Delphi Masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach (Illustrated) (Delphi Great Composers Book 3)

by Peter Russell

  It was this commanding position, of Director of Music of the great town of Leipzig, rather than that of teacher in the Thomasschule, which drew Bach from the ease and quiet of his ducal chapel. How little it was realised at the time of Bach’s arrival, we shall soon see. In the first place, the school itself was just then at the last period of decay. It had long suffered from the blunders of its rector, Johann Heinrich Ernesti, a solemn man, clergyman and pedant — he was Professor of Poetry in the university — who had lived his seventy years without learning the first secret of acquiring influence over masters or scholars, far less of giving unity or vigour to the management of the school. There was discord everywhere, with its usual accompaniment. The attendance of the scholars fell off, in the lower classes to less than half their former number; and, worse than this, their quality deteriorated in equal stages: the best pupils drifted away to Lueneburg, and the Leipzig school threatened to sink into a mere training-place for people who were to make their livelihood by singing at funerals. Yet every attempt to reform it was thwarted by the timid obstinacy of its rector; and it was not until his death, when Bach had been under him for six years, that any effectual measures for its revival were possible.

  An even greater obstacle to the prosperity of the school lay outside it; for, since the first years of the century, the institution of the opera had established a separate centre of musical training and musical interest in the town. The new importation gained a sudden popularity and success when it came under the hands of Telemann, afterwards famous as organist at Hamburg. The Opera became a dangerous rival to the School; and the rivalry was the keener since Telemann was organist of one of the churches that drew their choirs from S. Thomas’s. If the cantor was mortified at the retrenchment of his authority, it was the school that suffered the most. For its scholars at first spent their holidays in the opera-company; soon the choir of the New Church was absorbed into it. The boys went over altogether, willing enough to abandon the restraints and the severer training of the school, for the freedom and gaiety, not to say the profit, of the career now open to them. And, although Telemann left Leipzig after a year (1705), the Musical Society (Musikverein) which he founded went on growing and flourishing at the expense of the school. The music at S. Thomas’s had to be kept down to the diminished capacity of its voices. Difficult works could only be attempted with a certainty of failure. Even the Town Council, usually blind to the faults of old endowments, came to see the fruitlessness of helping any pretence of reform on the part of a school which produced results so inferior to the unendowed performances at the New Church.

  Such was the condition of affairs when Bach came to Leipzig: the whole musical life of the place seemed to be dying away in disunion and mismanagement. The very opera which had ruined the Thomasschule ceased to exist in 1726; the Musical Society founded by Telemann had passed into incapable hands; and, to complete the chaos, the University organ and the direction of University music had been given (in the interval between Kuhnau’s death and the appointment of Bach as his successor in the cantorate) to the pitifullest of musicians, one Goerner,35 who was to Bach for many years a standing grievance and obstruction. The temporary substitute was tacitly kept on by the indulgent University magnates, and the Thomasschule lost that connexion with the University which gave the only promise for its revival. Moreover, Goerner, who was also organist at S. Nicholas’ — afterwards, in 1730, at S. Thomas’s, under Bach’s own authority, which he disregarded — had a Collegium Musicum of his own, for which he arrogated a rank superior to the Thomasschule, the latter, in fact, being (as he explained) merely preparatory to his. It seemed as though the old school were destined to lose all weight in the town. The New Church had been monopolised by Telemann’s Musikverein; and now the University Church was being supplied by Goerner’s Collegium.

  We cannot be wrong in believing that Bach was well aware of these things; that he accepted his new post in the high ambition of re-creating what had been once a true home of musical art, of keeping alive and (as we see) of infinitely exalting the honourable tradition handed down in the learned line of his predecessors.

  On the 5th May, 1723, Bach appeared before the Town Council and made the declarations of office; the appointment was ratified by the consistory of the church, and before the month was over he was formally inducted.

  From this time to his death he was settled in the official lodgings in the left wing of the Thomasgebäude, which, added to some 700 thalers, made up the emoluments of his post. It is significant of the position he was resolved to maintain that, directly upon entering office, he distinctly subscribes himself not only cantor of S. Thomas’s, but also, in defiance of Goerner, Director of Music, or, as we should say, Choragus, in the University. The double function had belonged to his predecessor; and no one could challenge Bach’s claim to a part of the academical function — the duty namely of furnishing music for the proper University services (at the quarterly Acts, the Reformation Festival, and the three high-days of the Church). But of late years there had been a regular Sunday service as well, in the University Church; and this Goerner insisted on appropriating. It was not a mere question of fees that determined Bach’s appeal in 1725 to the King-Elector at Dresden; the entire issue as to who should be supreme in matters musical in Leipzig was at stake. A long correspondence as usual brought no practical result. Goerner seems to have retained his weekly services, and even now and then to have encroached on Bach’s strict province of composing special odes and the like for high University occasions. The fact that in 1736 he is actually described as Academical Director of Music shows that the dispute had not even then been set at rest. It is a common picture, this of a great man being perpetually harassed by the pretensions of a vain fellow who is only remembered for his self-assertion; but it reveals a singular want of appreciation on the part of the Leipzig authorities, that they suffered the nuisance without a hint of its absurdity. Bach never let himself for an instant appear in the light of a rival. He only resented the impertinence in a certain leonine fashion, and held to his academical title.

  This punctiliousness about titles has more in it than shews at first sight. Bach doubtless knew his public, and knew that, if he claimed to be a simple choir-*master, his influence would be restricted proportionately. But, moreover, such a description would have been misleading, since, as Dr. Spitta observes,36 if Bach’s music is the truest church-music, it contains none the less the elements of independent concert-music as well. Accordingly the titles of Capellmeister of Coethen, which he held when he came to Leipzig, and of Weissenfels, which was conferred upon him in the year of his arrival, Bach bore until his death. As a final vindication of his position, he appealed to the king, in 1733, for a court appointment at Dresden. The petition was accompanied by a part of the great Mass in B minor, which was written expressly for the royal chapel; but the honorary distinction of Composer in Ordinary did not follow for three years.

  Whatever honours he won from abroad, nothing to the end of his days could spare him continual annoyance from the municipal council. With his native independence of spirit he could not brook the invasion of this body into a province totally beyond their scope. All through his life he could never get to understand them or the reasons for their action, simply because he knew perfectly that they were incapable of under-* standing him. This much he knew about them, and they gave him ample opportunity, to his cost, of knowing it. He could not go further and make concessions to their limited intelligence. Their presumption irritated him, when he found his every act hampered and restrained as though he were the most incompetent of sciolists.

  Bach’s grievances in relation to the council began some years after his appointment at the Thomasschule. At first he probably threw himself with zest into his work, and gave no ground for fault-finding. But in time he must have restricted himself to the bare quantum of duty assigned to him, and given his best energies to composition. At least the differences begin in the spring of 1729, and the charge that he did no work
came with a peculiar force of demonstration just when he had brought out The Passion according to Saint Matthew, not to speak of three great church-cantatas at the commemorative festival of the Augsburg confession. The council proceeded to vote that he was not to be trusted even in the choice of choristers for his school. To fill nine vacancies Bach had examined a number of competitors, and sent in a careful report as to their qualifications. The council accepted only five of his nominees, making up the list by three who (as he told them) nichts in Musicis praestirten, and whom he had not even named. Then the council decided that he was so bad a teacher of music that he must be set to secular teaching as well, apparently as a punishment. This he managed to escape; but he suffered a suspension of all the accidentien or extraordinary emoluments of his post. The council resolved either to work him or to starve him out.

  Almost in despair, he wrote to an old friend, Erdmann the schoolfellow who had gone up with him from Ohrdruf to Lueneburg, now Russian agent at Danzig, and begged for a more suitable post anywhere, if any could be found. He gave an account of his position at Leipzig, the reasons that drew him thither, and his disappointment. His routine was ungrateful, his salary reduced (it relied upon varying items, and, as he explained, when a healthy wind blew, he could not count on much from the funerals) and the town very expensive — you could live in Thuringia for half as much — above all, he was under the control of an extraordinary council with little liking for music (eine wunderliche und der Musik wenig ergebene Obrigkeit), with which he stood perforce in continual disagreement and ill-will. Certainly it was, as I have said, the unaccountable— “wunderlich” — genius of the council that most impressed Bach. With that consciousness of himself which no great man is ever wholly without, he could not understand their action. It was an incongruity in the nature of things which would have been comical had it not been a perpetual irritation to him.

  There is, however, no hint of this irritation, but rather a haughty disdain which shows through the verbose respectfulness of Bach’s official memorials. Once, for instance, when he was rehearsing a Passion music for Good Friday, the council insisted on his submitting it to their inspection. He replied that he had gone to work precisely as on former occasions, the text in fact had been already produced more than once. However, he was not concerned to perform the thing: it would only give him trouble and no profit. He would report to his ecclesiastical superior that the council forbade its performance. In this way he managed to shift the dispute on to the shoulders of the consistory, which had a standing quarrel with the council as to their respective powers over the school. The present question belonged clearly to the church body; and it is evidently with grim satisfaction that Bach seizes on the technical mistake. Let it be noticed, too, how he refuses to give any explanation, refuses even to complain of his disappointment. He says, in so many words, that he is dealing with mere business people, and will use merely business arguments.

  Again, in 1730, when they sent one of their number to admonish him gravely of the submission which was due to them, Bach was preparing — perhaps had already sent in — an elaborate and carefully arranged report on the wide-reaching reform and extension which he demanded for the choir and orchestra under his direction. There is an irony in the way the man, who is to be frightened into docility by a retrenchment of his salary and influence, occupies himself meantime in devising and proving the necessity of a large scheme which should extend the scope of his authority and indirectly augment his income. The reform, of course, never came, and the memoir is only interesting as the reflection of the independent nature of the writer, and as evidence of the dimensions to which instrumental music had grown under his hands. It should, however, be mentioned that in the ten previous years the council had not been unmindful of the needs of the two chief churches, and had sanctioned an unusual outlay in the repair of the organs and in the purchase of stringed instruments and music-books for the performers.

  It is pleasant to turn from these disputes and anxiety to the glimpse — unfortunately almost a solitary glimpse — of the home life which saved Bach from ever really despairing, and which cheered him in a thankful contentment, so that no disappointment from without was able to dwarf his energy for work, or to cool the genial spirit which ever attended his composing. At the end of the letter to Erdmann, from which I have already quoted, he says: I must now acquaint you with somewhat of my domestic estate. For the second time I am married, my first lamented wife having deceased at Coethen. Of her I have living three sons and a daughter, whom your Excellence will kindly remember to have seen at Weimar; of the second marriage there are living a son and two daughters. My eldest son is a student of law, the next two are at school in the first and second class, and my eldest daughter remains unmarried. The children of my second marriage are still little, the eldest a boy of six years. Altogether, however, they are born musicians, and I can assure you that even now I can arrange a concert with my family vocaliter and instrumentaliter, whereas my wife that now is sings a pretty soprano, and my eldest daughter plays not amiss.

  From a variety of scattered facts we may form some idea of the activity of this musical house. Indeed, just at this time the home was reaching its happiest period. The two eldest boys, the worthiest inheritors of the family genius, were still with their father; and there is hardly a doubt that it was to play with them that Sebastian wrote his two concertos for three pianos. Who formed the orchestra we can only conjecture, but it is certain that the string of pupils who had formed part of his household since he began married life at Muehlhausen, and who continued in increasing numbers until his death, were in different degrees capable of giving their help; and the gaps may have been filled by promising scholars of the Thomasschule, or, indeed, by the — chiefly under-*graduate — members of the Musical Society of which Bach undertook the management in 1729. We know, from the inventory taken after his death, that he possessed latterly five clavecins (the word must be used inaccurately, and taken to include clavichords) and ten stringed instruments, not counting his three lutes; so that in the house itself there was material for the nucleus of an orchestra, though violinists would probably, and players on wind instruments necessarily, bring their own instruments with them. In all this domestic music his wife took her share, both as player on the clavichord, in which she was his apt pupil, and especially as a singer. It is likely that some church cantatas were written for her and for the eldest daughter Katharina (who sang alto) as may be inferred from the prevalence in such of one solo voice, and by other points (for instance, the shortness of one) which render them unfit for performance in church.37 Nor need we doubt that a similar use dictated Bach’s great collection of 240 chorales, of which unhappily only fragments remain. For it is almost needless to observe that the old German temper in its best form combined religion inextricably with all the common acts of life. We know how the festive gatherings of the Bachs, however jovial their purpose, always began with a chorale; and Sebastian himself, seeking for a definition of music, can find nothing more comprehensive to say than that Its final cause is none other than this, that it minister solely to the honour of God and refreshment of the spirit; whereof, if one take not heed, it is no proper music, but devilish din and discord.38

  The preparation for these perpetual concerts must have furnished incessant occupation to the household. Printed music was very rare and costly, and, as a matter of course, the parts had regularly to be copied out. A great deal exists in the delicate hand of Anna Magdalena Bach, who also transcribed many scores for her husband’s private use. No one was idle, and a certain amount even of music-engraving was done in this busy house. Bach himself, we are told, often laboured far into the night. The day was not long enough for all he found to do.

  CHAPTER VI.

  Bach’s appeal to Erdmann in the winter of 1730, to try and find him a more congenial post than he had at Leipzig, was without result. In fact, little as he suspected it, events had already begun to take a favourable turn for him. The year before, the orga
nist of the New Church had left, and Bach had followed him as director of the Musical Society, which had hitherto furnished the choir at that church, instead of the boys of the Thomasschule. It was a good thing for Bach in every way to break down a rivalry of this sort. But a greater gain had come to him the very month before he wrote to Erdmann. For the new rector of the school, Gesner, proved himself consistently the firm friend of the ill-used cantor.

  Gesner appears to have been much more than his books shew him — one of the revivers of classical learning in Germany. He was also a teacher by instinct, one who by infinite tact and patience could restore harmony to a school that had been dissolving for a generation, and form so direct an understanding between master and pupil that the friend was seen through the severe disciplinarian, and the fervent scholar through the mists and morasses of an antiquated pedagogy. He diffused a new spirit into the school; to Bach he gave his generous sympathy, and an earnest of hopefulness. How he appreciated him as a musician has already been noticed in another connexion; as head of the school he saved him from the petty annoyances to which he had hitherto been subjected. Bach had now his just share of the fees which made the largest item in his income and which were now the more necessary as his family was growing up. Moreover, thrifty as he was, his different posts must have involved expensive journeys to Coethen and Weissenfels; and he was fond of making short visits to Dresden to hear the opera, at that time under the leading of his friend Hasse, Il Sassone, as he is known by the Italians, among whom he lived for many years, and whose music in turn he naturalised in Germany. Friedemann, let us go again and hear the pretty Dresden songs, Bach would say to his boy; and the two went together. The phrase used is, by the way, characteristic of Bach. He enjoyed the opera, but could not call it by any more dignified name than songs (liederchen). Accordingly he never adopted this form of composition; his genius is essentially undramatic. But he studied the operatic style with eager energy, and absorbed it so thoroughly that the arias, duets, &c., which occur in his cantatas, are the worthiest representatives of the opera that Germany produced before Gluck, whom indeed he anticipated in his treatment of the recitative. They have the gaiety and grace of the Italian manner, and the inspiration of German thought.