Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  This time around, we can be sure that a court visit was carefully prepared through diplomatic channels, most likely the good services of Count Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk, Bach’s longtime champion, who was then serving as Russian ambassador in Berlin. Keyserlingk’s 1746 reassignment from Dresden to Berlin reflected a major political power shift in Europe that resulted from a bold move made in the 1740s by the young Prussian king: in order to expand and secure his territory, he fought two wars against the allied forces of Saxony, Poland, and Austria. During the Second Silesian War, Prussian troops under Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau took Leipzig on November 30, 1745, and occupied it for a year. On December 25, 1746, at the Peace of Dresden, Empress Maria Theresa confirmed the cession of Silesia, and in a 1748 letter Bach recalled the period as “the time we had (alas!) the Prussian Invasion.”21 Hence, the trip of the Leipzig cantor and Dresden court composer to the Prussian capital and, especially, his personal reception by the king—exactly six months after Prussian troops had withdrawn from Leipzig—occurred at a sensitive political moment and surely had implications that would make the people of Saxony, notably the Leipzig city council and the Dresden court, prick up their ears: his musical eminence, the Thomascantor of Leipzig, had gone to Berlin as a true ambassador of peace.

  Bach was accompanied on this trip by his oldest son, who had left Dresden the year before to become organist and music director of Our Lady’s in Halle—on Prussian territory. Wilhelm Friedemann later provided Forkel with some further details of the Berlin visit. Since Friedemann’s story as related by Forkel confirms and amplifies the Berlin press release, we may take the biographer’s 1802 account as reliable. According to Forkel, Bach’s visit took place largely at the request of the king himself:

  The reputation of the all-surpassing skill of Johann Sebastian was at this time so extended that the King often heard it mentioned and praised. This made him curious to hear and meet so great an artist. At first he distantly hinted to the son his wish that his father would one day come to Potsdam. But by degrees he began to ask him directly why his father did not come. The son could not avoid acquainting his father with these expressions of the King’s; at first, however, he could not pay any attention to them because he was generally too overwhelmed with business. But the King’s expressions being repeated in several of his son’s letters, he at length, in 1747, prepared to take this journey.22

  The simple fact is, of course, that it would have been utterly inappropriate for Bach to appear at the Prussian court during the Prussian occupation of Leipzig.

  Bach and his son Friedemann may have stayed once again at the house of Dr. Stahl, at least for the Berlin part of the trip; but their first call was Potsdam, eighteen miles southwest of Berlin, the preferred residence of FriedrichII. The construction of “Sanssouci” Castle had just been completed and dedicated on May 1, 1747, but the encounter between the king and Bach took place in the Potsdam city palace (destroyed in World War II), where chamber music was ordinarily played from 7 to 9 P.M. daily. Forkel’s account continues:

  The king used to have every evening a private concert, in which he himself generally performed some concertos on the flute. One evening, just as he was getting his flute ready and his musicians were assembled, an officer brought him the written list of the strangers who had arrived. With his flute in his hand, he ran over the list, but immediately turned to the assembled musicians and said, with a kind of agitation: “Gentlemen, old Bach is come.” The flute was now laid aside; and old Bach, who had alighted at his son’s lodgings, was immediately summoned to the Palace.

  …the King gave up his concert for this evening and invited Bach…to try his fortepianos, made by Silbermann, which stood in several rooms of the Palace. The musicians went with him from room to room, and Bach was invited to try them and to play unpremeditated compositions. After he had gone on for some time, he asked the King to give him a subject for a fugue in order to execute it immediately without any preparation. The King admired the learned manner in which his subject was thus executed extempore; and, probably to see how far such art could be carried, expressed a wish to hear also a fugue with six obbligato parts. But as not every subject is fit for such full harmony, Bach chose one himself and immediately executed it to the astonishment of all present in the same magnificent and learned manner as he had done that of the King.

  The twenty-plus musicians King Friedrich had assembled for his capelle were among the very best to be found anywhere and included such distinguished figures as the brothers Carl Heinrich and Johann Gottlieb Graun (capellmeister and concertmaster), the brothers Franz and Johann Georg Benda, and Johann Joachim Quantz—all well known to Bach. The Grauns had been trained in Dresden, and Johann Gottlieb, previously concertmaster in Merseburg, had been Friedemann’s violin teacher. The Bendas had been members of the Dresden court capelle before accepting positions as violinist and violist in the newly formed ensemble of then crown prince Friedrich; Quantz joined them from Dresden in 1741. They could now hear the Leipzig capellmeister play on the new fortepianos built by Silbermann with considerable technical input from Bach; they also witnessed Bach’s command performance of a fugue on the “royal theme.”

  On the following day, May 8, again at the request of the king and in his presence, Bach played the organ at Potsdam’s Holy Ghost Church, a medium-size instrument built in 1730 by Johann Joachim Wagner. According to Forkel, “Bach was taken to all the organs in Potsdam,” so he would also have performed—though not, apparently, in the king’s presence—on the organs at the Garnison Church (a larger Wagner instrument of 1732, with forty-two stops on three manuals and pedal) and St. Nicholas’s (an instrument by Johann Michael Röder, with twenty-three stops on two manuals and pedal). The composer then went on to Berlin, where he visited the four-year-old royal opera house Unter den Linden, built by the eminent architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff. As Carl Philipp Emanuel later wrote to Forkel:

  He came to Berlin to visit me; I showed him the new opera house. He perceived at once its virtues and defects (that is, as regards the sound of music in it). I showed him the great dining hall; we went up to the gallery that goes around the upper part of that hall. He looked at the ceiling, and without further investigation made the statement that the architect had here accomplished a remarkable feat, without intending to do so, and without anyone’s knowing about it: namely, that if someone went to one corner of the oblong-shaped hall and whispered a few words very softly upward against the wall, a person standing in the corner diagonally opposite, with his face to the wall, would hear quite distinctly what was said, while between them, and in the other parts of the room, no one would hear a sound. A feat of architecture hitherto very rare and much admired! This effect was brought about by the arches in the vaulted ceiling, which he saw at once.23

  So it did not escape Bach’s remarkable power of observation that the dining hall of the Berlin opera house possessed the same peculiar acoustical qualities that he apparently remembered from the “mathematical art chamber,” or turris echonica (echo tower), at the palace church in Weimar.24

  Bach returned to Leipzig by May 18, when he is listed as a communicant at St. Thomas’s. He then lost no time setting out to fulfill the promise made in Potsdam, which had already been carried by the press release of May 11, to set down the royal theme “on paper as a regular fugue and have it engraved on copper.” We have every reason to believe that the theme Bach elaborated on and published as Thema Regium is substantially what the king presented to him on that memorable evening, even if its final version suggests Bach’s polishing hand. And what was originally planned to be the published version of the fugue improvised before the king turned into a greatly expanded, multipart composition dedicated to his royal host under the title Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (see Table 12.1).

  TABLE 12.1. Musical Offering, BWV 1079: Contents

  I. Two fugues (Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta): keyboard

  Ricercar a 3, Ricercar a 6

&
nbsp; II. Sonata: transverse flute, violin, continuo

  Sonata sopr’ Il Soggetto Reale

  Lar go—Allegro—Andante—Allegro

  III. V arious canons (Thematis Regii Elaborationes Canonicae): flute, violin, keyboard

  Canon 1. a 2 (in retrograde motion)

  Fuga canonica

  Canon 2. a 2 (in unison)

  Canon perpetuus

  Canon 3. a 2 (in contrary motion)

  Canon perpetuus

  Canon 4. a 2 (augmenting, in contrary motion)

  Canon a 2

  Canon 5. a 2 (modulating)

  Canon a 4

  The Potsdam event had a lasting effect on the wider concept of the work. Not only does the three-part Ricercar reflect the qualities of an improvised fugue, with traces of free paraphrasing between the more concentrated fugal expositions, Bach’s choice of the term “ricercar” (from the Italian for “to search and research”) as a heading was related to an ingenious Latin acrostic he designed to summarize the origin and character of the whole work: Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta, meaning “At the king’s demand, the song [that is, the fugue] and the remainder [the canonic movements] resolved with canonic art.” Moreover, the motivic material of the interludes in the three-part Ricercar, significantly distinct from Bach’s other keyboard works, was inspired by and conceived for the fortepiano and its new—unlike the harpsichord’s—dynamically flexible sound. The six-part Ricercar is none other than the “fugue with six obbligato parts” requested by the king at the time, the improvisation of which Bach felt capable of approaching only with a theme he had chosen himself. The Trio Sonata must be understood as a special gift to the flute-playing monarch to enrich his chamber music repertoire, and the canonic settings are exemplary samples of Bach’s contrapuntal craftsmanship, which called forth the king’s and his musicians’ great admiration. And two of the canons gave him the opportunity for emblematic references; in the king’s dedication copy, Bach added by hand two meaningful Latin marginalia to the augmentation and modulation canons: “Notulis crescentibus crescat Fortuna Regis / Ascedenteque Modulatione ascendat Gloria Regis” (May the king’s happiness grow with the augmenting notes, and with the rising modulation may the king’s fame increase).

  Bach completed the complex project in a relatively short time. The dedicatory preface dates from July 7, 1747, exactly two months after the Potsdam event, and respectfully addresses the “Monarch whose greatness and power, as in all the sciences of war and peace, so especially in music, everyone must admire and revere”—without missing an opportune moment to subtly link music and peace. The entire publication was ready by September 30, when the following announcement appeared in the newspapers:

  Since the Royal Prussian Fugue Theme, as announced on May 11 of the current year by the Leipzig, Berlin, Frankfurt, and other gazettes, has now left the press, it shall be made known that the same may be obtained at the forthcoming Michaelmas Fair from the author, Capellmeister Bach, as well as from his two sons in Halle and Berlin, at the price of 1 imperial taler. The elaboration consists 1.) In two fugues, one with three, the other with six obbligato parts; 2.) In a sonata for transverse flute, violin, and continuo; 3.) In diverse canons, among which is a fuga canonica.25

  The Musical Offering is not a cyclical work with a binding movement sequence, but rather comprises various solo and ensemble pieces, with each individual setting based on the royal theme. It was the composer’s aim to treat this theme in the most varied manner, from free-style to the very strictest contrapuntal technique, from old-style counterpoint (notably in the six-part Ricercar) to the most modern mannerisms. The slow middle movement of the sonata in particular, with its melodically twisted, rhythmically differentiated, harmonically surprising, and dynamically shaded gestures, demonstrates impressively how Bach could easily match the musical language of Empfindsamkeit (sensitivity), so fashionable among his younger Berlin colleagues, and even outclass them. As a whole, the Musical Offering proves that “the old Bach,” as he was received in Potsdam, did not just dreamily follow esoteric arts but was still the brilliant virtuoso musician and the master of all compositional methods. In some ways, the work conceals a musical self-portrait: of a composer in his capacity as keyboard genius and master of fugue, capellmeister and chamber musician, contrapuntalist and musical scholar.

  There is no record of Bach’s having received from the Prussian court any kind of acknowledgment, let alone monetary present, for his dedication, as the custom of the time would have dictated, though he may have been given a present while still in Potsdam. We know, however, that he ordered a print run of two hundred copies, absorbed all the costs, distributed most of them “gratis to good friends” (as Bach put it a year later), and sold the remainder for 1 taler per copy so that he would make at least a small profit.26

  The opportunity for much more lucrative business, however, lurked behind contacts that emerged in the spring of 1749 with Johann Adam von Questenberg, a cultured and immensely wealthy patrician with residences in the Moravian countryside, Prague, and Vienna. Himself a practicing lutenist, Questenberg had musical connections with Johann Joseph Fux, Antonio Caldara, Francesco Conti, and later also with Christoph Willibald Gluck. At his main residence some sixty miles northwest of Vienna, the large palace in Jaromerice, the imperial count maintained a substantial ensemble that regularly played chamber music and also performed operas and oratorios.27 Questenberg asked the young Moravian count Franz Ernst von Wallis, an acquaintance who was studying law at Leipzig University, to get in touch with Bach on his behalf. On April 2, Wallis informed Questenberg that the mission was accomplished: “I inquired in different places about Mr. Bach’s residence and, the information having been obtained, the Lieutenant went to him in person in order to transmit the messages, as reported in the letter. He was greatly pleased to receive news from your Excellency, as his generous benefactor, and asked me to forward the enclosed letter…. The letter of the Herr Musique-Director will convey the various matters that Your Excellency has wanted to know.”28 The wording of the letter, especially Bach’s reference to “his generous benefactor,” suggests a relationship with the count of longer standing. Nevertheless, whatever Questenberg actually wanted from Bach—probably a commissioned piece or a performance, doubtless for a substantial fee—serious health problems that Bach developed toward the middle of 1749 thwarted any plans in the making.

  THE ART OF FUGUE, THE B-MINOR MASS, AND A PLACE IN HISTORY

  Between 1737 and 1739, off and on, Bach was drawn into the aesthetic dispute, provoked by Johann Adolph Scheibe, over his music and artistry. As much as bystanders may have viewed the literary battle between Scheibe and Birnbaum (on Bach’s behalf) as a tempest in a tea pot,29 Bach did not remain unaffected by it. Also, and to Bach’s annoyance, the controversy was unduly kept alive for an extended period by Scheibe, who reprinted most of the exchange in 1745 in his periodical Der Critische Musicus. In this dispute, the decisive issue for Bach was his concept of the nature of music, as formulated by Birnbaum:

  The true amenity of music consists in the connection and alternation of consonances and dissonances without hurt to the harmony. The nature of music demands this. The various passions, especially the dark ones, cannot be expressed with fidelity to Nature without this alternation. One would be doing violence to the rules of composition accepted everywhere if one wished to slight it. Indeed, the well-founded opinion of a musical ear that does not follow the vulgar taste values such alternation, and rejects the insipid little ditties that consist of nothing but consonances as something of which one very soon becomes tired.30

  In Bach’s view of nature and harmony, the connection and alternation of consonances and dissonances was governed by counterpoint. And it is the timeless value of counterpoint, way beyond the scope of old and new techniques, styles, or manners of composing, that he thought needed to be upheld. Through Birnbaum, the royal court compositeur spoke with authority, and, perhaps even more than before, Bach’s
compositions written or revised during and after the Scheibe-Birnbaum controversy reflect a deliberate emphasis on the principles of counterpoint. As demonstrated in the concluding quodlibet of the Goldberg Variations, even popular tunes could be governed and indeed enhanced by these time-tested rules.

  Nowhere, however, could the principles of counterpoint be more richly applied than in the composition of fugue. In this genre, Bach not only excelled, peerlessly, but set new standards of technique, form, and performance. Characteristically, King Friedrich asked him to improvise a fugue, so commonly identified was Bach with the genre. Bach knew both what had been achieved by others in this branch of composition and where his own contributions had a particular impact. He could see that to a considerable extent, his place in history would be that of “fugue master.” Thus, it should hardly surprise us that he devised a plan that would center systematically on fugal composition—unlike The Well-Tempered Clavier, without preludes—something neither he nor anyone else had ever done before. Moreover, in designing something like a vocal counterpart, he turned to the timeless genre of the Mass as the type of composition that would most readily lend itself to exclusively contrapuntal treatment.

  The Art of Fugue and the B-minor Mass conform to the ever-present Bachian intention of excelling beyond himself and others. The Art of Fugue, though linked to earlier fugue compositions, moves to a level that is utterly novel. The entire multisectional work is derived from the same thematic material, a musical plan that presupposes a far-reaching thought process regarding the harmonic-contrapuntal implications of the chosen theme. The result is more than a study of fugue: it is a compendium of the range offered by the utmost concentration and the highest technical demands of instrumental counterpoint. The B-minor Mass figures as a fully comparable counterpart. Its dimensions correspond to those of the St. Matthew Passion, but the Mass stands out, not just for its dominant choral fugues but for its exclusive focus on contrapuntal settings. It features a dynamic interplay of unparalleled dimensions, pitting vocal against instrumental counterpoint and vice versa, exposing styles conceived both vocally and instrumentally, and integrating many different vocal textures, with and without obbligato instruments, into a large-scale, complex score that has no room for such “lower” categories as recitatives and note-against-note chorale settings.