Hymn “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr”
Epistle lesson
Hymn chosen by the preacher
Gospel lesson
Hymn “Wir glauben all an einen Gott”
or Credo choraliter
Figuralstück (polyphonic music; primarily at the Upper Church)
Hymn de tempore (seasonal hymn)
Sermon
Communion
Sanctus choraliter
Agnus Dei choraliter
(Music during Communion: congregational hymns, organ music)
Administration of the Sacrament
Blessing
Postlude
When Andreas Börner served as interim organist at the New Church, he was also put in charge of its student choir, a responsibility he may have initially retained after Bach became organist in August 1703. Bach, in any case, was not charged with directing the student choir, and during 1705–6 Johann Andreas Rambach, an older student from the Lyceum, was paid to be choral prefect (assistant director) for services at the New Church. Bach’s contract lacks any specific details regarding his functions as organist beyond the expectation that he “appear promptly…for the divine services” and that he show himself “industrious and reliable in the office,” and makes no reference whatsoever to any collaboration with the student choir, let alone participation in concerted music presented by the choir.
Two to three years into Bach’s tenure of office, however, the issue of his contractual obligations became the subject of two disputes between Bach and the consistory, both related to disciplinary problems. In the first, Bach appeared before the consistory on August 4, 1705,22 to complain about a student by the name of Geyersbach. One night, on his way home from the castle and crossing the market square, Bach passed by six students sitting on the Langenstein (Long Stone), when one of them, Geyersbach, suddenly
went after him with a stick, calling him to account: Why had he made abusive remarks about him? He [Bach] answered that he had made no abusive remarks about him, and that no one could prove it, for he had gone his way very quietly. Geyersbach retorted that while he [Bach] might not have maligned him, he had maligned his bassoon at some time, and whoever insulted his belongings insulted him as well; he had carried on like a dirty dog’s etc., etc. And he [Geyersbach] had at once struck out at him. Since he had not been prepared for this, he had been about to draw his dagger, but Geyersbach had fallen into his arms, and the two of them tumbled about until the rest of the students who had been sitting with him…had separated them so that he [Bach] could continue his way home…. Since he did not deserve such treatment and thus was not safe on the street, he humbly requested that said Geyersbach be duly punished, and that he [Bach] be given appropriate satisfaction and accorded respect by the others, so that henceforth they would let him pass without abuse or attack.
After hearing Bach’s cousin Barbara Catharina, who had accompanied him from the castle and who therefore could serve as a witness, the consistory concluded that Geyersbach “initiated the incident, since he not only addressed Bach first but also was the first to strike out.” On the other hand, it developed that Bach had indeed called Geyersbach a Zippel Fagottist (greenhorn bassoonist), and members of the consistory admonished him that “he might very well have refrained from calling Geyersbach a Zippel Fagottist; such gives lead in the end to unpleasantness of this kind, especially since he [Bach] had a reputation for not getting along with the students and of claiming that he was engaged only for simple chorale music, and not for concerted pieces, which was wrong, for he must help out in all music making.” Bach answered that “he would not refuse, if only there were a Director Musices[music director],” whereupon he was told that “men must live among imperfecta; he must get along with the students, and they must not make one another’s lives miserable.”
At the time of the incident, Bach was twenty years old, while Geyersbach and his companion, Johann Friedrich Schüttwürfel (also mentioned in the proceedings), were both twenty-three.23 Thus, the young organist had to deal with students who were, in some cases, older than himself. The six sitting on the Long Stone had, as amateur musicians, just finished performing a serenade at a christening when Bach passed by—“tobacco pipe in his mouth” according to Geyersbach, “no tobacco pipe in his mouth” according to Barbara Catharina Bach. With or without pipe, Bach’s demeanor vis-à-vis the students must have been perceived as arrogant, and the market square brawl only magnifies the troublesome relationship that was bound to emerge between two unequal parties, both serving the New Church: on the one hand, a group of Lyceum students well above age twenty who were able to form a vocal-instrumental ensemble of sorts, and on the other, an ambitious, highly gifted, and, his youth notwithstanding, eminent professional musician who not only had graduated at age seventeen, but had done so from a more prestigious Latin school. No wonder Bach sought to keep the school choir at a distance and tried to fall back on a contract that did not specifically require him to work with the students—even though the church authorities had clearly expected him to lead the choir as Börner, the interim organist, twelve years Bach’s senior, had done.
Bach’s reluctance if not refusal to work with the student choir came up again, this time in connection with a complaint about his prolonged absence from Arnstadt in the winter of 1705–6 when he visited with Buxtehude in Lübeck.24 This time, the superintendent himself conducted the consistory’s interrogation, which focused initially on the length of the leave of absence that had been approved. Bach “had asked for only four weeks, but had stayed about four times as long.” Bach replied that he had “hoped the organ playing had been so well taken care of by the one he had engaged for the purpose that no complaint could be entered on that account.” He had, in fact, hired his cousin Johann Ernst Bach as a temporary substitute—the same cousin who would later succeed him in Arnstadt—thereby mitigating to some extent the consistory’s accusation. This reasoning, however, only goaded the consistory into bringing up two further matters.
First, they reproved Bach “for having hitherto made many curious variationes in the chorale, and mingled many strange tones in it, and for the fact that the Congregation has been confused by it.” This charge represented an attack on Bach’s manner of preluding for the congregational hymns and not, as the broader context of the exchange demonstrates (first he was playing “too long,” then “too short”), on his accompaniment of congregational singing.25 Typical chorale intonations of the time followed the models established by Johann Christoph and Johann Michael Bach and Johann Pachelbel, in which the hymn tune was introduced line by line for longer pieces and the initial line only for shorter ones, without modifying the chorale’s melodic contours or harmonic implications. Bach departed significantly from this pattern in his large-scale chorale preludes, which are often modeled on the fantasia-like north German chorale elaborations, here dissolving a plain chorale melody into complex embellishments, there modifying its intervallic structure, here leaving behind the chorale’s home key, and there introducing other features that the consistory members perceived as “curious variations” and “strange tones.” Yet the temporal reference “hitherto” can hardly refer to an abrupt change in Bach’s playing style after his prolonged absence, for only two or three Sundays had passed since his return from Lübeck. The accusation rather expresses an irritation that had preceded the trip, suggesting that Bach was playing large-scale chorale preludes in the mold of his early setting of “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,” BWV 739.
Second, the consistory returned to the old issue—
that hitherto no concerted music had been performed, for which he was responsible, because he did not wish to get along with the students; accordingly, he was to declare whether he was willing to play polyphonic as well as monophonic music [figural (iter) alß choral (iter)] with the students. For a capellmeister could not be engaged just for this sake. If he did not wish to do so, he should but state that fact categorice so that other arrangements could b
e made and someone engaged who would.
At the same session of the consistory, the student Rambach who served as choir prefect was “similarly reproved for the disordres that have hitherto taken place in the New Church between the students and the organist.” But Rambach, who was also “reproved for going into the wine cellar…during the sermon,” put the blame on the organist by reporting that Bach “had previously played rather too long, but after his attention had been called to it by the Superintendent, he had at once fallen into the other extreme and made it too short,” which probably caused laughter among the students and hence contributed to the “disorders.” At any rate, the lack of collaboration between the organist and the choir, who had to occupy the same church gallery, became a disturbing matter that was not resolved by the consistory’s admonitions issued on February 21, 1706.
Less than nine months later, the consistory proceedings returned to the unhappy subject: “It is pointed out to the organist Bach that he is to declare whether he is willing to make music with the students as he has already been instructed to do, or not; for if he considers it no disgrace to be connected with the Church and to accept his salary, he must also not be ashamed to make music with the students assigned to do so, until other instructions are given. For it is the intention that the latter shall practice, in order one day to be the better fitted for music.”26 This time the wording sounded like an order, understandable from the consistory’s perspective given its firm resolve to establish a well-balanced structure at the New Church for performing the kind of sacred music in which vocal and instrumental elements complemented and supported one another. Bach replied that he would “declare himself in writing concerning this matter.” Whether or not he ever submitted such a written statement (no such document is known), it is clear that after more than three years Bach did not see a realistic basis for a fruitful collaboration with the student choir, even knowing full well that such an arrangement would present new and enriching opportunities. For him, it could not have been the principle as such, but frustrating external conditions that discouraged him from seeking common ground for choir and organ, voices and instruments.
The consistory’s assertion that “hitherto no concerted music had been performed…because he did not wish to get along with the students” cannot be entirely accurate. After all, the affair that provoked Bach to call Geyersbach a Zippel Fagottist suggests that they were engaged in making concerted music together, which involved the participation of a bassoon. Incidentally, the old German fagott is not the same instrument as the basson of the late seventeenth-century French orchestra, and although contemporary terminology is not always consistent, it seems plausible that Geyersbach played a dulcian; that is, a prototype of the bassoon, in one piece and tuned to the higher Chorton pitch (rather than the French type with joints, in the lower chamber pitch), the kind of instrument that—as the German name Chorist-Fagott suggests—played a dominant role as a continuo instrument in late seventeenth-century German church music. What is presumably Bach’s earliest surviving cantata, “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich” BWV 150, requires a Fagotto in Chorton pitch and assigns it a demanding role in the fifth movement, “Aria Alto, Tenore et Basso con Fagotto”—a part probably beyond the capability of the said Zippel Fagottist. This cantata, for which no autograph source survives, may well belong to the second half of Bach’s Arnstadt period and may have been destined for the New Church or more likely for elsewhere, such as the chapel at Neideck Castle. What little concerted music was performed by the school choir at the New Church with Bach participating as organist was probably not composed by him.
The infamous Geyersbach incident began with Bach walking home from Neideck Castle, built between 1553 and 1560, which served as the stately residence of Imperial Count Anton Günther II of Schwarzburg. Beginning in 1683, Count Anton Günther ruled both the Schwarzburg-Arnstadt and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen counties and in 1697 was promoted to princely rank by Emperor Leopold I.27 The count was married to Auguste Dorothea, daughter of Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, whose love for theater and music, added to the splendor of his court, provided her with magnificent surroundings during her formative years. In many ways, Wolfenbüttel served as a model for Count Anton Günther. The staff of his administration in Arnstadt numbered around 120, as well as many notable scholars and artists, among them the famous numismatists Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel, Andreas Morelli, and Christian Schlegel, but also some more obscure scientists engaged as “gold makers.” In matters of culture, the count maintained good relations with Bayreuth, Brunswick, Celle, Dresden, Gotha, Halle, Cassel, Cöthen, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Munich, Nürnberg, Prague, and Weimar; moreover, he established an art collection and a court theater, and showed a keen interest in music. It was this nobleman who, after the untimely death of the Arnstadt court and town musician Johann Christoph Bach, inquired of the widow “whether there was not another Bach available…for he should and must have a Bach again.”28 And as head of the consistory, he was also Johann Sebastian’s nominal superior: Bach’s salary orders, for example, were issued in his name, and he was known for his involvement in virtually all realms of public life at Arnstadt.29 Why should Bach have come (with sword, suggesting formal dress or uniform) from the castle that evening—and, according Barbara Catharina’s testimony, specifically from the apartment of the court organist Herthum30—if not from some kind of official musical engagement?
Count Anton Günther maintained a court capelle of some twenty musicians, most of them typically functioning in dual roles as musician and servant or court and town musician. After the death in 1701 of the longtime court capellmeister Adam Drese, who had once worked with Heinrich Schütz in Dresden, Paul Gleitsmann, a violinist, lutenist, and viola da gamba player and a veteran member of the capelle, took over its direction.31 While Bach did not hold a court appointment and the Geyersbach story provides at best only indirect evidence of court connections, it would have been only natural for a musician of his background, special talents, and reputation to be drawn occasionally into the court music scene. Musical life at the Arnstadt court after 1700 is poorly documented, but we do know that in 1705 the court theater saw performances of two burlesque operettas: in February, Das Carneval als ein Verräter des Eckels vor der Heiligen Fastenzeit (The Carnival as a Tattler on the Loathing of the Holy Lenten Period), and in May, Die Klugheit der Obrigkeit in Anordnung des Bierbrauens (The Wisdom of the Government in Regulating Beer Brewing).32 Arnstadtians were able to attend the shows through ticket sales.33
The court music scene with its secular and sacred dimensions would have provided numerous opportunities for Bach the keyboardist and versatile instrumentalist. And by continuing his brief Weimar court experience of 1703, the Arnstadt court would have exposed him to musical genres and repertoires that were otherwise not readily accessible to him. The earliest specimen of an Italian chamber cantata in Bach’s hand, “Amante moribondo” by the Venetian composer Antonio Biffi, may well originate from there. The court would also have given Bach the opportunity to meet and perform with out-of-town musicians and might provide some kind of clue to “the unfamiliar maiden” (frembde Jungfer) whom, according to the consistory minutes, Bach “invited into the choir loft and let…make music there.”34 Female singers were traditionally barred from performing at churches with Latin school choirs, although in many smaller churches in towns and villages throughout Thuringia women participated in choirs as helpers, so-called Adjuvanten. In any event, the incident with the frembde Jungfer must have involved an out-of-town singer and not, as often assumed, Bach’s distant cousin Maria Barbara, whom he married the following year.35 Maria Barbara had been living in Arnstadt for several years, so she could scarcely have been described as “unfamiliar.”
The consistory’s complaint—especially petty since Bach seems to have consulted in the matter with the pastor of the New Church, Magister Uthe—may have merely annoyed him, but taken together with the forceful admonition made at the same hearing about his lack of r
elations with the student choir clearly indicated that he had little or no room for maneuvering. The congregation of the New Church was entitled to enjoy modern-style church music, and the consistory legitimately expected both the organist and the student choir to play a mutually constructive role in establishing a viable and attractive musical program. But Bach saw no way toward a realistic compromise. His standards and ambitions were much too remote from that of the basically leaderless choir. Bach realized that orderly progress could not be achieved with the help of a mere student prefect; a person of authority, with proper disciplinary oversight, was needed. He also realistically understood that he himself, on the basis of his youth alone, would not be in a position to claim the necessary authority, and for this reason requested a director musices from outside. He also avoided saying anything negative about the student choir; in fact, he expressed his willingness to participate if only under the proper leadership. In other words, he was not pointing out any lack of musical competence on the part of the choir, but a lack of discipline, which not only affected the choral situation but apparently had wider ramifications. Indeed, during Bach’s time in Arnstadt, municipal and church authorities recorded many complaints about the excessive behavior of undisciplined Lyceum students.36 So after three years, he saw little future for himself at the New Church.
As for Arnstadt itself, as much as he appreciated that his grandfather’s town was the nerve center of the Bach family and provided plenty of advantages and connections, Sebastian must have felt keenly that its narrow confines and its close-knit family environment severely hampered his privacy and freedom of movement. Eying a position in the free imperial city of Mühlhausen, he showed a readiness to move again out of the traditional family realm—he had savored his time in Lüneburg, hundreds of miles away from home. He apparently deemed such a step essential to starting a family of his own and solidifying the family bonds in a different way. For he had become close to Maria Barbara, daughter of his father’s cousin Michael Bach, the late organist and town scribe of Gehren, and the two of them wanted to marry. After Johann Sebastian had secured the new position, they indeed arranged for a wedding at the village church of Dornheim, three miles from Arnstadt, on October 17, 1707.
Johann Sebastian Bach Page 15
