Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  The cantor ranked third among the senior St. Thomas faculty of four, whose other members consisted, in 1723, of M. Johann Heinrich Ernesti, then a septuagenarian who held the position of rector simultaneously with that of professor of poetics at the university; the conrector, L(icentiate). Christian Ludovici, who also held a professorship at the university and in 1724 transferred there altogether; and the tertius, M. Carl Friedrich Pezold, a classics scholar who had agreed to take over Bach’s academic teaching obligations (in 1731, he was promoted to conrector). After the death of rector Ernesti in 1729, M. Johann Matthias Gesner was appointed to that post, but he remained in it only briefly—much to the disappointment of Bach, who knew him from Weimar and who found in him a most supportive superior; in 1734, Gesner accepted an appointment as founding dean of Göttingen University (to be established in 1737) and was succeeded as rector by M. Johann August Ernesti (a distant relative of the other Ernesti), who also taught simultaneously at the school and the university. The rector and principal instructor of the prima carried a weekly teaching load of fifteen hours, while the conrector and tertius as instructors of the secunda and tertia classes taught for seventeen hours. The cantor traditionally taught twelve classroom hours in addition to his regular musical and administrative duties; having no class specifically his own, the cantor worked with the four upper classes, prima down to quarta.

  In the sequence of eminent Protestant cantors serving the Thomana since the mid-sixteenth century, Bach was the tenth (see Table 8.1). He was, however, the first one to focus exclusively on the musical education of the upper classes. By special arrangement with the tertius, his teaching load was reduced to seven classes. This reduction did not, however, result in a net decrease of Bach’s actual teaching functions, because he invested more than any of his predecessors in private vocal and instrumental instruction as well as in rehearsal time—a necessity considering the dramatic increase in the musical demands on his students as compared, for example, with what Kuhnau had required of them. Classes at the St. Thomas School were held weekdays from 7 to 10 A.M. and from 12 to 3 P.M.; the remaining unscheduled time was reserved for individual study, in the cubicles for the alumni and at home for the externi. The cantor taught his “musical exercises with all classes” on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 9 and 12 and on Friday at 12, seven hours per week, at the school’s auditorium; he had no scheduled classes on Thursday or Saturday. The classes were compulsory for all resident and nonresident students, altogether some 150 youngsters, so Bach was assisted by the four choral prefects appointed by him from among the senior and musically expert students. We may assume that Bach himself worked mostly with smaller groups of the more advanced students, whom he then coached, perhaps with students in the audience observing, and that he performed regularly, giving explanations and demonstrations of musical concepts. All his teachings were imbued with the educational goals stated in the school’s regulations for its preceptors, namely to instruct their students “in the knowledge and fear of God” and “in the vivid knowledge of divine essence and will,” the very same goals with which Bach himself had been raised.32

  TABLE 8.1. Protestant Cantors at the St. Thomas School, to 1800

  1519–1520

  Georg Rhau

  1540–1549

  Ulrich Lang

  1549–1551

  Wolfgang Figulus

  1553–1564

  Valentin Otto

  1594–1615

  Seth Calvisius

  1616–1630

  Johann Hermann Schein

  1631–1657

  Tobias Michael

  1657–1676

  Sebastian Knüpfer

  1677–1701

  Johann Schelle

  1701–1722

  Johann Kuhnau

  1723–1750

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  1750–1755

  JohannGottlob Harrer

  1756–1789

  Johann Friedrich Doles

  1789–1800

  Johann Adam Hiller

  For the music instruction in the upper classes and for his private lessons, Bach apparently used no textbooks (at Latin schools, musical notation was taught to the younger students before they reached the quarta). Instead, he formulated his own rules and principles for theoretical subjects (an example is his Vorschriften und Grundsätze zum vierstimmigen Spielen des General-Baß oder Accompagnement, Precepts and Principles for Playing the Thoroughbass or Accompanying in Four Parts)33 and focused chiefly on practical examples from the vocal and instrumental repertoire. Since his successors in the St. Thomas cantorate, notably his student Johann Friedrich Doles, made frequent use of the Bach motets for regular choral exercises, it seems likely that Bach himself established this practice. A work such as the eight-voice motet of 1726–27, “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied,” BWV 225, may in fact have been composed just for this purpose—no other being known. As a choral etude for double choir, to be sung alternatively with or without instrumental support, it would have given Bach the possibility of training his students in the vocal techniques and genres (movements 1 and 3a: eight-part concerto; 2: four-part aria and four-part chorale juxtaposed; 3b: four-part fugue) that he needed for his demanding cantata repertoire. The motet’s biblical texts, from Psalm 98:1–3, “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” (Sing unto the Lord a new song) and Psalm 150:2 and 6, “Lobet den Herrn in seinen Taten / Alles was Odem hat, lobe den Herrn. Halleluja” (Praise the Lord for His mighty acts / Let everything that has breath praise the Lord), as well as the chorale stanza “Wie sich ein Vater erbarmet” (As a father has mercy / for all his young small children / the Lord will also forgive us / when we as children purely fear Him), would have been particularly appropriate for teaching how such a piece of music fit into the daily lives and duties of the choral scholars. Similarly suitable for pedagogical purposes and regular repeated performances would have been the five-part chorale motet “Jesu, meine Freude,” BWV 227, in which Johann Franck’s 1653 hymn is connected with the central doctrinal New Testament passage Romans 8:1, 2, 9–11, “Es ist nun nichts Verdammliches an denen, die in Christo Jesu sind” (There is therefore no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit). This diversified structure of five-, four-, and three-part movements, with shifting configurations of voices and a highly interpretive word-tone relationship throughout, wisely and sensibly combines choral exercise with theological education.

  It is clear that the traditional sixteenth-century motets from the standard collections (such as Erhard Bodenschatz’s Florilegium Portense of 1618), which were still regularly performed at the beginning of services during Bach’s time, would have been insufficient to prepare the choral scholars for the challenges they had to meet in Bach’s cantatas. It was therefore necessary for Bach to prepare the pupils by way of demanding and interesting pieces that would keep them on their toes. There had been regular complaints during Kuhnau’s time about disorder and a lack of discipline among the choral scholars, and both Kuhnau and rector Ernesti were blamed. But no complaints about disciplinary problems are recorded for Bach’s classes or performances (although he was reproached in 1729 for negligence in the arrangements regarding academic classes and for canceling singing classes).34 A stiff schedule of fines discouraged students from disturbing performances: for a noticeable (musical) mistake, 1 groschen had to be paid, and for an intentional and mischievous mistake, 3 groschen (1 groschen would buy two quarts of beer). This money was subtracted from the students’ extra income from funerals and other services and was used by the cantor for the acquisition of music and the maintenance of instruments.35 In general, the school regulations reminded everyone that “our ancestors have determined that music should be practiced at the St. Thomas School, and that the alumni should provide it for all the city’s churches. Therefore, they should be mindful of their duty and office by exercising this art as much as possible, and consider that they perform a good deed which the heavenly host pursues
with the greatest pleasure.”36

  Under his contract, Bach was required to instruct “not only in vocal but also in instrumental music.”37 While most of his instrumental lessons took place in private or small groups, the classroom exercises may also have involved instrumental performances and coaching. The large amount of instrumental music by Bach that was copied in the 1750s by Christian Friedrich Penzel, then one of the school’s prefects, suggests that Bach’s own ensemble compositions—chamber works for one instrument and harpsichord but also concertos and overtures—may also have played a role in his musical exercises at the school, especially for the training of his best players, whether or not they were needed for the cantata performances. The auditorium was equipped with a small organ and a harpsichord (in his office, on the same floor level, the cantor kept instruments that could be added as needed) and also served as rehearsal space for the church performances. And as noted earlier, each alumni cubicle either contained or provided easy access to a keyboard instrument, so that students could prepare for lessons and learn their cantata parts. Lessons and rehearsals had to take place during the daily periods for individual study, outside the scheduled classroom hours. The school’s regular teaching schedule was maintained rigidly on all workdays throughout the year, with the exception of the religious holidays and the three periods of the fairs, which usually involved additional musical commitments.

  The cantor was in charge of the music in four churches: St. Nicholas’s and St. Thomas’s, the city’s two main parish churches; the New Church, which was the old Franciscan Barfüsser Church, rebuilt in 1699 (renamed St. Matthew’s in 1876 and destroyed in World War II); and the smaller St. Peter’s Church, built in 1505 and enlarged 1710–12 (torn down in 1886). The fifty-five alumni, that is, the resident choral scholars from the upper four classes, were thus divided into four cantoreien, with distinct assignments requiring different musical accomplishments (see Table 8.2). Choir I, consisting of the most select singers from the upper classes under the direction of the cantor, provided the cantatas and, in general, the concerted music at the two main churches in an alternating schedule (for details, see the following section, “Mostly Cantatas”). This choir was joined by the town music company for cantata performances conducted by the cantor; it also sang the Introit motet under the direction of the first prefect, a member of this choir. Choir I together with the town musicians also performed four times a year at the Old Service in St. Paul’s, where the regular services on high feast days and during the fair periods featured concerted music performed under the direction of its music director by university students who had formed a Collegium Musicum. Choir II served the two main churches and performed in alternation with choir I, under the direction of the second prefect; choir II ordinarily performed only motets, without an instrumental ensemble. Choir III, conducted by the third prefect, served the New Church and sang motets and chorales; concerted music was presented there on high feast days and during the fairs by another Collegium Musicum under the direction of its organist and music director—a tradition established in 1704 by Georg Philipp Telemann. Choir IV, led by the fourth prefect, was responsible merely for hymn singing at St. Peter’s.

  It was within this fairly tight organizational framework that Bach began, from the moment of his arrival in Leipzig, to take charge of the cantorate in true capellmeisterly fashion. The repertoire of music he created for Leipzig demanded the performing standards he had grown used to in Weimar and Cöthen and was unwilling to relinquish. At the same time, his works offered a richness of ideas, forms, and sonorities that went well beyond established conventions. Focusing initially on a bold program of church music that was unprecedented for Leipzig (or anywhere else, for that matter), he engaged, over his twenty-seven-year tenure, generations of St. Thomas School students, the town music company, and a host of supplementary musicians for a total of some 1,500 performances of cantatas, passions, oratorios, and similar works, playing to a captive audience of more than two thousand each time.38

  By the end of the 1720s and after six years in office, Bach the capellmeister-cantor had managed to place himself in a commanding position vis-à-vis Leipzig’s music organizations, sacred and secular. When a major reshuffling of important positions took place in 1729 on Georg Balthasar Schott’s acceptance of a cantorate in Gera and the death of Christian Gräbner, the St. Thomas organist, Bach claimed for himself the directorship of Leipzig’s first and best Collegium Musicum. He also helped reorganize the organists’ scene by moving the able Johann Gottlieb Görner from St. Paul’s to St. Thomas’s and by appointing two capable young musicians, his own students Carl Gotthelf Gerlach and Johann Schneider, as organists at the New Church and St. Nicholas’s; all three would remain in their posts for the rest of their careers. Such powerful stature in the city (and consequently within the St. Thomas School as well) bolstered by a steadily growing supra-regional reputation and by princely, ducal, and electoral-royal honorary titles at the courts of Cöthen, Weissenfels, and Dresden, respectively, made Bach practically invulnerable, and probably to some extent ungovernable. It seems to have been the latter quality—not the unique musical achievements of unquestionable value to Leipzig—that prompted Burgomaster Stieglitz, in the city council’s talks about the succession after Bach’s death, to declare that “the School needed a Cantor and not a Capellmeister.”39 And indeed, never again would the Thomana have a capellmeister.

  TABLE 8.2. Organization of Leipzig Church Music, 1723–50

  MOSTLY CANTATAS

  When Bach took over the St. Thomas cantorate in the spring of 1723, he moved from courtly to municipal service, from unpredictable despotic rule and princely caprices (benevolent or not) to a more slowly operating civic bureaucracy and collegial administration. More important to him than such external conditions, however, was the opportunity finally to realize his artistic aspirations: “the ultimate goal of a regulated church music,” which he had described in 1708 to the Mühlhausen town council and which he had tried to pursue, on a more restricted level, at the Weimar court. Fifteen years later, he was now back in a similar situation—as the leading musician of a municipality—but with far greater authority, experience, and means to prevail. An additional source of encouragement must have been the reputation of the venerable office at St. Thomas’s as the leading cantorate in Protestant Germany, esteemed for its uninterrupted sequence of distinguished incumbents such as Calvisius, Schein, Michael, Knüpfer, Schelle, and Kuhnau and their exemplary creative work.

  Even before he officially assumed his Leipzig office, Bach must have decided to supply the two main churches with works of his own composition. Once in Leipzig, unlike any of his predecessors, all of whom were also active composers, he embarked on a program to provide a piece of concerted music—a cantata—for every Sunday and feast day of the ecclesiastical year, except for the Lenten weeks preceding Christmas and Easter, when concerted music was traditionally suspended. Such a repertoire required no fewer than sixty cantatas annually, an enormously challenging task (especially during the first several years) demanding extraordinary concentration and discipline. Only gradually could Bach build up a repertoire of sacred music that would eventually enable him to draw on a rich cache of materials for years to come.

  In order for the St. Thomas School to serve the two main churches equally well, a scheme of alternation had been devised early in the seventeenth century, so Bach’s cantata performances alternated in a steady rhythm between St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas’s. For the high feasts of the ecclesiastical year, the morning performance in one church was repeated at the afternoon service in the other, so that the congregations of both parishes would benefit. The headings in the printed booklet for the Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, for example, indicate how the arrangement worked in 1734–35:40

  Part I (Christmas Day):

  Mornings at St. Nicholas’s and afternoons at St. Thomas’s

  Part II (2nd day of Christmas):

  Mornings at St. Thomas’s and afternoons at
St. Nicholas’s

  Part III (3rd day of Christmas):

  At St. Nicholas’s

  Part IV (New Year’s Day):

  Mornings at St. Thomas’s and afternoons at St. Nicholas’s

  Part V (Sunday after New Year’s Day):

  At St. Nicholas’s

  Part VI (Epiphany):

  Mornings at St. Thomas’s and afternoons at St. Nicholas’s