Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

by Gardiner, John Eliot

  Seven hundred municipal street oil lamps were installed in Leipzig in 1701, by which ‘many sins, especially against the 5th, 6th and 7th commandments, were remarkably checked and strongly hindered’ (J. C. Vogler, 1714). (illustration credit 46)

  Of course, had they looked at things slightly differently, they might have acknowledged the palpable benefits to the city and welcomed the musical enrichment of the Sunday service. Finding volunteer instrumentalists good enough to play figural music was an age-old problem, one that had defeated Bach’s predecessors as cantors and was to frustrate his successors. What the city most needed, according to Burgomaster Gottfried Lange in 1723, was a musical celebrity able ‘to animate the students’10 – in other words, someone who could attract skilled labour willing to play free of charge at the Sunday services of the two main churches. At last, Lange might have thought, his man was vindicating his support. Wasn’t Bach’s new access to a number of student or semi-professional instrumentalists prepared to augment the core group of Thomaner and Stadtpfeifer and to play in church from time to time on a quid pro quo basis, exactly what Lange and his supporters on the council had always hoped for? Such a system of exchange was accepted elsewhere as a matter of course and had been tried twenty years earlier in Leipzig in Telemann’s time, but its success had depended upon a favourable alignment of the opera, the Neukirche and the collegium concerts, and so far it had never worked to the benefit of the two main city churches.

  As the newly appointed head of the collegium musicum, Bach now had the chance to turn things around. Provided he could trade private lessons for playing at church services or offer a platform to ambitious performers at his coffee-house concerts, it was an arrangement that might prove workable, at least from time to time, since the participation of university students in church services would not then be a drain on council funding. But the problems ran deeper. The tipping point for Bach in his dispute with the council came in early June 1729. On 24 May they had finally agreed to the admission of unmusical Alumnat boys to the Thomasschule. In so doing, they had cut off Bach’s supply of adequate singers, and from now on he would no longer have vocal forces competent enough to do justice to the intricate figural opening choruses that had been the most dazzling feature of his first two Leipzig cantata cycles.

  It was at this point that Bach conceived the idea of a ‘protest cantata’, an opportunity to make a public and very audible case for changing the basis of church music in Leipzig. On Whit Monday 1729 the newly appointed head of the collegium musicum made sure that his best instrumentalists were on parade in the Thomaskirche, giving them a prominent role in a new cantata, BWV 174, Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte, which opened with a quasi-orchestral and harmonically expanded version of his third Brandenburg Concerto. Judging by the surviving performing material, this was a fairly last-minute decision: into the new score, he instructed his copyist to transfer the original concerto lines for nine solo strings (three each of violins, violas and cellos) who now constituted a concertino group set against a brand-new independent ripieno ensemble comprising two horns, three oboes and four doubling string parts. These last he composed straight into score. Immediately, even with one instrument per part supplemented by violone, bassoon and keyboard continuo, Bach was able to feature a band of over twenty players, one able to provide a magnificent sonic display. With instrumental colours and rhythms even sharper than before, and the strings shining in their solo episodes, this was Bach’s ebullient, rather secular-sounding way to open the celebrations to this Whit Monday feast and with not a single singer audible. It was given (presumably) under the approving eye of the man who up to now Bach might have seen as his main ally, Burgomaster Gottfried Lange.

  Few of the listeners present, including Lange, could have been in any doubt that this was a polemical statement. In its instrumental opulence the sinfonia of the cantata dwarfs all its other movements. It was a defiant demonstration to the council of what was theirs for the taking if only they would cease their niggardly refusal to divert sufficient funds to augment the Thomasschule forces and thereby add musical lustre to the feasts of the church. The cantata’s remaining movements comprise just two arias separated by a recitative in which Bach points up the plainness of the vocal writing – clearly intended not to overtax his Thomaner soloists – and follows it with a plain four-part chorale, in marked contrast to the livelier, virtuosic writing for obbligato instruments played by the older collegium students. It was the second prong of Bach’s demurral: in effect, he was telling the councillors that ‘if you cut off my supply of musically gifted boys, you leave me with no alternative but to shrink my vocal and choral contributions to church music.’

  Had Lange or any other of his fellow councillors sought admission to Zimmermann’s coffee-house later that autumn, they would have found exactly the same players performing BWV 201, Geschwinde, geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde, Bach’s new secular dramma per musica, entitled ‘The Contest between Phoebus and Pan’ in the autograph score – a satirical skit on pedantic, ill-informed critics whose utterances are ridiculed through the downward bray of a donkey over an octave and a half. From Bach’s perspective, then, there were no insurmountable obstacles for moving from one forum to another or from one genre to another, as the formulations we encounter on the title pages of his publications confirm. Expanding on the celebrated formulation by the fifteenth-century theorist Johannes Tinctoris – Deum delectare, Dei laudes decorare (‘To please God, to embellish the praise of God’) – Bach had defined music’s purpose in his Orgel-Büchlein as ‘For the highest God alone honour; for my neighbour that he may instruct himself from it.’11 Beneath its flowery surface, we are shown the underlying didactic purpose of his collection, one close to the twin purposes of music in the Lutheran tradition: die Ehre Gottes und des Nechsten Erbauung12 – for giving honour to God (the standard Orthodox position) and for edifying one’s neighbour (the slant favoured by the Pietists).

  Once Bach is ensconced in Leipzig his views begin to lean towards the more ‘enlightened’ formulations of musicians such as Friedrich Erhard Niedt,13 embracing aesthetic pleasure as well as devotion and edification. We now find him adopting in his Generalbasslehre of 1738 a different two-fold purpose of music: ‘zur Ehre Gottes und zulässiger Ergötzung des Gemüths – ‘for giving honour to God and for the permissible delight of the soul’.14 He explains, ‘And so the ultimate end or final purpose of all music … is nothing other than the praise of God and the recreation of the soul. Where this is not taken into account, then there is no true music, only a devilish bawling and droning.’15 Behind these generalisations lies an assumption, if not exactly a claim, that by its dedication to ‘the honour of God’ his music would lead to the ‘permissible delight of the soul’ on the part of his musicians and listeners – as if, as Butt suggests, ‘there were a mechanical connection between a sacred compositional intention and a secular, earthly effect’.16 This was another way for Bach to affirm the unity of physical and spiritual natures, evidence of his awareness of changing public tastes and of living in a culture that was increasingly pluralistic and thus very different from that of his parents’ generation.

  It would be misleading, therefore, to assume from this two wholly distinct and contrasted styles of Bachian composition, as is implied by the authors of the Nekrolog: ‘His very serious temperament drew him predominantly to hard-working, serious and profound music [zur arbeitsamen, ernsthaften, und tiefsinnigen Musik], but he could also, if it seemed necessary, particularly when playing, make himself comfortable with a light and jocular manner of thinking.’17 In reality these categories were far from rigid, and we are just as likely to encounter the ‘light and playful manner’ in Bach’s church cantatas as we are ‘serious and profound’ music in his instrumental concertos. With an interest in French courtly music aroused in his teens thanks to Georg Böhm in Lüneburg, Bach was by no means the first or only composer to introduce dance-derived forms into his church cantatas – and may well have attra
cted criticism for this even in a city where the French fashion for dancing was well entrenched.e Very possibly his collegium concerts at Zimmermann’s café sometimes ended with a ball, just as they did at the rival establishment run by Johann Gottlieb Görner at Schellhafer’s wine tavern.18 Nor was Bach averse to making the occasional switch to composing in the new galant style, even if one of its characteristics – of sustaining the same tone throughout – curdled somewhat with his instinctive feel for unity through diversity. He was equally at ease providing ‘a solemn music, with trumpets and timpani, at Zimmermann’s gardens’ to mark the Elector’s accession to the throne on 5 October 1734, or for the torch-lit processions that led to crowd-filled celebrations in the town square.19 (See illustration overleaf.)

  Perhaps the writers of the Nekrolog were inadvertently hinting at a genuinely radical or subversive streak in Bach – his refusal to be tied down by convention to an appropriate Affekt in any given genre, something for which both his elder two sons were also later renowned. This is exactly what brings us up short when we come across slow movements of exceptional gravity, as in the Brandenburg Concertos or, at the other extreme, the palm-court levity of a church cantata like BWV 181, Leichtgesinnte Flattergeister, as we saw in Chapter 7. This delightful wrong-footing of the listener, this criss-crossing from the secular to the sacred, while it may be a feature of Baroque culture in general and common practice in a mercantile and university town like Leipzig, turns out also to be a defining characteristic of Bach’s compositions. Yet, for every one of his listeners who took issue with him for the inappropriate theatricality of his church music, there may have been others, looking up from their card-tables while sipping their coffee, who objected to the undue seriousness of some of his instrumental music. They might even have agreed with Count Pococurante in Voltaire’s Candide (1759) that ‘this noise can give half an hour’s amusement; but if it lasts any longer it bores everyone, though no one dares to admit it … Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces, and what is merely difficult gives no lasting pleasure.’

  Friedrich August II, Elector of Saxony, receiving the homage of the inhabitants of Leipzig on 20–21 April 1733 in the market square. (illustration credit 47)

  The founding of Leipzig city concerts can be traced back to the 1650s, when an informal gathering of musicians drawn mainly from university students began meeting regularly in the house of Councillor Sigismund Finckthaus under the musical direction of the colourful Johann Rosenmüller. These student collegia came and went depending on the initiative and drawing power of successive musical luminaries – such as the head Stadtpfeifer, Johann Christoph Pezel, or Thomascantors such as Sebastian Knüpfer and Johann Kuhnau. Kuhnau boasted of the opportunities his ensemble gave to young studiosi ‘to refine further their excellent art, and in part, too, because they learn from the pleasing harmonies how to speak together concordantly’, adding rather acidly, ‘even though these same people mostly disagree with one another at other times’.20

  But it was with the arrival in 1701 of Telemann as a law student that things really took off. Before then, music had been a leisure-time activity for musically minded students; under Telemann’s aegis his collegium musicum became a major star in the city’s musical firmament. Rapidly redirected towards public performance in three separate venues – in Johann Lehmann’s coffee-house (the Schlaffs Haus in the market square), at the Neukirche (which was still at the time also the university church) and at the Leipzig Opera – the ensemble was now successful enough to be put on a professional, fee-paying basis. For as long as the opera house was viable, students keen to supplement their budgets and to gain experience and contacts could now be active in one way or another in all the main musical goings-on of the city.f These multiple performing activities linked by venue and personnel were epitomised by the custom of afternoon run-throughs of selected arias given in Lehmann’s café that would be heard on stage at the opera later that evening – advance publicity for the composer and lucrative for Hofchocolatier Lehmann, who, besides running the coffee-house in the town centre, had a concession to provide drinks and finger food at the opera-theatre.21

  Bach’s own association with the collegia musica may already have began during his first visit to Leipzig in 1717 while he was still employed at the Cöthen Court. It was certainly cemented at the beginning of his Leipzig tenure, first as principal guest conductor,g and then from 1729 as director of the larger of the two collegia. There was, however, a subtle difference in the rationale of the two groups. Where Johann Gottlieb Görner’s university collegium was designed to help train future cantors and organists (‘ein exercitium vor die Studiosos’), Bach’s saw itself as an elite ensemble of virtuoso instrumentalists who played to divert and delight members of the public.22 Bach remained in charge of it for the next eight years (1729–37); then after a gap of two years (during which he still guest conducted) he resumed control until at least 1741. h Under his aegis the ensemble performed once a week for two hours all through the year: in summer from 4 to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays in Gottfried Zimmermann’s coffee-garden in the Grimmischer Steinweg outside the east gate of the city, and in winter from 8 to 10 p.m. on Fridays in Zimmermann’s coffee-house in the centre of town (Catharinenstrasse N0. 14).23 (See opposite.) These weekly performances were doubled during the three annual trade fairs, when the group performed twice a week from 8 to 10 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays (each fair lasted three weeks). At these coffee-house events, or ordinaire concerten, as they were called at the time, the precursors of late-eighteenth-century public concerts, audiences could hear the latest in galant instrumental ensemble music as well as concertos for one or more harpsichords performed by Bach and his sons, and, more rarely, secular Italian cantatas and opera arias performed by touring musicians. Opera lovers – still smarting in disappointment at the closure of the opera house in 1720 and still whistling snippets of arias they had first heard there – had to set aside a whole day’s travel to Dresden in order to satisfy their addiction.

  Zimmermann’s coffee-house, marked 2. Örtelische, referring to his landlord, Theodor Örtel, who bought the house in 1727. (illustration credit 48)

  Excursus: The protocol and rules for the Leipzig collegium musicum have not survived. The nearest we have is a summary of the rules for one founded in Greiz in 1746 by the Leipzig-born Johann Gottfried Donati. Its members were usually professional or pre-professional musicians, organists and court musicians, lackeys, and two pupils or apprentices.

  1. Rehearsals are from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesdays (2 to 4 p.m. in winter). At least five works are to be played and rehearsed until there are no more errors, beginning with an overture and ending with a symphony.

  2. Members are fined one groschen for every fifteen minutes they are late.

  3. Everyone must play his or her appointed instrument unless otherwise directed.

  4. If members are not playing in a given piece they should remain quiet or be fined one groschen.

  5. Four-groschen fine if you skip a rehearsal unless it is through a summons to perform at court or on account of illness.

  6. Keep your instrument in good shape, or be fined one groschen.

  7. Fighting or arguing will incur a fine of two groschen.

  8. Tune carefully to the Clavecin.

  9. The deplorable habit of musicians of doodling [fantasieren] on their instruments between pieces, particularly during recitatives in church music, is bad, as it creates a Mischmasch for the listeners, causing such an inconvenience to their musical understanding as to give them toothache, or a stitch in the side.

  10. Pay close attention to the much loved piano and forte. Play only the notes the composer wrote and without fancy arpeggios in between them.

  11. By failing to learn your part or by making a mess of things you will be fined four groschen the first time and eight the second. After this you may be thrown out.

  12. Do not drink or smoke until the time for it is allowed, or be fined one groschen.

&
nbsp; 13. Any honest person is free to attend the concert, but needs to pay two groschen.

  14. The fines and other fees are to be paid into a charitable pot.

  15. Every year there is a banquet to celebrate the founding of the collegium musicum.

  16. Now and then the collegium musicum will buy new instruments. Members should not lend them out.

  17. All members are obliged to attend church services. The main goal of the ensemble is to serve their masters and neighbours.24

  It has been estimated that Bach was in charge of sixty-one two-hour collegium secular concerts each year for a period of at least ten years, which works out at more than 1,200 hours of music, compared with the 800 hours entailed in providing church cantatas lasting a half-hour or so over his twenty-seven years as Thomascantor.25 These figures are of course approximate, and, since we have neither detailed programmes for the concerts nor reliable information about Bach’s compositional contribution to them, they do not necessarily reflect an unequal distribution of Bach’s own creative output across the two categories. But they do raise the question of how Bach prioritised his activities at any given stage – his differing roles as composer, performer and concert promoter. It is possible that he attached more weight to the prestige of leading the collegium musicum, to the autonomy of action it afforded him and to the de facto contact it generated with the Dresden Court than was previously thought. At the very least these statistics provide a startling corrective to the slewed image of Bach’s activities and output presented by nineteenth-century biographers, who placed an overwhelming emphasis on his church music and who pushed secular music to the margins.