first principia on the clavier” imply first and foremost the acquisition of a solid keyboard technique, involving the standard keyboard instruments—notably harpsichord and organ—and (on the organ) applying both hands and feet; second, experience with the major keyboard genres and styles, improvisatory (prelude, toccata, etc.) or strict (fugue, ricercar, etc.), freely invented or based on a given subject or choral tune; and third, familiarity with the different approaches of individual composers. Christoph, therefore, would have structured the teaching of his ten-year-old brother along the lines that Sebastian himself later used to teach his oldest son, when he was nine. The Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, begun in 1720, contains on the first pages some basic information about clefs, scales, and symbols for ornaments as well as a fingering exercise in C major; following are some short pieces in different but easy keys—a praeambulum, a chorale setting, a prelude, another chorale, two allemandes (very early compositions by Friedemann), and so forth; appearing later are early versions of preludes from The Well-Tempered Clavier, including some in difficult keys, and early versions of the two-part Inventions and three-part Sinfonias as exercises in imitative style—mostly compositions by Bach himself; still later come works by other composers.
Johann Sebastian Bach Page 9