Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  Not surprisingly, the unmistakable qualities of Bach’s music find their equivalent in his strong and highly individual artistic personality. His life story reveals an extremely self-aware manager who looked out for his own interests and knew how to protect them. Furthermore, in more than fifty years of intense compositional activity, Bach underwent an evolution that is without parallel among his contemporaries. Comparing the first fruits of early mastery such as the Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582, and the Actus tragicus, BWV 106, with such late works as The Art of Fugue or the B-minor Mass exposes an extraordinarily broad spectrum of artistic development and technical and stylistic advances, continually setting new benchmarks.

  The rapid rate of change and progress in Bach’s compositional development is all the more remarkable in that his geographical horizon and his exposure to contemporaneous European musical life remained quite constricted. Still, the breadth of his knowledge and his intimate familiarity with the music literature both of his day and of the past was unusual if not unique among his contemporaries. He was certainly unsurpassed in his ability to absorb new insights and experiences in his compositions as elements of enrichment and reorientation. The overall development of Bach’s musical language clearly reflects his immense curiosity, openness toward change, and power of integration.

  The permutations in Bach’s style are regulated by one dominating element of stability and continuity, and that is his thoroughly virtuosic disposition. Having grown up in a family of musicians provided him with a professional outlook that he never shook off. Accordingly, making concessions to nonprofessional music making was for him unthinkable. More often than not, his technical requirements push the limits of both performance and compositional complexity, whether the work is a church cantata, a keyboard piece, or an instrumental concerto. The high standards and demands are typical of the young, middle, and old Bach—in fact, they represent one of his most characteristic trademarks and one that brought him much admiration during his lifetime as well as considerable disapproval (he was accused of requiring that the throats of his singers have the same facility that his own fingers had at the keyboard).

  Bach’s idea of musical perfection, as Birnbaum affirmed, included the goal of perfect execution. He was well aware, however, that performances, especially of larger ensemble works, would not necessarily match the degree of perfection represented in the musical composition. It is this aspect that prompted him to have Birnbaum, in a 1739 supplementary essay, raise a crucial point: “It is true, one does not judge a composition principally and predominantly by the impression of its performance. But if such judgment, which indeed may be deceiving, is not to be considered, I see no other way of judging than to view the work as it has been set down in notes.”17

  This statement is significant since it points to the value of the notated score of a composition, above and beyond its performance. It is, after all, the written text that establishes the only reliable document of the composer’s ideas and intentions, and that is particularly true of a work displaying Bach’s “unusual musical perfections.” And as a performance may only represent an approximation, the dilemma between the perfection of the idea and the perfection of its realization may remain unresolved but still provide a stimulating incentive for perfectibility. In the final analysis, only the idea can claim to be truly perfect, and Bach knew it.

  His music, because it represented the idea of musical perfection in such a striking and paradigmatic way, became the model for an ideal very early on. The exemplary quality of his keyboard fugues and his four-part chorales in particular were well recognized in the immediate decades after his death. But it was the singular combination of Bach as an authority in the later eighteenth-century treatises on musical composition and his impact on Viennese Classicism, notably on the works of Mozart and Beethoven, that sealed the historical significance of his art. That Bach’s music could engender theory without freezing into theory demonstrates the strength of its scientific underpinning and the stirring power of its expressive message. Moreover, that it could help lift a piece such as the finale movement of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony to sublime heights proves its strength as an all-encompassing and stimulating catalyst. And when Beethoven called Bach the “progenitor of harmony,” he echoed what the Berlin capellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt had proclaimed in 1784: Bach was “the greatest harmonist of all times and nations.”18 Beethoven doubtless shared Reichardt’s judgment expressed in an 1805 review of the first edition of Bach’s solo works for violin, that these works were “perhaps the greatest example in any art form of a master’s ability to move with freedom and assurance, even in chains.”19

  Perfectly constructed and unique in sound, Bach’s compositions offer the ideal of bringing into congruence original thought, technical exactitude, and aesthetic beauty. Whatever the category of music and whatever the level of achievement, the two-part Inventions or The Well-Tempered Clavier, a four-part chorale or an eight-part motet, an unaccompanied cello suite or a concerto for multiple instruments, individually and collectively Bach’s works demonstrate the musical realization of unity in diversity, of musical perfection. But the dialectic of divine perfection and human originality that manifests itself in Bach’s oeuvre so strongly and influentially has never been formulated more poignantly or more aptly than by Johann Nicolaus Forkel at the end of his 1802 biography. It seems worth repeating, despite its flourishes of Romantic diction, because it preserves the atmosphere of the immediate post-Bach generation of the eighteenth century that once set the stage for an ongoing post-Bach era now poised to transcend the millennium:

  It is owing to this genuine spirit of art that Bach united his great and lofty style with the most refined elegance and the greatest precision in the single parts that compose the great whole, which otherwise are not thought so necessary here as in works whose only object is the agreeable; that he thought the whole could not be perfect if anything were wanting in the perfect precision of the single parts; and, last, that if, notwithstanding the main tendency of his genius for the great and sublime, he sometimes composed and performed something gay and even jocose, his cheerfulness and joking were those of a sage.

  It was only through this union of the greatest genius with the most indefatigable study that Johann Sebastian Bach was able, whichever way he turned, to extend so greatly the bounds of his art that his successors have not even been able to maintain this enlarged domain to its full extent; and this alone enabled him to produce such numerous and perfect works, all of which are, and ever will remain, true ideals and imperishable models of art.20

  Notes

  PROLOGUE

  1. NBR, no. 343.

  2. NBR, no. 344.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Johann Mattheson, Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (Hamburg, 1740), pp. xxxiiif.

  5. NBR, no. 318.

  6. NBR, no. 303.

  7. NBR, no. 306.

  8. NBR, no. 162.

  9. NBR, no. 303, nos. 13–14.

  10. NBR, no. 162.

  11. NBR, no. 306.

  12. NBR, no. 344.

  13. “Therefore, Joseph, you will strive in time with all your might for novelty and invention; but by no means overturn the rules of art, which imitates and perfects nature, but never destroys it. If you master all this through continuous practice and if you acquire skill, Joseph, I trust you will have all you need to become famous as an exceptional composer.” Translated from the annotated German translation published by Bach’s student Lorenz Christoph Mizler (Leipzig, 1742), p. 196.

  14. Beißwenger 1992, p. 285.

  15. Cf. Butt 1994; Dammann 1985; Leisinger 1994.

  16. Musicalische Bibliothek, V (Leipzig, 1738), p. 72.

  17. Kurze doch deutliche Anleitung zu der lieblich-und löblichen Singekunst (Mühlhausen, 1690, 1704) (Butt 1994, p. 37).

  18. De usu atque praestantia Philosophiae in Theologia, Iurisprudentia, Medicina (Leipzig, 1736) (Leisinger 1994, p. 66).

  19. Wilson 1998, p. 14.

>   20. NBR, no. 349.

  21. Fabian 1967, pp. 61ff.

  22. “Anfangsgründe des General-Basses,” in: Musikalische Bibliothek, II/1 (Leipzig, 1740), p. 131.

  23. The Leipzig periodical Acta eruditorum published in 1714 one of the most important early reviews of Newton’s principal opus, with a careful collation of the 1687 and 1713 editions of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. See Cohen 1978, pp. 6f. and 254.

  24. For a summary of Newton’s intellectual achievements, see Cohen 1985, pp. 161–65.

  25. On the “Newtonian style,” see Cohen 1985, pp. 165–70.

  26. Dobbs-Jacob 1995, pp. 8–12.

  27. Cohen 1985, p. 161.

  28. Book III of the Principia: “De mundi systemate.”

  29. For Newton’s Kepler critique, see Cohen 1985, p. 144.

  30. Precepts and Principles for Playing the Thorough-Bass (Leipzig, 1738), translated with a commentary by Pamela L. Poulin (Oxford, 1994), p. 11.

  31. Unlike, for example, Jean-Philippe Rameau, a true representative of the Age of Reason, who wrote a Traité de l’harmonie (Paris, 1722) that included general statements such as “Music is a physico-mathematical science; sound is its physical object, and the ratios found between different sounds constitute its mathematical object.” However, this kind of musical science had very little if any bearing on actual compositional practice. Denis Diderot hoped, therefore, that “someone would bring [Rameau’s system] out from the obscurities enveloping it and put it within everyone’s reach” (1748; cited by Lester 1992, p. 143). This did not happen, and by 1800 Rameau had almost completely fallen into obscurity.

  32. NBR, no. 281.

  33. Vierstimmige Choralgesänge, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1765–69), incomplete; and 4 vols, ed. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Philipp Kirnberger (Leipzig, 1783–87).

  34. AMZ, 3 (1801): col. 259 (Documenta, p. 79).

  35. §53 (cf. Dahlhaus 1978)—anticipated by Kirnberger’s “art of pure composition” (Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik, Berlin 1771), a treatise largely based on Bach’s teachings. Not insignificantly, Kirnberger’s use of “rein” is terminologically consistent with that of Immanuel Kant in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1781).

  36. NBR, no. 373.

  37. NBR, no. 306.

  38. NBR, no. 344. Cf. Mattheson’s brief critical comment on Bach’s assertion, BD II, no. 464.

  39. The thesis forms part of the title of the book.

  CHAPTER 1

  1. For the entry in the baptismal register, see NBR, no. 2.

  2. Cf. BD II, no. 59; the baby was baptized on September 7, 1713.

  3. Cf. Hübner 1998.

  4. NBR, no. 7.

  5. Brück 1990, 1996.

  6. Oefner 1996, p. 19.

  7. Rollberg 1927, p. 141.

  8. NBR, no. 1 (no. 20 of the Genealogy, NBR, no. 303).

  9. Freyse 1955.

  10. Schulze 1985, pp. 61f.

  11. Oefner 1996, p. 28.

  12. The appearance of Johann Nicolaus in the Eisenach school records created much confusion in the Bach family literature; for some time it was speculated that he was a ninth child of Ambrosius Bach (Helmbold 1930, p. 55). Although he can be related to No. 20 in the Genealogy (NBR, no. 303) by implication only, this identification seems justified on many grounds.

  13. The “Bachhaus” (Frauenplan 21) was ruled out long ago as Bach’s birthplace; in the late seventeenth century, it belonged to Heinrich Borstelmann, rector of the Latin school. Ambrosius’s citizenship entry in the Eisenach Bürgerbuch reads: “Ambrosius Bach, Haußman, along with his wife and children, on April 4, 1674.”

  14. NBR, no. 89; Brück 1996, p. 113.

  15. Freyse 1956.

  16. Rollberg 1927, pp. 144f.

  17. Of this ensemble of buildings, only the old town hall no longer stands; it was torn down in 1745 after the town council moved to the old “Brothaus” on the east side of the market square, which functions as town hall to this day.

  18. Rollberg 1927, p. 135.

  19. On the history of the Eisenach court capelle, see Claus Oefner, Telemann in Eisenach: Die Eisenacher Musikpflege im 18. Jahrhundert (Eisenach, 1980), pp. 43–48.

  20. Nuremberg, 1675.

  21. Freyse 1933, p. 8.

  22. Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400–1550 (Stuttgart, 1979), 1: 204.

  23. Schadaeus, Promptuarium musicum, 1611–13 (motets for the church year); Franck, Threnodiae Davidicae, 1615; Scheidt, Geistliche Concerte, 1634–40, and Neue Geistliche Concerte, 1631; Profe, Geistliche Concerte und Harmonien, 1641–46.

  24. See note 13.

  25. Kaiser 1994, p. 180.

  26. Of Sebastian’s brothers, Johann Christoph entered the quartain 1680 when he was ten, moved on to the tertia in 1683 for two years, and left school after graduating in 1685. Johann Balthasar began at eight together with his older brother, but in the sexta (1680/81–82), spent two years each in the quinta (1683–84), quarta (1685–86), and tertia (1687–88), and then left school. Johann Jonas entered the quintain 1684 at nine, was promoted after one year, but died a few months into the quarta. Finally, Johann Jacob spent three years in the sexta (1689–92) and at eleven joined his brother Sebastian in the fifth (1693–94) and fourth (1695) classes. NBR, no. 6, and Helmbold 1930.

  27. For details, see Petzoldt 1985.

  28. NBR, no. 6.

  29. NBR, p. 424.

  30. NBR, no. 306, p. 298.

  31. For a worklist, see Wolff, Die Bach Familie (Stuttgart, 1993), pp. 43–45.

  32. Freyse 1956, pp. 36–51; Oefner 1996, pp. 48–61.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. NBR, no. 3.

  2. NBR, nos. 303, 283.

  3. Kock 1995, p. 172.

  4. NBR, no. 4.

  5. Helmbold 1930, p. 55.

  6. He apparently returned to relatives in Erfurt and eventually studied medicine there. J. S. Bach kept track of his cousin and classmate from Eisenach days; he reports in the Genealogy (NBR, no. 303) that Johann Nicolaus (No. 20) ended up as a chirurgusnear Königsberg in east Prussia.

  7. NBR, no. 5.

  8. BD II, no. 3; NBR, no. 7 (excerpt).

  9. For biographical details, see Schulze 1985a.

  10. NBR, no. 9.

  11. For the specifications, see NBR, no. 10.

  12. Küster 1996, p. 74.

  13. Discussed in detail by Junghans 1870, p. 8.

  14. NBR, no. 8f.

  15. NBR, no. 9.

  16. Among Bach’s cousins, only the oldest son of Johann Christoph Bach (13), Johann Nicolaus, completed Latin school; he graduated in 1689 from the prima of the Eise nach school and then enrolled for a short period at Jena University.

  17. NBR, no. 279.

  18. For a representative choral repertoire from the Gotha region, see the Eccard inventory in Wollny 1997a. Virtually no comparable inventories of choral libraries from seventeenth-or eighteenth-century Thuringia have survived; cf. Friedhelm Krummacher, Die Überlieferung der Choralbearbeitungen in der frühen evangelischen Kantate (Berlin, 1965), pp. 193f.

  19. NBR, no. 306.

  20. NBR, no. 304.

  21. See Wolff 1986, pp. 374–86.

  22. Ibid., p. 382.

  23. NBR, no. 306, p. 299.

  24. Complete inventories in Keyboard Music from the Andreas Bach Book and the Möller Manuscript, ed. Robert Hill, Harvard Publications in Music, vol. 16 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. xxix–xlvi. The exact dating of the two manuscripts is problematic, but the Möller Manuscript (MM), at least in part, most likely preceded the Andreas Bach Book (ABB). Schulze 1984a, who first identified the principal scribe, dates both in the period 1705–13, with later entries by scribes other than Johann Christoph Bach; Hill dates MM c. 1703–7 and ABB c. 1708–13 and beyond. There are, however, neither philological nor codicological reasons that speak against the possibility of assuming slightly earlier dates for the beginning of both manuscripts, especially for ABB. See also the discussion
on pp. 30–56.

  25. One item from Johann Christoph Bach’s collection (his copy of Buxtehude’s Prelude in G minor, BuxWV 148) ended up in the United States; cf. Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Bach und Buxtehude. Eine wenig beachtete Quelle in der Carnegie Library zu Pittsburgh/PA,” BJ1991: 177–81. The copy most likely originates from before 1700 and might include, as Schulze surmises, a section (fol. 2r) copied by Johann Sebastian in Ohrdruf. This would then represent his earliest autograph sample.

  26. Schulze 1985a, p. 77.

  27. See Hill 1985; HWV, vol 3.

  28. Mainwaring, p. 35.

  29. The Letters of C. P. E. Bach, trans. and ed. Stephen Clark (Oxford, 1997), no. 287; see also the corresponding remark in Bach’s autograph catalogue of his keyboard works (1772), cited in Wolff 1999.

  30. Johann Pachelbel, Orgelwerke, ed, Max Seiffert. Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern, IV/1 (1903), no. 66.

  31. Cf. BJ1997: 158–59.

  32. NBR, p. 459.

  33. NBR, p. 456.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. Herda (1674–1728) had served toward the end of his Lüneburg years as a bass concertist. He then studied theology at Jena University for two years, taught briefly in Gotha, and became cantor in Ohrdruf in January 1698; cf. Fock 1950, p. 38.

  2. Ibid., p. 38.

  3. Indicated by the wording in the Obituary of 1750/54: “Johann Sebastian betook himself, in company with one of his schoolfellows, named Erdmann” (NBR, no. 306, p. 299); see also NBR, p. 35.

  4. In a letter of 1726 to Erdmann (NBR, no. 121).

  5. One of the very few descendants of Veit Bach’s second son, mentioned in the Genealogy (NBR, no. 303, p. 286).

  6. They must have arrived in time for the beginning of the special rehearsal period for Easter. According to the school’s regulations, “at Easter, the choral rehearsals began on the Thursday before Palm Sunday [which fell that year on April 1] and lasted until the Wednesday before Maundy Thursday” (Fock 1950, p. 71).