Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  7. On the organization of services and music, see Fock 1950 (which includes a 1655 schedule for Vespers and Matins).

  8. First Sunday in Advent, three Christmas feast days, New Year’s Day, Epiphany, Estomihi Sunday, Good Friday, three Easter feast days, Jubilate Sunday, Ascension Day, three Pentecost feast days, Trinity Sunday, tenth and eleventh Sundays after Trinity, St. Michael’s Day, and the three Marian feasts. Cf. Fock 1950, p. 27.

  9. Letters and other documents show that Bach possessed at least an elementary facility in French; the most extensive document in French is his 1721 dedication of the Brandenburg Concertos (NBR, no. 84), for which he may have received some expert linguistic assistance. See Chapter 7, note 50.

  10. Published in Fock 1950, pp. 114–15. Other compositions are contained in the inventory of the St. Michael’s choir library; cf. note 11.

  11. For inventories, see Seiffert 1907–8 and Schering 1918–19; the Leipzig collection has not survived.

  12. NBR, no. 306, p. 298.

  13. See Küster 1996, pp. 87–97, although Küster’s efforts in postulating that Bach never sang soprano in Lüneburg and was actually hired as bassist fail to convince; see review by Schulze in BJ1997: 204.

  14. NBR, no. 394, p. 397.

  15. Spitta I, pp. 187f.

  16. NBR, p. 426.

  17. The school owned at least one harpsichord, a regal (reed organ), and a relatively new positi vorgan (with four stops) that was purchased in 1662; cf. Fock 1950, p. 81. St. Michael’s had owned two organs since 1474. The larger instrument, expanded and rebuilt several times, had thirty-two stops (three manuals and pedal) around 1700 but was in a poor state of repair. According to an expertise prepared c. 1704–5 by Matthias Dropa, a pupil of the renowned organ builder Arp Schnitger, only twenty-five stops were then playable. Subsequently, a completely new organ was commissioned from Dropa and built by him in 1705–8. Cf. Fock 1974, pp. 120–23; Petzoldt 1992, p. 122.

  18. Fock 1950, pp. 81f.

  19. Morhardt, son of Peter Morhardt (d. 1685), the distinguished previous organist at St. Michael’s from 1662, was provisionally entrusted with the position after his father’s death “until another able organist can again be appointed” (Petzoldt 1992, p. 113). This had to wait until 1707, when, after a thorough renovation of the organ, Gottfried Philipp Flor was appointed. On the older Morhardt, see New Grove 12: 573f.

  Löwe, who signed himself “Löw von Eysenach,” was born in Vienna, where his father, a native of Eisenach, served as a diplomat. He had studied with Heinrich Schütz and served as capellmeister in Wolfenbüttel and Zeitz before taking up the organist post in Lüneburg in 1683. Most of his vocal and instrumental compositions and all of his publications appeared before his Lüneburg period.

  Flor was the oldest son of the prominent composer Christian Flor, organist at St. John’s in Lüneburg from 1668 (deputy) and 1676. The second son, Gottfried Philipp (1682–1723), became organist at St. Michael’s in 1707 (see note 20).

  20. BD II, no. 224.

  21. NBR, no. 395.

  22. As stated at the opening of the Obituary; see NBR, no. 306.

  23. Johann Christoph Graff reportedly studied composition with Böhm in Lüneburg (Walther 1732, p. 288). Previously he had been a pupil of Johann Pachelbel in Erfurt, at the same time as the Ohrdruf Johann Christoph Bach (Schulze 1985a, p. 66).

  24. Altogether ten suites plus one overture (copied by J. C. Bach) represent virtually everything Böhm wrote in this genre.

  25. Zehnder 1988, pp. 76f.

  26. NBR, no. 306, p. 303.

  27. NBR, no. 397. Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, who reported the anecdote in 1786, personally knew Bach and his two oldest sons.

  28. Johann Ernst, son of Johann Christoph, Ambrosius Bach’s twin brother, succeeded Sebastian in 1707 as organist of the Arnstadt New Church.

  29. Arnstädter Bachbuch, p. 63.

  30. See NBR, no. 12.

  31. NBR, nos. 358a, 358b.

  32. Cf. Wolff, Essays, p. 64; Wolff 1995, pp. 24f.

  33. See Wolff, Essays, pp. 65–71.

  34. See Walker 1989.

  35. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach later reports that his father held Keiser in high esteem but did not know him personally (NBR, no. 395, p. 400).

  36. NBR, no. 306, p. 300.

  37. See BJ1985: 107, reprinted in Wolff, Essays, p. 62. Beginning with Spitta and con tinuing to 1985, the Bach literature consistently interpreted this passage as referring to Bach’s trips to the town of Celle.

  38. Cf. Fock 1950, pp. 44f.

  39. Fock 1950 was the first to reject the prevailing earlier view that Bach remained at St. Michael’s through much of 1702, and makes the case for Bach’s graduation in the spring of 1702. The pertinent Lüneburg school registers have not survived, but considering Bach’s outstanding academic achievements at the Ohrdruf Lyceum, he should have had no trouble in meeting St. Michael’s requirements in the customary four semesters, to which one semester from the Ohrdruf prima must be added.

  40. Traditional Bach biographies, including Küster 1996, assume a course that led more or less directly from Lüneburg to Weimar, without an extended stay with the family in between.

  41. All notions of tension between the two brothers, often assumed in the older Bach literature, were dispelled by Schulze 1985a.

  42. See Schulze 1985a, pp. 73–75; Johann Christoph Bach’s autobiographical note (NBR, no. 9) belongs in this context.

  43. NBR, no. 303.

  44. NBR, no. 395.

  45. NBR, no. 189.

  46. The organ was built in 1603 by Ezechiel Greutscher of Eisleben. A new, two-manual instrument by Zacharias Hildebrandt (with twenty-eight stops) was dedicated on June 1, 1728, in the presence of Duke Christian, Bach’s later patron and younger brother of Duke Johann Georg (see Schmidt I, pp. 702–3).

  47. Sangerhausen church records of 1703 as quoted in Schmidt I, pp. 722–25; Werner 1911, p. 78. Kobelius later wrote numerous works for the Weissenfels court, and from 1716 regularly composed operas for the court under Duke Christian, one of Bach’s major princely patrons beginning in 1713 (see Werner 1911, p. 119). In 1724, Kobelius succeeded Krieger as court capellmeister in Weissenfels, and in 1729 (two years before Kobelius’s death) Bach was appointed titular capellmeister to the duke of Weissenfels—a curious if coincidental knotting together of two musical fates.

  48. NBR, no. 188.

  49. Genealogy, NBR, no. 303.

  50. NBR, no. 13.

  51. Ibid.

  52. See the Genealogy entry under no. 24 in NBR, no. 303.

  53. Forkel, on the other hand, reported in 1802 that “he was engaged to play the violin” (NBR, p. 426), but it is unclear where he obtained such information, and furthermore, the remark is contradicted in a reference to Bach as “Court Organist to the Prince of Saxe-Weimar” in the records of Bach’s Arnstadt organ examination of July 1703 (NBR, no. 15). That reference, however, may have been a free invention of the Arn stadt burgomaster or a minor act of misrepresentation by Bach himself.

  54. Whether the lackey Hoffmann at the Weimar court was a descendant of the town musician and Hausmann Johann Christoph Hoffmann of Suhl and therefore a distant relative of Bach’s (as surmised by Jauernig 1950, p. 52) cannot be ascertained.

  55. For the little-known details of Effler’s biography, see Javernig 1950.

  56. The cost for the instrument was covered by a bequest of 800 florins; the detailed contract drawn up for the organ builder was signed October 17, 1699 (see Arnstädter Bachbuch 1950, pp. 81–84). For the most complete list available of Wender organs, see Kröhner 1995, p. 85.

  57. Arnstädter Bachbuch 1950, pp. 87, 84.

  58. Expanded version of Werckmeister’s earlier Orgelprobe, oder kurze Beschreibung, wie…die Orgelwerke…annehmen, probiren, untersuchen…solle (Frankfurt/Main and Leipzig, 1681).

  59. NBR, no. 31.

  60. Cf. Williams 1982, p. 185.

  61. NBR, no. 15.

  62. NBR, p. 41.

&nb
sp; 63. “Every year at the Feast of St. John the Baptist he shall play at the close of the afternoon service for a half hour the full organ with all its stops and voices in pleasing and harmonious concord, in remembrance of his installation as organist, and thus at the same time give proof to the whole Christian congregation of how he has improved himself in his office during the year.” Cf. Ziller 1936, p. 127.

  64. The notion of Bach as a late starter goes back to Spitta, and the fact that even Bach’s Weimar cantatas of 1714–17 have long been considered among his “early” works reinforced the idea.

  65. After 1750; see BWV2, p. 530.

  66. NBR, no. 303, p. 289.

  67. NBR, no. 121.

  68. The Toccata in D minor, “In honorem delectissimi fratris Joh. Christ, Bach Ohrdruffiensis,” BWV 913, seems to belong in this same context, perhaps somewhat later; see NBA/KBV/9.1 (Wollny).

  CHAPTER 4

  1. NBR, no. 306, p. 300.

  2. NBR, no. 16; BDII, no. 11.

  3. Spitta I, pp. 223f; Schiffner 1995, pp. 9f.

  4. The counts of Schwarzburg also ruled in two other Thuringian principalities, with residences in Rudolstadt and Sondershausen.

  5. Next to the Naumburg and Magdeburg cathedrals the most significant medieval sacred structure in Thuringia and Saxony.

  6. Arnstädter Bachbuch, p. 95. For comparison, the superintendent and senior minister Olearius earned a salary of 100 florins. Not included in any of the figures are additional payments in kind and benefits.

  7. Schiffner 1995, p. 5.

  8. NBR, no. 16.

  9. NBR, no. 17; the cash supplement for room and board compared extremely favorably with the payments in kind received instead by the interim organist Börner, 1702–3, and by Johann Ernst Bach, from 1707 (three and one and a half, respectively, bushels of grain).

  10. Bach’s compensation came from three different sources, reflecting joint responsibility of church and town for his position: 25 florins from the cash box of the New Church, 25 florins from the beer taxes, and 30 talers from St. George’s Hospital.

  11. Arnstädter Bachbuch, p. 54.

  12. The Wender organ has long been replaced by enlarged successor instruments, but much of the original case and facade have been preserved.

  13. For the original specification, identical with that of the organ contract of 1699, and a detailed description of the authentic console of the Wender organ (removed in 1864, now kept in the Bach Memorial at the Arnstadt Museum), see Wenke 1995; all previous descriptions of the organ contain numerous errors.

  14. Werckmeister’s Erweiterte und verbesserte Orgelprobe (Quedlinburg, 1689), p. 79, deemed the tuning system “a good adequate temperament” the term “wohl temperiret” appears already on the title page of the 1681 edition of his Orgelprobe. Cf. Williams 1984, III, p. 184.

  15. The exact pitch and the actual tuning are not known.

  16. Harmonologia musica (Quedlinburg, 1702).

  17. Schiffner 1985, p. 51.

  18. Biblische Erklärung (Leipzig, 1679–81); cf. NBR, no. 279. The son of the Arnstadt superintendent, Johann Christoph Olearius, served before Bach’s time as preacher at the New Church and also wrote a town chronicle, Historia Arnstadiensis (Arnstadt, 1701).

  19. Excerpts in BJ 1995: 101–2.

  20. See Petzoldt 1997, pp. 129–31.

  21. Schiffner 1985, p. 15. Gleitsmann’s appointment letter required him to present new compositions for all Sundays and feast days and to rehearse those extensively.

  22. NBR, no. 19.

  23. For the ages of the other Lyceum students involved in the Geyersbach affair, see BD II, no. 14.

  24. NBR, no. 20.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Schiffner 1995, pp. 24f.

  28. NBR, no. 7.

  29. Fuhrmann 1995, p. 28.

  30. BD II, no. 14, p. 17.

  31. In 1705, the capelle numbered twenty-two, but in the absence of name lists, its exact membership during the Gleitsmann years (1701–10) cannot be determined; see Arnstädter Bachbuch, pp. 68–78.

  32. Composer(s) and performers are unknown; see Arnstädter Bachbuch, p. 75.

  33. Schiffner 1995, p. 5.

  34. NBR, no. 21.

  35. Spitta I, p. 328, hypothetically identified Maria Barbara as the frembde Jungfer.

  36. Schiffner 1995, p. 51.

  37. Arnstädter Bachbuch, p. 38.

  38. BD II, no. 26.

  39. NBR, no. 22a.

  40. NBR, no. 26.

  41. NBR, no. 303.

  42. Spitta I, p. 369 proposes as occasion for this work the wedding of Johann Lorenz Stauber and Regina Wedemann in Dornheim; Küster 1996, p. 171, dates BWV 196 for stylistic reasons to the early Weimar years.

  43. The text includes, for example, the names “Salome” and “Dominus Johannes,” which may refer to Bach’s sister Marie Salome and the parson Johann Lorenz Stauber; “ancillam in corona aurea” may refer to a maid (any of the Michael Bach daughters?) at the Golden Crown (Güldene Krone), the house of Burgomaster Feldhaus.

  44. NBR, no. 306, p. 300.

  45. NBR, no. 395.

  46. See repertoire in Andreas-Bach-Book and Möller Manuscript (Hill 1991) as well as Bach’s elaborations on Legrenzi and Corelli, BWV 574 and 579.

  47. NBR, no. 395.

  48. The most prominent autograph is that of BWV 739; see NBR, no. 286.

  49. Ever since Spitta I, book 2.

  50. Included in Neumeister Collection; see Wolff, Essays, p. 120.

  51. Johann Mattheson, Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (Hamburg, 1740); reprint, ed. M. Schneider (Kassel, 1969), p. 94.

  52. Proceedings, NBR, no. 20.

  53. BD, no. 1; the calculation of c. sixteen weeks (about four times four weeks) is based on the rebuke to Bach for his prolonged absence, NBR, no. 20.

  54. NBR, no. 21.

  55. Walther to Johann Mattheson; Johann Gottfried. Walther, Briefe, ed. Klaus Beckmann and Hans-Joachim Schulze (Leipzig, 1987), pp. 219f.

  56. J. G. Ahle received his laureateship in 1680 from Emperor Leopold I.

  57. In the concluding chorale of cantata BWV 60, “Es ist genung” (1723), Bach makes use of J. R. Ahle’s aria melody, including its ascent to the augmented fourth (A/B/C-sharp/D-sharp), from the latter’s Drittes Zehn Neuer Geistlicher Arien (Mühlhausen, 1662).

  58. NBR, no. 22a.

  59. The sources of the first Leipzig re-performance of this piece reflect a number of substantive changes, such as the apparent replacement of the original final movement by a newly composed four-part chorale; see BC A 54a–b.

  60. NBR, no. 24.

  61. BDII, nos. 22–23.

  62. Bach started with a rather busy weekend, for the festival of Visitation (July 2) fell on a Saturday. M. Petzoldt (1992, pp. 135f.) makes a case for Bach having performed the cantata BWV 223 on the Marian feast day, based on some connections between the (incomplete) text of the (fragmentary) cantata and the outline of a sermon held on this day by pastor Eilmar. The question is, however, whether there was really sufficient time for communicating with Eilmar, moving from Arnstadt to Mühlhausen, and preparing a performance.

  63. Cf. BDII, commentary to no. 26 and nos. 34–35.

  64. Petzoldt 1992, p. 130.

  65. Ibid., p. 138.

  66. NBR, no. 23.

  67. NBR, no. 22b.

  68. Cf. Ernst 1987.

  69. The nunnery was torn down after 1884, but the Wender organ survives in part at the village church of Dörna near Mühlhausen, Wender’s birthplace; cf. Ernst 1987, pp. 80f.

  70. Ibid., p. 77.

  71. For example, the organist’s fee at St. Blasius’s for a wedding Mass with a piece of concerted music (“so figural musiciret wird”) amounted to 9 groschen; see ibid.

  72. Walther, Lexicon, p. 557.

  73. Reported by Forkel, NBR, p. 456.

  74. Exemplars of both formularies are to be found in the Mühlhausen church archives; cf. Petzoldt, WBK1: 131–33.

&nb
sp; 75. BD I, p. 154; Petzoldt 1992, pp. 142f.

  76. NBR, no. 31.

  77. NBR, no. 358b.

  78. Cf. the historical description of the ceremony (1705) in NBA/KBI/32.1, pp. 59f.

  79. NBR, no. 28a.

  80. NBR, no. 28d.

  81. NBR, no. 27.

  82. NBR, comments to no. 54.

  83. Rondeau from Jean-Baptiste Lully's 1686 opera Armide, also disseminated after 1700 as a keyboard suite; cf. Wolff 1995a, p. 27.

  84. BD III, p. 638. Eilmar was present in Weimar on December 29, 1708, at the christening of Catharina Dorothea Bach, along with godmothers Martha Catharina Lämmerhirt (widow of Bach’s late uncle Tobias Lämmerhirt) and Johanna Dorothea Bach, wife of his Ohrdruf brother Johann Christoph. See BD II, no. 42.

  85. Jauernig 1950, pp. 53f.; Schrammek 1988, pp. 100f.

  86. NBR, no. 306, p. 300.

  87. Jauernig 1950, p. 55. Effler died 1711 in Jena, where his children lived.

  88. NBR, no. 35.

  89. This view, summarized by W. Emery in New Grove, 1: p. 58, goes back to Spitta I, pp. 358–64. Petzoldt 1992, pp. 133–35, corrects the picture of a supposedly anti-orthodox Frohne but does not draw any conclusions about Bach’s move from Mühlhausen to Weimar.

  90. Petzoldt 1992, pp. 133f.

  91. See Bunners 1966.

  92. Beißwenger 1992, pp. 46ff. The only very early example, albeit a secular one, is the autograph copy of a cantata by Biffi; see above, p. 88. Peter Wollny has made a plausible case for the transmission of what constitutes today the bulk of the Alt-Bachisches Archiv Alt-Bachischesvia the Arnstadt cantor Heindorff, a close friend of the Bach family (see Wollny 1998).

  93. NBR, no. 33.

  94. NBR, no. 34.

  95. BD II, no. 51.

  96. BD II, no. 365.

  CHAPTER 5

  1. NBR, no. 36.

  2. BD II, no. 45. 1709 census listing: “The organist Johann Sebastian Bach, with his sweetheart and her sister.”

  3. For Bach’s total compensation and ducal gifts, 1708–13, see NBR, nos. 35–39; BD II, no. 48; cf. also Jauernig 1950, pp. 51–58.