Mr. Martius,
My patience is now at its end. How long do you think I must wait for the harpsichord? Two months have passed, and nothing has changed. I regret to write this to you, but I cannot do otherwise. You must bring it back in good order, and within five days, else we shall never be friends. Adieu.
Joh: Sebast: Bach67
Through his widespread connections, Bach also functioned as sales agent for instrument makers. Thus, at the time of the Easter Fair in 1749, Bach sold a very expensive fortepiano to a Polish nobleman—apparently on commission from the Dresden organ builder Gottfried Silbermann, at the time the only maker of this kind of instrument. Bach’s receipt for his payment provides the necessary details:
That to me, the undersigned, the payment of 115 rthl., written out one hundred and fifteen rthl. in Lui blanc[= 23 louis d’or], for an instrument called Piano et Forte which shall be delivered to His Excellency Count [Jan Casimir von] Branitzky in Bialystok, was properly handed over by Mr. [Barthelemy] Valentin here, I herewith attest. Leipzig, May 6, 1749.
Joh: Sebast: Bach
Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon
Court Composer
In addition to his instrument-rental and commission sales business, the eminently practical, versatile, and entrepreneurial Bach—the “compleat musician” par excellence—ran a small book and music sales operation. Available for purchase were not only his own publications, such as the volumes from the Clavier-Übung series, but also works by his sons, students, and colleagues. In the spring of 1729, for example, German newspaper advertisements informed the public that important new music books such as Johann David Heinichen’s DerGeneral-Bass in der Composition of 1728 and Johann Gottfried Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon of 1731 were available under commission “in Leipzig from Capellmeister Bach” (as in Hamburg from Johann Mattheson, in Darmstadt from Christoph Graupner, and so forth).68 Moreover, the title pages of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s keyboard publications dating from 1745 to 1748 invariably indicate that the works were obtainable not only “from the author” in Dresden and Halle, but also “from his father in Leipzig, and from his brother in Berlin.” Similar references to Bach’s music business can be found on keyboard publications of 1735 and 1736 by Conrad Friedrich Hurlebusch and on the Clavier-Übung of 1741 by Bach’s student Johann Ludwig Krebs.69 The sales venture was complemented by a manuscript-copying service and by the rental of manuscript parts of his own works. For example, the autograph score of the Sanctus in D major, BWV 232III, bears the notation “NB. The parts are in Bohemia with Count Sporck”70—referring to Franz Anton Count Sporck of Lissa and Prague, with whom Bach maintained contact; the parts were apparently never returned, so that a replacement set had to be copied out.
Bach’s multifarious connections with instrument makers allowed him to experiment with new instrument designs, less for commercial reasons than out of a genuine interest in the technology of musical instruments. Directly related to his activities as keyboard virtuoso were, of course, his services as a consultant and organ expert, an area in which he had virtually no peers. But not only did he design and test organs, he also played a significant role in the development of new keyboard instruments, most notably the lute-clavier, a gut-strung variant of the traditional harpsichord, and the fortepiano, the prototype of the modern piano. Possibly inspired by the work of his elder cousin Johann Nicolaus Bach of Jena, who had built lute-clavier instruments,71 Bach himself toyed with this hybrid instrument type. Johann Friedrich Agricola later recalled “about the year 1740, in Leipzig, having seen and heard a lute-harpsichord designed by Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach and executed by Mr. Zacharias Hildebrandt, which was of smaller size than the ordinary harpsichord.”72 Among the works intended for this instrument is the Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat major, BWV 998, dating from the late 1730s, and according to its autograph title written “pour la Luth ò Cembal.” However, much more consequential than his association with this short-lived keyboard type was Bach’s involvement with Gottfried Silbermann’s important refinement of the fortepiano, a keyboard instrument with controllable hammers that permitted an infinitely variable differentiation between forte and piano dynamics. The Saxon organ builder improved Bartolomeo Cristofori’s original design, in particular its hammer action and sound quality, and for both he received critical advice from Bach,73 as the same Agricola reported:
Mr. Gottfried Silbermann had at first built two of these instruments. One of them was seen and played by the late Capellmeister, Mr. Joh. Sebastian Bach. He praised, indeed, admired, its tone; but he complained that it was too weak in the high register and too hard to play. This was taken greatly amiss by Mr. Silbermann, who could not bear to have any fault found in his handiworks. He was therefore angry at Mr. Bach for a long time. And yet his conscience told him that Mr. Bach was not wrong. He therefore decided—greatly to his credit, be it said—not to deliver any more of these instruments, but instead to think all the harder about how to eliminate the faults Mr. J. S. Bach had observed. He worked for many years on this. And that this was the real cause of this postponement I have the less doubt since I myself heard it frankly acknowledged by Mr. Silbermann…. Mr. Silbermann also had the laudable ambition to show one ofthese instruments of his later workmanship to the late Capellmeister Bach, and have it examined by him; and he received, in turn, complete approval from him.74
Silbermann had developed his original model in the early 1730s, but withdrew it after it was not fully approved by Bach; he introduced his new and better version in the mid-1740s. Bach then played on the new fortepianos at the court of King Friedrich II of Prussia in 1747. Reportedly, the improved instruments manufactured by Silbermann—the kind Bach helped market at the Leipzig trade fair—“pleased the king so much that he resolved to buy them all up. He collected 15.”75
Contemporary reports also link Bach to the design of the viola pomposa (or violoncello piccolo, or Bassetchen), a higher-range bass string instrument. In 1782, Forkel discussed the reasons for what seems to have been Bach’s own modification—not properly an invention—of existing prototypes of the violoncello piccolo.76 Forkel cites the dilemma in making the proper choice of an instrument that is either too low (cello) or too high (violin) for accompanying certain lines in a flexible manner: “In order to find a way out of this situation, and to avoid both extremes, the former Capellmeister in Leipzig, Mr. Joh. Seb. Bach, invented an instrument that he called viola pomposa. It is tuned like a violoncello but has one string more at the top, is somewhat larger than a viola, and is so attached with a ribbon that it can be held on the arm in front of the chest.”77 Bach made use of this five-string viola pomposa in the Suite in D major, BWV 1012, specifically designated “a cinq cordes” within the set of solo cello suites. For accompanimental purposes, he required it in several cantatas written between 1714 and 1726 (BWV 199/second version, 5, 180, 115, 139, 41, 6, 85, 183, 68, 175) and also in the A-major Mass, BWV 234, for a performance in the 1740s. Bach’s keen interest in exploring unconventional sonorities is particularly well documented in his early Leipzig cantatas. The oboe d’amore, for example, not traceable anywhere before 1720, is integrated into his Leipzig instrumental ensemble from the very beginning; in fact, his audition piece apparently introduced the instrument into the Leipzig church music repertoire. A bit later, beginning in 1724, Bach promoted the invention of the oboe da caccia, a hybrid tenor-range oboe with a wooden shaft and a brass bell, by the Leipzig instrument maker Johann Heinrich Eichentopf. The instrument is featured most prominently in the pastoral sinfonia that opens part II of the Christmas Oratorio, which combines a pair of oboi da caccia with a pair of oboi d’amore.
Eichentopf, perhaps the most eminent German woodwind instrument maker of his time, was also among the few who tried their hand at producing contrabassoons. Bach called for one in the 1749 version of his St. John Passion and, most likely, used an Eichentopf instrument for that performance. Eichentopf lived and worked with other instrument makers in the Stadtpfeifergass
e, the street where the Leipzig town musicians received free or subsidized housing. The distinguished violin maker Johann Christian Hoffmann lived there as well, and the Bach family maintained particularly close connections with him,78 apparently from the beginning. In 1729, Bach purchased from Hoffmann a new quartet of string instruments, complete with bows, for St. Thomas’s.79 Hoffmann, who held the privilege of Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Court Instrument and Lute Maker and was charged with maintaining the string instruments that belonged to St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas’s, probably worked with Bach on the construction of the viola pomposa. He listed Bach among the beneficiaries of his estate, and when he died in January 1750, Bach passed his portion—an unspecified musical instrument—on to his second youngest, Johann Christoph Friedrich, who probably made good use of it, as the seventeen-year-old was entering his first employment as Schaumburg-Lippe court musician.80
Close personal working relationships with organ builders and string and wind instrument makers must have meant a great deal to Bach. Besides being congenial company, they never held his own craftsman’s origin in contempt. Mechanically skillful, always attracted by technological tasks, and a quick problem solver, Bach never felt that personally maintaining and repairing his instruments was beneath him; he even worked on those that were merely under his purview, such as the instruments at the Weimar and Cöthen courts and, at least initially, the church instruments at St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas’s.81 “Nobody,” wrote Forkel, “could install the quill plectrums of his harpsichord to his satisfaction; he always did it himself. He also tuned both his harpsichord and his clavichord himself, and was so practiced in the operation that it never cost him above a quarter of an hour.”82 All of this extra work, of course, made for an even tighter professional schedule, and the kind of balancing act that Bach had to manage on a daily basis is indeed hard to imagine. On the other hand, he never became a slave to his office and his assigned responsibilities. Instead, he devoted himself to his musical science in the broadest possible sense, to exploring the full range of musical composition and performance—up to but not exceeding the limits imposed by the physical, acoustical, mechanical, and physiological conditions of actual music making. When it came to the business of commission sales and instrument rentals, he merely adopted the practices that others exercised as well. But there was hardly anyone among his composer peers who cared so much about and spent so much time involved with instrumental sound production, the mechanics and ergonomics of performance, and the thorny issues surrounding musical temperament. Somehow, what looks to us like a totally unmanageable workload left room not only for an unrivaled creative output, but also for such matters as procuring a singing bird and carnations for the lady of the house.
12
Contemplating Past, Present, and Future
THE FINAL DECADE: THE 1740s
RETREAT BUT NO REST
Ever since Johann Kuhnau’s 1721 Passion performance at the newly established Good Friday Vespers, the annual presentation of the Passion had been the highpoint of Leipzig’s church music calendar. And from 1724 on, Bach had single-handedly shaped that tradition, so it must have come as a shock to him when, after fifteen years, the city council interdicted the Passion performance planned for Good Friday, March 27, 1739. Bach himself apparently did not know the reasons for the council’s decision. The only report we have of the clearly unpleasant incident was written by the assistant city clerk on March 17:
Upon a Noble and Most Wise Council’s order I have gone to Mr. Bach here and have pointed out to the same that the music he intends to perform on the coming Good Friday is to be omitted until regular permission for the same is received. Whereupon he answered: it had always been done so; he did not care, for he got nothing out of it anyway, and it was only a burden; he would notify the Superintendent that it had been forbidden him; if an objection were made on account of the text, [he remarked that] it had already been performed several times.1
The council’s interference in this matter and the background for their claiming the permission rights raises many questions: What triggered the intrusion? The church administration was clearly not involved, but who actually was? Which faction of the city council prevailed? Did rector Ernesti play a role? Was someone jealous of the cantor’s prominent exposure at the musical event of the year in Leipzig? The work scheduled by Bach for performance at St. Nicholas’s was probably the St. John Passion, which he had indeed performed “several times.” Moreover, the only surviving fair copy of the score, an autograph manuscript that Bach started copying and revising for a re-performance of the work in the late 1730s, breaks off abruptly in the middle of recitative no. 10, on page 20; Bach never returned to the task beyond that point.2 If it was indeed the St. John Passion that was canceled in 1739, we can understand Bach’s anger and frustration over an issue he did not quite fathom. He chucked the whole business because “it was only a burden.”
Whatever musical work replaced the Passion on Good Friday 1739, Bach resumed Passion performances in the following years: the St. Matthewin 1740 or 1742 and the St. John in 1749. Nevertheless, the 1739 prohibition marked a defining moment for Bach in the conduct of his office during the final decade of his life. Retirement from his post was inconceivable—he was only fifty-five and in good health—and permission to retire in good standing was granted only under the most extraordinary circumstances. But the combination of discouraging experiences with the civic administration and the strained relationship with the rector of the St. Thomas School on the one side, and his protected status as royal court compositeur on the other, led him to devise a scheme of limited withdrawal from the pandemonium of the school office. At the same time, he must have realized that he had brought on the greatest amount of pressure himself by undertaking to compose a new cantata nearly every week for a considerable stretch of time in the 1720s. He knew that he completely controlled his actual workload at St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas’s. His office required of him neither weekly delivery of new pieces nor technically demanding performances of large-scale works. Exceeding the expectations of the office on the scale he did was entirely his own decision, one he surely never regretted, though the lack of genuine recognition by his superiors rankled.
Now disillusioned and dispirited, the cantor retreated a step further from what had already become a reduced level of creative activity for the church music repertoire ever since 1729, when he had assumed the directorship of the Collegium Musicum. He still fulfilled his duties as music director of the Leipzig main churches in traditional capellmeister style, performing the accustomed repertoire of intricate works that continued to challenge his performers, many of whom—though none of the singers—were the same as before. In other words, he kept introducing what to his choir and instrumental ensemble were indeed “new” cantatas and related works, but he expanded the church repertoire only minimally after 1739–40. In fact, the only evidence we have of a newly composed cantata movement after 1740 is the single aria “Bekennen will ich seinen Namen,” BWV 200, dating from around 1742. All other compositional activity in the realm of church cantatas was limited to modifying older pieces, for example, by reassigning certain instruments to accommodate changing performance conditions. One of the few revisions or reworkings that do reflect changes in musical aesthetics involves the cantata “Dem Gerechten muß das Licht immer wieder aufgehen,” BWV 195—characteristically, a work not intended for the regular Sundays and feast days but composed for a special occasion, a wedding Mass. In 1748–49, for a performance of a work that was some twenty years old, Bach wrote two new recitatives (nos. 2 and 4) that reveal a remarkable level of heightened compositional sophistication. Movement 4 in particular, an accompanied recitative scored for soprano, 2 transverse flutes, 2 oboi d’amore, and continuo, exhibits an exceptionally refined sense of declamatory intensity, enhanced by the rich textures of colorful yet well-blended instrumental sonorities. This kind of substantive revision in the cantata repertoire is rare, though, and new adaptations
from earlier compositions occur even less frequently. One such instance is a festive Latin work for Christmas Day, “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” BWV 191, based on three movements (nos. 4, 8, and 12) from the Mass in B minor of 1733 and presented sometime between 1743 and 1746. However, the most eloquent testimonial for Bach’s markedly scaled-back efforts in music for the ecclesiastical year is the fragmentary revision of the St. John Passion, a major project broken off in 1739 and never resumed, even though Bach presented a performance of the Passion on Good Friday 1749.3
Yet however sharply Bach reduced his creative investment in the functions of cantor at St. Thomas’s and music director at the main churches, he did not withdraw from the responsibilities of his appointment. As before, he apparently made optimal use of the choral prefects at his disposal for much of the daily school routine while personally seeing to the essential singing exercises and rehearsals, private lessons for the most gifted students, the rotating four-weekly inspector’s duties, and the regular church performances. He thus found a way to administer the office, achieve the objectives of the cantorate, and avoid problems within his control. Seen from the vantage point of the 1740s, it becomes clear that the two earlier instances of Bach’s arguing with his superiors represented challenges to the authority of his office: in one case, the cantor’s customary prerogative of choosing the hymns for the divine service, in the other, his right to appoint the choral prefects.
Johann Sebastian Bach Page 59