Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  Buxtehude also involved himself in organology (the study of musical instruments). A widely recognized organ expert, he held close ties with his colleague the organist Andreas Werckmeister, the premier German musical scientist and speculative theorist at the end of the seventeenth century, and became the strongest public advocate of Werckmeister’s new system of temperament. Finally, his compositional orientation included a broad spectrum of styles and genres, incorporating retrospective as well as modern tendencies, Dutch and Hanseatic traditions (through Jan Pieters Sweelinck, Heinrich Scheidemann, and Reinken), English elements (in his writing for viola da gamba), French manners (in choral movements emulating Jean-Baptiste Lully), and Italian traditions (Frescobaldi, Legrenzi, and Giacomo Carissimi). Nearly all new genres of the seventeenth century may be found in his music: concerto, motet, chorale, aria, and recitative in the vocal realm; toccata, prelude, fugue, ciaconna, canzona, suite, sonata, dance, and variation in the instrumental.

  From Bach’s vantage point in 1705, there was simply no other musician who could offer him so much, “so he undertook a journey, on foot, to Lübeck, in order to listen to the famous organist of St. Mary’s Church there, Dieterich Buxtehude. He tarried there, not without profit, for almost a quarter of a year, and then returned to Arnstadt.” This rather plain report from the Obituary does not remotely hint at the trouble Bach created for himself by his unauthorized extended stay.52 He apparently received permission to be absent for only four weeks, from mid-or late November, so that he could be present in Lübeck for the performances on December 2 and 3 of Buxtehude’s newest oratorios, Castrum doloris (commemorating the death of Emperor Leopold I) and Templum honoris (paying tribute to the new emperor, Joseph I). Bach must have learned about this forthcoming major musical event in advance, for there is no question that it largely determined the original timing of his Lübeck trip. It need hardly be added that he was expected back in Arnstadt for the busy Christmas season.

  Traveling the more than 250 miles from Arnstadt to Lübeck on foot would have taken at least ten days each way. Even if he managed an occasional free or cheap ride for some part of the trip, it would still have been a long journey. Nevertheless, his lengthy sojourn in Lübeck was motivated entirely by artistic objectives. On being questioned by the superintendent after his return, Bach articulated his initial aim: “to comprehend one thing and another about his art.” As neutral as this wording sounds, with its lack of emphasis on specific musical purposes (in particular keyboard and vocal music), it suggests that the main attraction lay in Buxtehude’s indisputable authority as an extraordinary artist and role model, not just as a distinguished organist or composer of oratorios.

  Even before Bach’s visit, he possessed a basic familiarity with the master’s organ works, which were available before 1700 in Thuringia (especially in the Pachelbel circle), and which would have been readily accessible to him in Lüneburg and Hamburg. Still, Buxtehude’s general stature as an organist, his innovative approach to virtuosic and large-scale works in the stylus fantasticus, his development of a pedal technique as both a performing and compositional device, and the extent and probably well-guarded distribution of his major organ works would have been of major interest to Bach. He would have snatched any opportunity to expand the Buxtehude repertoire already in his possession: it cannot be mere coincidence that the most important and comprehensive transmission of Buxtehude’s organ works in the eighteenth century eventually took place through the efforts of the circle surrounding Johann Sebastian Bach. In Lübeck, the Arnstadt visitor would also have wanted to demonstrate to the master his own organistic accomplishments in the hope of receiving acknowledgment and encouragement. For that reason, he would probably have brought large rather than little pieces of his own to show Buxtehude, compositions that ventured to measure up to their model. It thus seems plausible that Bach’s multisectional organ works in the direct Buxtehude mold, with their bold but inhibited gestures—such as the Prelude and Fugue in E major, BWV 566—mostly anticipate or coincide with the Lübeck visit rather than postdate it.

  Later works, reflecting the Buxtehude experience as a matter of the past, reflect a deeper and perhaps more emancipated understanding of the Lübeck master’s art. The Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582, fits in here as a work of remarkable sophistication whose twenty variations over its sweeping eight-measure ground (Ex. 4.1), culminating in a fugal elaboration, exhibit—especially in comparison with a work such as the Toccata BWV 565—absolute control over compositional principles, musical form, figurative material, fugal devices, and harmonic strategies. As indebted as it is to the musical architecture of Buxtehude’s ostinato works (all of which are found in the Andreas Bach Book), notably to his Passacaglia in D minor, BuxWV 161, Bach reaches far beyond his models. Of particular significance is the imaginative fugal treatment of the thematic material. For the fugue, the passacaglia theme is divided exactly into two halves: the first part takes the same shape in which it originally occurs in the “Christe” movement (trio en passaccaille) of the organ Mass from André Raison’s Livre d’Orgue of 1688 (Ex. 4.2a); the second part is transformed into an emphatically pulsating countersubject (b). A second, freely developed countersubject (c) enters immediately after themes (a) and (b) and combines with them in perfect congruence. All three subjects articulate their own distinct rhythmic beats in quarter, eighth, and sixteenth-note values. Proceeding from the outset in multiple counterpoint, theme (a), from its second entry on, is always heard simultaneously with its two countersubjects, in changing combinations:

  The extremely regular scheme creates a perfect permutation fugue exposition “à la Reinken,” yet here, too, Bach transcends his model.

  The two oratorios Buxtehude presented in December 1705 exposed Bach to a vocal genre, style, and manner of performance he had never heard before. Bach’s Lübeck visit lasted about sixteen weeks, from mid-October at the earliest to early February at the latest—he was back in Arnstadt taking communion on Sunday, February 753—and conceivably, he was not merely a member of the oratorio audience but a participant in the large ensemble Buxtehude assembled for the two major works. After all, Bach had to finance his trip, and had to pay his Arnstadt substitute, cousin Johann Ernst Bach, so that offering his services as violinist or keyboard player would have been a logical course of action for the young, ambitious professional. Unfortunately, the music of neither Castrum doloris, BuxWV 134, nor Templum honoris, BuxWV 135, has survived (as is deplorably the case with all of Buxtehude’s oratorios); their printed librettos, however, supply a number of crucial details that allow us to infer some of the more important musical features and to form a general impression of what Bach may have experienced.

  The two librettos indicate that the performances were occasions of grandiose spectacle at St. Mary’s Church, which had been decorated and illuminated for both events, dedicated by the free imperial city to the imperial house in Vienna. The musical presentations included both large organs and featured several instrumental and vocal choirs positioned in different galleries; and the end, at least, of Castrum doloris had the entire congregation join in as well. The texts of the two oratorios represent a curious mixture of sacred and secular elements chosen to suit the politically oriented occasion. Their dialogue format calls for two soloists as allegorical figures, Fame (Gerücht) and Prudence (Klugheit), and two choirs. The musical forms include double-chorus movements with da capo rounding off, recitatives, and strophic arias with instrumental ritornellos. The instrumental requirements as outlined in the librettos are particularly striking and were apparently without precedent or parallel. The intradas require two bands of trumpets and timpani, a ritornello “two choirs of horns and oboes,” a sinfonia “twenty-five violins in unison,” and a passacaglia “various instruments.”

  The young Bach had no opportunity to compose pieces in an oratorio-like format, but elements of Buxtehude-style compositional design and instrumental splendor are reflected in Bach’s first Mühlhausen town council election cantat
a, “Gott ist mein König,” BWV 71 (1708), written one year after the Lübeck master’s death. Four more modestly scored cantatas, the Psalm cantata “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich,” BWV 150, the funeral music “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit,” BWV 106, the wedding piece “Der Herr denket an uns,” BWV 196, and the Easter cantata “Christ lag in Todes Banden,” BWV 4, are similarly indebted to the tradition of the late seventeenth century in general and to Buxtehude in particular. Their strong and unique affiliation with vocal-instrumental works of the late seventeenth century point to an origin around or before 1707–8, that is, to the late Arnstadt years.

  Although Bach had no obligations to provide vocal music at the New Church and records actually stress his refusal to collaborate with the chorus musicus, he may well have begun to perform with that vocal-instrumental group after the consistory’s final admonition in November 1706.54 But a more likely scenario suggests itself: that the authorities were upset with Bach because he did occasionally perform concerted music but was unwilling “to make music [musiciren] with the students” from the Latin school and, worse, used an ad hoc ensemble, perhaps one that included the band of the town musician Weise or members of the court capelle. The reproof that in the fall of 1706 he “invited into the choir loft” a young female singer “and let her make music [musiciren] there” leads us to wonder what she was doing there if not singing a solo part, most likely in a cantata performance, for the term musiciren referred to performing a concerted ensemble piece that only later came to be called “cantata.”

  At Lutheran churches in cities and towns with Latin schools, musical services were ordinarily divided so that the cantor, generally in charge of vocal music at both church and school, selected and conducted the main polyphonic piece that followed the gospel lesson on Sundays and holidays. Organists with ambitions of presenting vocal-instrumental ensemble works (the repertoire generally in the cantor’s domain) were therefore usually limited to weddings, funerals, and other special occasions. The situation at the New Church in Arnstadt fits well into this picture. The person officially responsible for vocal music was the choir prefect appointed by cantor Heindorff, who tended to his own duties at the Upper Church. However, subjecting his works to the questionable leadership of a prefect in a regular Sunday service would have been unacceptable to Bach. So it is no surprise that, with the sole exception of BWV 4 (most likely written for the Mühlhausen audition on Easter Sunday 1707), none of Bach’s extant cantatas written before 1714 bear a designation for a specific Sunday or holiday; they fall instead into the typical category of “organists’ music” (as opposed to “cantors’ music”) and, if they were based on a text for multiple purposes such as that of BWV 150 (Psalm 25), offered various possibilities for performances.

  Stylistically, these works display considerable mastery, indeed a deliberate attempt at enhancing the scope and makeup of the highly flexible genre labeled “church piece,” or early Lutheran cantata. A biblical text was normally set in the manner of a concertato motet, with particular attention lavished on musically suggestive individual words; hymns and hymn melodies were treated in a variety of homophonic and polyphonic ways; and free lyrics were presented as tuneful arias, derived from strophic song. The early cantatas of Bach (see Table 4.4) lack recitatives, although he had encountered them in Buxtehude’s oratorios, if not before. Unlike Bach’s other cantatas, BWV 4 is based exclusively on the seven stanzas of a single text, Martin Luther’s Easter hymn “Christ lag in Todes Banden.” A cantata usually opened with an instrumental sinfonia or sonata (sonatina). Though the instrumental forces in Bach’s earliest works remain modest, he makes extremely effective use of instrumental combinations, such as the soft quartet of two recorders and two gambas in the mourning cantata BWV 106, or the independent use of violoncello in BWV 150 and fagotto in BWV 196. The overall degree of mastery by which these early pieces compare favorably with the best church compositions from the first decade of the eighteenth century, whether by Johann Philipp Krieger, Johann Kuhnau, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, or others, proves that the young Bach did not confine himself to playing organ and clavier but, animated by his Buxtehude visit, devoted considerable time and effort to vocal composition. The very few such early works that exist, each a masterpiece in its own right, must constitute a remnant only—partly a careful selection, partly a random bit—from a larger body of similar compositions.

  “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich,” BWV 150, Bach’s earliest surviving cantata, surprises us in many ways. First, it offers refined and complex chromaticism in the opening chorus (“For thee, Lord, is my desire”). Then it presents one of Buxtehude’s favorite devices—a passacaglia for chorus and orchestra, “Meine Tage in den Leiden / endet Gott dennoch in Freuden” (All my days, which pass in sadness, / God will end, at last, in gladness), which Brahms chose as the bass theme for the Finale of his Fourth Symphony; the French-style triple meter adds, however, a new facet distinct from Buxtehude. Finally, the cantata features a vocal tercet, “Zedern müssen von den Winden / oft viel Ungemach empfinden” (Cedars must, from blowing zephyrs, / often suffer strains and stresses), for alto, tenor, bass, and a differentiated continuo (cello embellishing the bassoon/organ part), followed by a chorus with an elaborate accompaniment performed by the entire instrumental ensemble. Especially impressive is the beginning of the middle chorus, “Leite mich in deiner Wahrheit” (Lead me in thy truth), whose structure—derived from the keywords “lead” and “truth”—is based on a strict ascending scale that penetrates all participating voices, first vocal then instrumental, and brings form and content into absolute congruence (Ex. 4.3).

  TABLE 4.4. Bach’s Earliest Cantatas

  Italics = biblical text; bold = hymn text; c.f. = cantus firmus (hymn tune)

  The advanced temperament in which Bach’s organ was tuned allowed him to chart a daring harmonic course and to explore advanced chord progressions for which there were no precedents whatsoever. A characteristic example is found at the end of “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr,” BWV 715, one of several early chorale harmonizations, in which Bach exploits for a plain G-major tune all twelve notes of the chromatic scale (Ex. 4.4)—within the space of two measures. Such experiments won for him remarkable command over a widened tonal spectrum, so that in movements 2 and 6 of the cantata BWV 150 he was able to employ virtually the entire chromatic-enharmonic scale, including pitches as far off the beaten path as B-sharp. Similarly, the bold harmonic design of the Actus tragicus, BWV 106, ranges through the flat keys, movement by movement: E-flat major / C minor / F minor / B-flat minor / A-flat major / E-flat major. In both instances, Bach explored a tonal range and applied a harmonic language that had no parallel among his predecessors or contemporaries; they are impressive evidence of how little the modest means and restrained conditions under which the earliest cantatas were created kept the composer from venturing well beyond established musical conventions.

  AT THE BLASIUS CHURCH IN MÜHLHAUSEN

  Word of the death in early December 1706 of Johann Georg Ahle, the well-known organist at St. Blasius’s Church in the free imperial city of Mühlhausen, must have reached Bach in Arnstadt fairly soon. After all, the Mühlhausen town scribe was Johann Hermann Bellstedt, whose brother was not only the town scribe in Arnstadt but was also related by marriage to the Bach family (see Table 4.3). The news may also have been passed on to Bach by the Mühlhausen organ builder Johann Friedrich Wender, who had built Bach’s organ at the New Church. For Johann Gottfried Walther, a distant cousin of Bach’s, claimed that Wender proposed that he (Walther) apply for the Mühlhausen post.55 Walther submitted his application along with “two church pieces of my own work,” that is, two cantatas he had composed. His public audition was scheduled for Sexagesimae Sunday (February 27, 1707), but he withdrew from his candidacy because, as he later put it, “some (perhaps self-interested) acquaintances viewed such a plan as unsuitable.”

  Who were these acquaintances? Did Bach have anything to do with Walther’s withdrawal? Unlik
ely, considering that Bach was more than just an acquaintance—his mother and Walther’s, both Lämmerhirts from Erfurt, were cousins—and he and Walther subsequently developed a cordial and long-standing friendship. In any case, Walther’s account of the events, though written more than thirty years later, illuminates how the search for a new organist at St. Blasius’s proceeded, including the requirement that the candidates submit two vocal compositions. The position had, for more than a half century, been in the “possession” of father and son Ahle, both natives of Mühlhausen and both later elected members of its city council. Johann Rudolf, noted composer and theorist and eventually first burgomaster of the city as well, held the post beginning in 1654; Johann Georg, also an active composer and even more illustrious as poet laureate,56 succeeded him in 1673. Both Ahles had left a long list of vocal compositions, many of them published,57 and because the ceremonial music for the annual town council election service at St. Mary’s Church was traditionally assigned to the St. Blasius organist, it is understandable that the Mühlhausen authorities were seeking a musician with proven abilities in vocal music.

  The council records that document the Mühlhausen organist search mention no name other than Bach’s, suggesting that he was the only candidate seriously considered. On May 24, 1707, at a meeting of St. Blasius’s Parish Convent—a body comprising the members of the city council who resided in the parish—the influential senior consul and previous burgomaster, Dr. Conrad Meckbach, asked without any preliminaries “whether consideration should not first be given to the man named Pach [sic] from Arnstadt, who had recently done his trial playing at Easter.”58 Without any further deliberation, the parish convent quickly commissioned the town scribe Bellstedt to work out an agreement with Bach.