Duke Johann Ernst III, who occupied the more modest Red Palace nearby, and who had employed Bach in 1703, died in 1707. He had been primarily responsible for reassembling the court capelle from 1683 onward, after his father had dissolved it some twenty years earlier: he began by hiring Johann Samuel Drese as capellmeister and Johann Effler as court organist. Johann Ernst’s oldest son, Ernst August, acceded to the position of co-regent in 1709—Bach’s second year at Weimar—when he reached the age of majority. But from the very beginning, his uncle Wilhelm Ernst, accustomed to his statutory seniority from the days of joint rule with his younger brother, claimed absolute predominance, especially in the duchy’s domestic policy. The relationship between the co-reigning dukes suffered quietly under the weight of their incompatible personalities: Wilhelm Ernst, twenty-six years older, was rigidly conservative and zealously religious, while Ernst August displayed a more enlightened attitude, though he was no less stubborn. During their long joint rule of nineteen years, both uncle and nephew had a share in provoking power struggles that at times reached preposterous proportions, as, for example, when Duke Wilhelm Ernst in one of his arbitrary despotic acts had Duke Ernst August’s councilors arrested. But matters deteriorated even further after 1728, when Ernst August assumed undivided rule as absolute monarch.7
Bach could hardly have anticipated the roiling political climate at the Weimar court and probably assumed, naively, that in his role as a ranking court musician he would not be directly affected by disputes within the ducal family. Yet over the years, the controversial question of who had control over joint servants directly affected the members of the court capelle. Bach could not have known, for example, that in 1707, before his time, Duke Wilhelm Ernst had decreed that members of the court capelle were allowed to make music at the Red Palace only with his special permission. Wilhelm Ernst, who in June 1708 had particularly admired Bach’s playing and engaged him virtually on the spot, continued to hold Bach in highest esteem. Indeed, on June 3, 1711, he ordered a substantial salary increase, from 150 to 200 florins, in response to Bach’s “humble request because the salary and allowance of his predecessor [Effler had died the previous April]…will cease completely and revert to…the princely treasury.” He also provided Bach with additional allowances.8 Whether Bach produced an attractive outside offer or simply made the case on the basis of his performance in Weimar, it is altogether remarkable that having been appointed at a salary substantially higher than his predecessor’s and equal to the vice-capellmeister’s, Bach was now, only three years later, put on the same pay scale as the capellmeister, Johann Samuel Drese, whose annual salary of 200 florins remained unchanged for his entire thirty-three-year term of office.
Despite the undeniable support he received from the Wilhelmsburg, Bach must have developed closer personal ties to the Red Palace. The young Duke Ernst August, who played both violin and trumpet and who was known for his active acquisition of musical instruments and performing materials for his large music library,9 paid Bach in 1711–12 for giving keyboard lessons to his page Adam von Jagemann (who also received dance instruction from Bach’s colleague and landlord Weldig).10 The duke’s twelve-year-old half-brother, Prince Johann Ernst, was taught the violin as a small child and, from 1707 on, studied keyboard and composition with Johann Gottfried Walther, the Weimar town organist and distant relative of Bach’s (in 1708, Walther wrote an instruction manual, Praecepta der musicalischen Composition, for the prince and presented it to him as a nameday gift). Bach later transcribed four of the prince’s compositions, for organ and harpsichord (BWV 592, 595, 982, and 987).11 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach reported to Forkel that along with Prince Leopold of Cöthen and Duke Christian of Weissenfels, “Duke Ernst August in Weimar…particularly loved him, and rewarded him appropriately.”12 Whether or not the warmer relationship with Ernst August ultimately had a negative impact on Wilhelm Ernst’s attitude toward Bach, a sizable salary supplement for his final Weimar years was covered by the younger duke’s treasury.13
Bach’s double function as court organist and chamber musician reflects his versatility and expertise as a performer, but increasingly as a composer, too. As a member of the court capelle, he belonged to the group of “joint servants” and was therefore employed by both dukes and paid by the joint treasury. In 1708–9, Bach’s first year, the capelle consisted of twelve mostly full-time members14 (see Table 5.1).
TABLE 5.1. The Weimar Court Capelle, 1708–9
Johann Samuel Drese
capellmeister
Johann Wilhelm Drese
vice-capellmeister
Johann Sebastian Bach
court organist and chamber musician
Michael Wüstenhöfer
discantist
Georg H. Romstedt
discantist
Adam Immanuel Weldig
falsettist and master of the pages
Johann Döbernitz
tenor and court cantor
Andreas Aiblinger
tenor and secretary
Christoph Alt
bass
Johann Andreas Ehrbach
violinist
Andreas Eck
violinist and chamber valet
Johann Georg Hoffmann
violinist
This list does not include trumpeters and timpanists, who were typically counted separately in princely households and were carried by the military budget. Personal servants were not listed either, as, for example, Prince Johann Ernst’s chamber valet and violin teacher, Gregor Christoph Eylenstein.15 The list also omits the part-time musicians who occupied lackey or other courtly functions but were essential for providing musical balances when called for; nor does it include the Weimar town musicians and town organist, who often joined the court ensemble in varying roles, or the cantor and members of the chorus musicus from the Weimar gymnasium. Capellmeister Drese, then director of the Weimar court music for twenty-five years, must have been supportive of Bach’s appointment. Bach, in turn, will have remembered him as well as his colleagues Alt, Ehrbach, Döbernitz, Hoffmann,16 and Weldig, all members of the capelle back in 1703. The younger Drese, son of the capellmeister, had been away in 1702–3 studying in Venice and perhaps elsewhere in Italy at the expense of the Weimar court;17 he was appointed to his present post after the death in 1704 of the former vice-capellmeister Georg Christoph Strattner.
Bach’s principal assignment was that of court organist. In that capacity he served at the palace church at the southern end of the Wilhelmsburg’s east wing, the center of Duke Wilhelm Ernst’s religious and ceremonial activities. Fully integrated into the architectural design of the Wilhelmsburg, the unusually shaped church was dedicated in 1658. Built on a footprint of about 100 by 40 feet, it rose to a total height of about 90 feet from the floor to the tip of the crowning cupola.18 The tall structure of the sanctuary, with two sets of galleries surrounding the relatively narrow rectangular hall, extended upward over three floors (see illustration, p. 146). Cut into the flat ceiling of the sanctuary (about 65 feet above the floor level) was a wide rectangular aperture—about 13 by 10 feet and surrounded by a balustrade—that opened into the music gallery, a spacious domed compartment called the Capelle. As was customary for music galleries, the balustrade would have been designed to serve as an elongated music stand so that singers and players could be placed—depending on the size of the ensemble—around two, three, or four flanks of the aperture. The painted cupola extending about 15 feet above the gallery level projected an open heaven and clouds with figures of angels and putti. Appropriately named Weg zur Himmelsburg (Road to Heaven’s Castle)—for short, Himmelsburg—by its theologically minded planners, the pious Duke Wilhelm IV and his architect Johann Moritz Richter, the church represented the image of its true religious function: a way station between the Wilhelmsburg and heaven, between the earthly ducal residence and God’s castle. The limited seating capacity of the church presented no major problem since services were attended only by the ducal families, sit
ting in their princely boxes, and by members of the princely household, other gentry, court officials, and select employees seated in the pews of the narrow nave and in the surrounding double galleries. For the worshippers, music from the Capelle above the ceiling, enhanced by the “echo tower” effect of its dazzling acoustics, would have been perceived as sounds descending from heaven—corresponding to the ancient imagery of an angels’ concert.
Historical accounts describe the Himmelsburg as “adorned with a marvelous organ.” Considering the unique architectural circumstances, its place in the Capelle, just behind the balustrade of the shorter east side of the rectangular ceiling opening, provided for maximum exposure and projection. We do not know what the organ actually looked and sounded like during Bach’s time because the information we have about the instrument, which is no longer extant, either predates or postdates his Weimar years. A publication of 1737 specifies twenty-four stops on two manuals and pedal,19 reflecting changes that date from a rebuilding of 1719–20. The original organ (seen in the illustration, p. 146) was built in several sections from 1658 on by one of the most famous German organ builders, Ludwig Compenius of Erfurt.20 However, that instrument had been thoroughly overhauled and enlarged by the organ builder Johann Conrad Weishaupt immediately before Bach’s arrival in Weimar; the most significant changes included new wind chests, new pedal stops (including a 32-foot subbass), and a rebuilding of the Seitenwerk (side organ, lower manual) into an Unterwerk (lower organ). Further design changes were made during Bach’s nine years there, but generally the organ seems to have been in excellent technical condition throughout his tenure, for the court registers contain no entries pertaining to even minor repairs.
In Weimar, Bach developed a close personal relationship with the resident organ builder, Heinrich Nicolaus Trebs, who provided maintenance service for the organ at the court church. Trebs signed a contract on June 29, 1712, for a complete overhaul and manufacture of several new stops, in exchange for a payment of 200 florins.21 Of the plans, drawn up by Bach, we know only that they called for a glockenspiel stop, which had also been a part of Bach’s 1708 rebuilding project for the Mühlhausen organ. By October 1712, Trebs had already obtained twenty-nine chimes from a Nuremberg maker, and twelve additional ones arrived the following spring.22 The organ project was coordinated with a redesign and expansion of the entire Capelle. In late June 1712, the organ’s wind chests were dismantled, so that the instrument was rendered unplayable. Beginning December 21, eleven carpenters and two day laborers worked day and night installing the bellows chamber so that the organ could be played on Christmas eve.23 But work on the instrument was by no means finished then. Bach’s student Kräuter, hoping to remain longer with Bach, wrote to his Augsburg sponsors in April 1713 that “by Whitsuntide the palace organ here will be in as good a condition as possible; hence I could familiarize myself more completely with the structure of an organ, in order to be able to judge if this or that would be useful for an organ, if all repair work were executed well and not superficially, and at the same time how much, approximately, one or two ranks of pipes would cost, all of which I consider rather worthwhile.”24 Still, the project was not entirely completed even by Whitsuntide 1713. The importance of keeping the organ playable throughout much of the construction explains why Trebs took such a long time to finish it. Only on May 19 of the next year, 1714, was a bellows operator finally paid for fourteen days of “labor for the tuning of the organ,” indicating that the finishing touches were being applied.25 All this means that Bach’s organistic activities at the court church were curtailed for a long period, from Christmas 1712 through May 1714, and that for half a year he could not play the organ at all.
Far fewer services were held each week at the court church than at any regular town church—in general, one Sunday and one weekday service—with Johann Georg Lairitz, the duchy’s general superintendent, serving as the main preacher. According to the new Weimar formulary of 1707, Agende, oder kurtzer Auszug aus der Kirchen-Ordnung, the order of divine service complied with standard Lutheran practices in all major respects (see Table 4.2), but showed the following small variants: the service opened with a congregational hymn in line with the liturgical season; then a polyphonic Kyrie was performed by the choir, followed by the Gloria intonation by the pastor from the altar and the congregational Gloria hymn “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr.” A single Kyrie by Bach has come down to us, albeit in posthumous sources. But since the work in question—Kyrie “Christe, du Lamm Gottes,” BWV 233a, for five voices and continuo, later integrated into the Mass in F major, BWV 233—not only fits stylistically among Bach’s early choral fugues but also employs the Weimar melodic version of the Litany, it may confidently be placed in the early Weimar period. The existence of this Kyrie suggests that the court organist Bach played at least a modest role in the realm of vocal music, too. In his Mühlhausen resignation letter, Bach had made such a strong case for his “ultimate goal of a well-regulated church music” and expressed such a keen interest in getting more involved in vocal music that his voluntary withdrawal from it would indeed be hard to imagine. Nevertheless, as in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, his official activities continued to focus primarily on organ music.
It would be misleading to describe Bach’s musical functions at Weimar as exclusively liturgical. Of course, playing at the divine services was of central importance, but this task was essentially limited to accompanying hymns and providing introductory chorale preludes and a postlude. The remarks in the Obituary that “the pleasure His Grace [Duke Ernst August] took in his [Bach’s] playing fired him with the desire to try every possible artistry in his treatment of the organ” and that in Weimar “he wrote most of his organ works” suggest activities of a much broader scope, perhaps frequent organ recitals or performances at the end of the church services, at the request of Duke Ernst August or for the pleasure of both ducal families, guests and foreign dignitaries, and other interested parties. Similarly, when the occasion arose, Bach may also have presented solo performances on the harpsichord. Taking pride in a keyboard virtuoso of Bach’s stature would have been only in keeping with the princely habit of regularly showcasing the trophies of their “talent hunters,” thereby also justifying financial rewards over and above the pay scale called for by the musician’s actual rank. Such courtly entertainment would then have permitted Bach to impress and captivate his audience by performing works that would ordinarily be unsuitable for worship services, because of either their disproportionate length (large-scale preludes, toccatas, and fugues) or their unconventional design (Italian concerto and other transcriptions).
Bach’s “desire to try every possible artistry,” a major impetus for his creative endeavors as organist in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen as well, could never have found this kind of focused support and promotion in a position under regular church and civic governance. Thus, it stands to reason that, as noted earlier, Weimar was where most of his organ works originated. This Obituary statement clearly refers to written compositions, and considering that a large portion of a capable organist’s work consisted of improvised music, the organ compositions that have come down to us represent only a fraction of the music that originated from Bach’s creative mind. Nevertheless, his decision to fix so many organ works—some if not most of them based on improvisations—in written form indicates that Bach considered these pieces worthy of elaboration and preservation, that the musical ideas embedded in them stimulated and challenged his compositional instincts, that the functions for which they were written required a certain degree of preparation and exercise, and finally, that these compositions would serve his increasing teaching activities. After all, Bach’s Mühlhausen pupils Schubart and Vogler moved with him to Weimar, where they were joined over time by more than ten other students, among them the first complement of Bach family members: Johann Lorenz, eldest son of cousin Johann Valentin Bach of Schweinfurt, arrived in the fall of 1713 and remained for five years; Johann Bernhard, his Ohrdruf brother’s seco
nd son, came to Weimar as a fifteen-year-old in late 1714 or early 1715 and stayed on until 1719, through Bach’s early Cöthen years;26 and his own son Wilhelm Friedemann surely began to receive his father’s instruction well before his seventh birthday, in 1717.
Roughly half of Bach’s extant organ works point either to Weimar origin or to Weimar revisions of, or amendments to, earlier works; evidence is provided both by autograph manuscripts and, in particular, by copies (or sources related to copies) made by Bach’s student Johann Tobias Krebs and colleague Johann Gottfried Walther. None of these sources, however, permit us to differentiate clearly between chronological stages. Even the few samples available of Bach’s music hand that are datable to the period 1708–14 feature insufficient changes in his penmanship. One of the few indirect chronological clues for Bach’s keyboard works from the Weimar period relates to an important historical fact. In the spring of 1713, Prince Johann Ernst, Duke Ernst August’s half-brother and a musician of professional caliber, returned from his grand tour to the Low Countries and brought back with him copies of recent music, published and in manuscript, that he had acquired in Amsterdam. Indeed, additional music shelves had to be installed in the library of the Red Palace to hold this bounty.27 In Amsterdam, Johann Ernst may also have met the blind organist Jan Jacob de Graaf, who was known for his playing of the latest fashionable Italian ensemble concertos in keyboard transcriptions and presumably supplied the indirect model for similar transcriptions by the young prince’s teachers, Walther and Bach.
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