Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  During his first year in Leipzig, Bach made greater use than heretofore assumed of vocal works from the Cöthen years (p. 197), in addition to cantatas from the Weimar period. We may note that the Cantata BWV 75 for the first Sunday after Trinity, still composed on Cöthen paper (p. 244); the Cantata BWV 69a for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity (p. 271); and the first town council election cantata (p. 287), whose original scores contain several movements as fair copies, reveal themselves as parodies rather than new compositions. The following movements can be traced to Cöthen models: arias no. 3 and 5 from BWV 75; the opening chorus from BWV 69a, with its typically Cöthen duet formations (based on BWV Anh. 5?); and the opening chorus and arias no. 3, 5, and 7 from BWV 119.

  Detailed comparisons between the Leipzig arrangements and their Cöthen models provide conclusive evidence that the Cöthen court capelle, presumably like its Berlin predecessor ensemble and following French tradition, performed at low pitch (“Tief-Kammerton,” ca. Hz 392).

  Andreas Glöckner, “Vom anhalt-köthenischen Kapellmeister zum Thomaskantor: Köthener Werke in Leipziger Überlieferung,” Cöthener Bach Hefte 11 (2003): 78–96.

  • About the participants in Leipzig church music (pp. 260–63):

  The normal choral complement called for by Bach in his memorandum of 1730 (one to two concertists and at least two ripienists for each vocal part of his “elite” ensemble), which has been cast into doubt by Andrew Parrott and Joshua Rifkin, is confirmed by two historical choir rosters: one from 1729 names twelve singers in the primary choir that Bach conducted, and another from 1744–45 names seventeen singers. Moreover, it has become evident that Bach’s instrumentalists and singers were regularly supported by substitutes and assistants from the town musicians and by professional forces from the ranks of university students. This applies in particular to Bach’s private pupils, as shown in the case of his future son-in-law, Johann Christoph Altnickol: he moved from being a paid choir singer at the Mary Magdalene Church in Breslau to Leipzig, where he attended the university and entered Bach’s ensemble, taking along two fellow students.

  Andrew Parrott, The Essential Bach Choir (Woodbridge/Suffolk, 2000). The latest exchange in a protracted discussion regarding Bach’s Leipzig performing forces consists of three articles in the journal Early Music (EM): Andreas Glöckner, “On the performing forces of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Leipzig church music,” EM 38 (2010): 215–22; Andrew Parrott, “Bach’s chorus: The Leipzig line. A response to Andreas Glöckner,” EM 38 (2010): 223–36; Andreas Glöckner, “ ‘The ripienists must also be at least eight, namely two for each part’: The Leipzig line of 1730—some observations,” EM 39 (2011): 575–86. Barbara Wiermann, “Altnickol, Faber, Fulde: Drei Breslauer Choralisten im Umfeld Johann Sebastian Bachs,” BJ (2003): 259–66.

  • New cantata text booklets and confirmed performance dates (p. 275–78):

  Only six original printed text booklets of church cantatas were known until Tatjana Schabalina turned up several more such booklets in St. Petersburg, as well as an exemplar of the book with Picander’s cantata cycle of 1728. Several booklets corroborate performing dates previously determined only on the basis of a philological analysis of the musical sources: (1) September 3 to 29, 1724, for BWV 33, 78, 99, 9, and 130; (2) August 27, 1725, for BWV Anh. 4; (3) June 1 to 8, 1727, for BWV 34, 173, 184, and 129; (4) Good Friday, April 24, 1734, for the performance of G. H. Stölzel’s passion oratorio “Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld” at St. Thomas’s under Bach’s direction.

  Tatjana Schabalina, “Texte zur Music in Sankt Petersburg. Neue Quellen zur Leipziger Musikgeschichte sowie zur Komposition- und Aufführungstätigkeit Johann Sebastian Bachs,” BJ (2008): 33–98, and “Texte zur Music in Sankt Petersburg—Weitere Funde,” BJ (2009): 11–48. “Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ,” BWV 33. Facsimile of the autograph score (Scheide Library, Princeton), the original performing parts (Bach-Archiv Leipzig), and the original libretto of 1724 (Russische Nationalbibliothek, St. Petersburg). Commentary by Christoph Wolff and Peter Wollny (Leipzig, 2010).

  • Bach and Stölzel (pp. 285ff.):

  In addition to the Stölzel oratorio, Marc-Roderich Pfau discovered a text booklet that documents performances of Stölzel cantatas by Bach in the fall of 1735, and Andreas Glöckner argued that an entire cantata cycle by Stölzel in Bach’s possession was presented in Leipzig that year. Moreover, Peter Wollny was able to demonstrate that the cantata movement “Bekennen will ich seinen Namen,” BWV 200, previously considered an autograph cantata fragment by Bach, in fact constitutes Bach’s arrangement of the aria “Dein Kreuz, o Bräutgam meiner Seelen” from Stölzel’s passion oratorio “Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld” (see above).

  Marc-Roderich Pfau, “Ein unbekanntes Leipziger Kantatentextheft aus dem Jahr 1735—Neues zum Thema Bach und Stölzel,” BJ (2008): 99–122; Andreas Glöckner, “Ein weiterer Kantatenjahrgang Gottfried Heinrich Stölzels in Bachs Aufführungsrepertoire?” BJ (2009): 95–116; Peter Wollny, “Bekennen will ich seinen Namen—Authentizität, Bestimmung und Kontext der Arie BWV 200. Anmerkungen zu Johann Sebastian Bachs Rezeption von Werken Gottfried Heinrich Stölzels,” BJ (2008): 123–58.

  • On Picander’s cantata cycle and Bach’s library—Latin Masses, French keyboard music, and an illustrated Bible (pp. 284ff., 333–35):

  Peter Wollny uncovered at an archive in Mügeln (Saxony) a C. P. E. Bach composing score with a cantata from the Picander cycle, apparently performed under his father’s guidance before he left Leipzig in 1734, as well as a score of an anonymous Kyrie-Gloria Mass in the hand of J. S. Bach. The previously unknown cantata “Ich bin vergnügt in meinem Stande” by C. P. E. Bach suggests that his father’s church music performances in Leipzig after 1730 occasionally included works by his students and that he apparently assigned at least some cantata texts from the Picander cycle of 1728 to his students rather than composing the whole cycle himself. This may also include the fragment “Ich bin ein Pilgrim auf der Welt,” BWV Anh. 190 (perhaps another composition by C. P. E. Bach).

  The manuscript of the anonymous Mass in E minor, which lacks an inner folio containing the end of the “Laudamus te” and the beginning of the “Qui tollis” movements, can be dated to the late 1730s. The work, most likely of Italian origin, indicates that Bach’s Leipzig repertoire of Latin church music was larger than previously known. Newly identified sources also increase the repertoire of French keyboard music in Bach’s music library by including important works by François Couperin (Second Livre des Pièces de Clavecin, 1716–17) and Jean Philippe Rameau (Nouvelles Suites de Pieèces de Clavecin, ca. 1728). Moreover, the organ trio BWV 587 has been identified as derived from an early version of a sonata in Couperin’s Les nations, which Bach most likely acquired in Weimar via Johann Georg Pisendel.

  Bach’s collection of Lutheran Bibles contained the famous Merian edition with some two hundred engravings (Frankfurt/Main, 1704) that turned up in private possession and is now on long-term loan at the Leipzig Bach Archive. It shows the composer’s autograph initials and 1744 as the year of acquisition.

  Peter Wollny, “Zwei Bach-Funde in Mügeln. C. P. E. Bach, Picander und die Leipziger Kirchenmusik in den 1730er Jahren,” BJ (2010): 111–51; “Zur Rezeption französischer Cembalo-Musik im Hause Bach in den 1730er Jahren: Zwei neu aufgefundene Quellen,” In organo pleno: Festschrift für Jean-Claude Zehnder zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. L. Collarile and A. Nigito (Bern, 2007), pp. 265–76; and “Fundstücke zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs 1744–1750,” BJ (2011): 35–50; Kerstin Delang, “Couperin - Pisendel - Bach. Überlegungen zur Datierung des Trios BWV 587 anhand eines Quellenfundes in der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden,” BJ (2007): 197–204.

  • On Bach’s knowledge of music literature and teaching methods (pp. 305–11, 331–35):

  Surprisingly copious evidence has been found relating to the central thesis of this book, as expressed in its subtitle, “The Learned Musician.” The evidence
demonstrates the systematic breadth and historical depth of Bach’s study of older music literature and theory as well as his pragmatic start in using this knowledge for his teaching of composition.

  Already during his time in Weimar, Bach supplied himself with a volume of Masses and Mass movements by the old master of classic vocal polyphony, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. This manuscript collection, which has only recently been connected to Bach, served above all as primary study material; nevertheless, at least two of its works were later performed in Leipzig. Besides the known performance materials dating from around 1740 for a Missa sine nomine, an unknown Bach performance part from the same time appeared containing the Missa Ecce sacerdos magnus, a cantus firmus Mass directly connected with the Symbolum Nicenum of the B-Minor Mass.

  An autograph manuscript in the field of theory that must be considered a unique document relating to Bach’s teaching practice dates from the early to mid-1740s. Its first part contains rules, formulated by Bach, for handling syncopations in double counterpoint; its second part offers a collection of excerpts dealing with the teaching of counterpoint, fugue, and canon that Bach compiled from Latin treatises of Zarlino, Calvisius, and others, together with Latin explanations.

  What Bach missed in older counterpoint teachings were the voice-leading rules for a five-part setting, especially in the framework of a modern, harmonically richer language. His absolute command of the art of multivoiced composition and his feel for pedagogically handy rules led him to construct a “Regula J. S. Bachii,” which bears on the prohibition of doubling certain intervals in a five-voice setting and which can be confirmed in a previously unknown manuscript by his pupil Johann Friedrich Agricola.

  The systematic way Bach approached difficult contrapuntal problems, even taking into consideration the old church modes, shows the musically challenging “mind game” dialogue of the late 1730s that he established with his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Also appearing among these important and extensive studies first discovered in 1999 is the oldest indication that Bach began work on The Art of Fugue before 1740.

  Bach’s various contributions to thorough bass practice, contrapuntal studies, and theory are now collected in the NBA Supplement (Kassel, 2011).

  Christoph Wolff et al., “Zurück in Berlin: Das Notenarchiv der Sing-Akademie; Bericht über eine erste Bestandsaufnahme,” BJ (2002): 165–80; Barbara Wiermann, “Bach und Palestrina: Neue Quellen aus Johann Sebastian Bachs Notenbibliothek,” BJ (2002): 9–28; Walter Werbeck, “Bach und der Kontrapunkt: Neue Manuskript-Funden,” BJ (2003): 67–96; Christoph Wolff, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Regeln für den fünfstimmigen Satz,” BJ (2004): 87–100; Peter Wollny, “Ein Quellenfund aus Kiew: Unbekannte Kontrapunktstudien von Johann Sebastian und Wilhelm Friedemann Bach,” Bach in Leipzig—Bach und Leipzig: Konferenzbericht Leipzig 2000, ed. U. Leisinger, LBB 5 (2002): 275–87.

  • Chapter 9, “Musician and Scholar” (pp. 305–39):

  Bibliographic reference concerning content and context of chapter 9:

  Musik, Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter J. S. Bachs, ed. U. Leisinger and C. Wolff, LBB 7 (2005), includes contributions on the Latin school of Bach’s time (Peter Lundgreen); on the rector of the St. Thomas School, philologist Johann Matthias Gesner (Ulrich Schindler); on the electricity experiments conducted by Bach’s colleague Johann Heinrich Winckler (Myles W. Jackson); on literary theory in Bach’s time (Hans Joachim Kreutzer); on music theory and the art of the possible (Thomas Christensen); on the concept of nature, style, and art in eighteenth-century aesthetics (Wilhelm Seidel); and on Bach’s empiricism (Hans-Joachim Schulze).

  • Latin ode, BWV Anh. 20 (p. 314):

  Among the most puzzling lost works of Bach’s are the Latin odes composed for a ceremony at the university in August 1723, during his first year in Leipzig. Therefore, a report about this ceremony written in Latin by an academic with an explicit appreciation of BWV Anh. 20 is all the more important. Bach is mentioned there as “summus artifex,” and of the pieces, it is said that they “fit the occasion so perfectly” that “everyone admired them.”

  Ernst Koch, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Musik als höchste Kunst. Ein unbekannter Brief aus Leipzig vom 9. August 1723,” BJ (2004): 215–20.

  • New Bach students (pp. 327–31):

  The identification by name of one of the most important Bach copyists (“Anonymous 5”) leads us on the trail of a Bach pupil unknown until now. Kayser, born in 1705 in Cöthen, became a pupil of Bach’s in or before 1720 and continued his instruction in Leipzig, where he simultaneously studied law and apparently was among Bach’s closest assistants, perhaps serving for a time as his personal secretary. Returning to Cöthen, Kayser functioned as a court and government attorney as well as a chamber musician and court organist, and presumably also as organist of St. Agnus’s Lutheran Church in Cöthen, to whose congregation he belonged (as did Bach and his family during his time there). As the possessor of important Bach sources and as teacher of Johann Christoph Oley (1738–1789) and Friedrich Wilhelm Rust (1730–1796), Kayser must be counted as the leading agent in the transmission of Bach’s music in the Anhalt area; he died in 1758.

  The cantor and composer Johann Friedrich Schweinitz (1708–1780) turns out to be another important Bach pupil. He later became music director at the University of Göttingen and in this capacity preceded Johann Nicolaus Forkel, Bach’s first biographer.

  Andrew Talle, “Nürnberg, Darmstadt, Köthen: Neuerkenntnisse zur Bach-Überlieferung in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” BJ (2003): 143–72; Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Johann Friedrich Schweinitz, ‘A Disciple of the Famous Herr Bach in Leipzig,’ ” About Bach, ed. Gregory B. Butler, George B. Stauffer and Mary D. Greer (Chicago, 2008), pp. 81–88.

  • Repertoire of the Collegium Musicum (p. 355):

  Items from the repertoire of Bach’s regular Collegium Musicum concerts include compositions in a variety of vocal and instrumental genres by J. B. Bach, F. Benda, C. P. E. Bach, J. D. Heinichen, G. P. Telemann, J. G. Graun, N. A. Porpora, A. Scarlatti, and G. F. Handel—many of them previously not identified as such.

  George B. Stauffer, “Music for ‘Cavaliers et Dames.’ Bach and the Repertoire of his Collegium Musicum,” About Bach, ed. Butler et al., pp. 135–56.

  • Bach’s music rental operation (p. 412):

  Newly found documents about mailing costs for sending music to Bach’s second-generation pupil Johann Wilhelm Koch, cantor in Ronneburg (Thuringia) in the years 1732–44, provide evidence—with indications like “several cantatas sent back to Mr. Bach”—for the regular renting out of Bach’s cantatas, among them exacting works such as “Herr Gott, dich loben wir,” BWV 16; “Schwingt freudig euch empor,” BWV 36; and “In allen meinen Taten,” BWV 97. Since we are not concerned here with just a single case, we can assume that St. Thomas’s cantor Bach was in a way functioning as a country church music director, taking care, to a certain extent, of his wider surroundings. Therefore he carried on his music business not only in Leipzig but also in the entire region. He could hardly have limited his distribution to his own works because his challenging compositions prevented anything like the thoroughgoing distribution enjoyed a generation later by the motets and cantatas of Bach’s pupil and cantor at the Holy Cross Church in Dresden, Gottfried August Homilius.

  Michael Maul and Peter Wollny, “Quellenkundliches zu Bach-Aufführungen in Köthen, Ronneburg und Leipzig zwischen 1720 und 1760,” BJ (2003): 100–110, 120–34.

  • The Art of Fugue and B-Minor Mass (p. 431–42):

  The chapter-like systematic organization of The Art of Fugue is substantiated by Gregory Butler. Peter Wollny proves that Bach’s second youngest son, Johann Christoph Friedrich, assisted his father in the late 1740s (he copied, for example, the “Fantasia chromatica” with its authentic title—the previously unknown source of BWV 903 was acquired in 2009 by the Leipzig Bach Archive) and that his hand shows up in additions and corrections of the autograph score of the B-Minor Mass, his father’
s last vocal work. Michael Maul considers the possibility that Bach prepared his Mass for a performance on St. Cecilia’s Day at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna on commission by Adam Count Questenberg. My own book on the Mass discusses the work in the context of an increased number of performances of Latin church music in Leipzig during the last two decades of Bach’s life.

  Gregory G. Butler, “Scribes, Engravers, and Notational Styles. The Final Disposition of Bach’s Art of Fugue,” About Bach, ed. Butler et al., pp. 111–23; Peter Wollny, “Beobachtungen am Autograph der h-Moll-Messe,” BJ (2009): 135–52; and “Fundstücke zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs 1744–1750,” BJ (2011): 35–50; Michael Maul, “Die große catholische Messe. Bach, Graf Questenberg und die ‘musicalische Congregation’ in Wien,” BJ (2009): 153–76; Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: Messe in h-Moll (Kassel, 2009).

  • On Bach’s last months and final illness (pp. 448ff.):

  The last known written musical entries by the composer occur, as Peter Wollny has shown, in the original performing parts of C. P. E. Bach’s Magnificat Wq 215, which was presented in Leipzig on either February 2 or March 25, 1750. The nature of the entries indicates his participation in the careful preparation of the performance, whether or not it took place under his own direction. Archival documents uncovered by Andreas Glöckner attest that Bach, despite the two eye operations he underwent at the end of March and the beginning of April, apparently remained officially in charge of church performances until the middle of May 1750. His substitute, the prefect Johann Adam Franck, was appointed only from May 17 (Whitsunday) and functioned in this capacity until Gottlob Harrer, Bach’s successor, took over on St. Michael’s Day, September 29, 1750.