As hereditary prince, the ten-year-old Leopold succeeded his father immediately, but as a minor, he was placed under the guardianship of his mother, Princess Gisela Agnes, who assumed rule. Small size and relative insignificance prevented the principality from pursuing any real foreign policy. Moreover, although Prince Emanuel Leberecht’s will entrusted his wife with the regency, he had resolved that the Prussian king serve as superior guardian.7 This move made internal and local politics loom all the larger; and indeed, during the eleven years of the princess mother’s government, religious and social affairs stood very much at the center. In 1596, the still undivided duchy of Anhalt had adopted Calvinism as its state religion, in accordance with the principle cuius regio, eius religio (literally, “whose territory, his religion”), an agreement reached under the 1555 Peace of Augsburg by which the ruler’s religion was automatically declared the official faith of the region. Of Lutheran descent and landed gentry, Gisela Agnes (née von Rath), however, fiercely observed her own religious beliefs, staunchly championed the principality’s Lutheran minority, and showed little interest in dynastic concerns and commitments. After her marriage in 1692 with Prince Emanuel Leberecht, fundamentally a misalliance of birth and religion, she had built—with the express support of her Calvinist husband, who favored the free and public exercise of religious observances—a new church for the Lutherans that was dedicated in 1699 and unsubtly named St. Agnus’s Church. Later, as reigning princess mother, she built a school for her fellow Lutherans (which Bach’s children attended) and established a foundation for Lutheran girls and women of gentle birth. Fond of an unpretentious life-style, she chose after her husband’s death to reside with her children in a modest house across the street from St. Agnus’s Church. While she ruled with considerable wisdom, political prudence, and a strong sense of equity and social justice, she also kept a firm grip on everything that would benefit the largely underprivileged Lutherans. Her persistence in championing the cause of her co-religionists eventually created numerous bitter conflicts with her son after he acceded to power, as Leopold strongly upheld the “reformed” Calvinist tradition of his dynasty.
For most of his mother’s interregnum, Leopold stayed away from Cöthen. From 1707 to 1710, he attended the Ritteracademie in Berlin, one of the preeminent schools for young princes in Germany, to round off his formal education. Following a custom in the higher echelons of the aristocracy, he then set out on a grand tour, escorted by his steward and private tutor, Christoph Jost von Zanthier, who led the princely entourage of seven that included a page who kept the prince’s diary.8 In October 1710, Leopold, then almost sixteen, traveled to The Hague and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, then to England, crossed parts of Germany and France, and ended up in Italy. After a visit to Venice and a three-month stay in Rome during the spring of 1712, he returned home in April of the following year by way of Florence, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig.9 Along the way, he enjoyed opera, especially in The Hague and in Venice, and acquired a considerable amount of published music.10 Recurring expenses for harpsichord rentals and repairs as well as for strings attest to considerable musical activity,11 but Leopold also showed a keen interest in art, architecture, and books. For seven months, including a major stretch of his Italian journey, the prince was accompanied by Johann David Heinichen, who worked in Italy for six years before taking up the post of electoral Saxon capellmeister in Dresden at the beginning of 1717. They met in Rome, where Leopold wanted “to accept him as his composer and to take him along on his further travels,” according to Johann Adam Hiller, a musician writing in 1769, who added: “This Prince Leopold was a great connoisseur and champion of music; he himself played the violin not badly and sang a good bass.”12 An inventory of instruments in the prince’s private possession, compiled before they were auctioned off after his death, indicates that he also played the harpsichord and the viola da gamba.13 Hiller’s general assessment of Leopold’s musical interest and competence matches that of Bach, who refers to Leopold in a 1730 letter as one “who both loved and knew music.”14 After the prince’s formal accession to power on May 14, 1716, he was able to devote full attention to his favorite pastime.
The Cöthen court capelle had its very rudimentary beginnings in 1691, then comprising a mere three trumpets and timpani. Prince Emanuel Leberecht enlarged the ensemble in 1702 to six members and restructured it so that only one trumpeter remained. Christoph Krull, one of the new court musicians, was asked to serve as music instructor for Leopold. Five years later and perhaps at the instigation of her son, the reigning princess mother, not particularly disposed toward the court music, reluctantly appointed three Cöthen town pipers to serve simultaneously as court musicians, two of whom—Wilhelm Andreas Harbordt and Johann Freitag, Sr.—were still active when Bach arrived (see Table 7.1). Bach fired Harbordt after less than a month, but in general, the better Cöthen town musicians continued to complement the court capelle. The woodwind player Johann Gottlieb Würdig even made it to the higher rank of chamber musician.
Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen in an engraving by Martin Bernigeroth (c. 1715)
TABLE 7.1. The Cöthen Court Capelle, 1717–2317
Bach, Johann Sebastian
Capellmeister
August 1, 1717, to April 30, 1723 (titular to March 31, 1729)
Members by the end of 1717
Title or function
Principal instruments (if known) and remarks
Spieß, Josepha
Premier Cammer Musicus
violin
Abel, Christian Ferdinand
Chamber musician
violin, viola da gamba
Lienicke, Carl Bernharda
Chamber musician
violoncello
Rose, Johann Ludwiga
Chamber musician
oboe; also (until June 1722) fencingteacher
Marcus, Martin Friedricha
Chamber musician
violin; left in June 1722
Torlé, Johann Christopha
Chamber musician
bassoon
Würdig, Johann Gottlieb
Chamber and town musician
flute (recorder), until June 1722; concurrently and beyond 1722, director of town pipers
Freitag, Johann Heinrich
Chamber musician
flute (recorder); died on August 1, 1720
Harbordt, Wilhelm Andreas Freitag, Immanuel Heinrich Gottlieb
Court and town musician Court musician; then chamber musician
died August 1719 June 1720 to April 1721 on leave to Berlin; promoted on return
Freitag, Johann, Sr.
Court and town musician
Weber, Adam
Court and town musician
Göbel, Johann Bernhard
Copyist
left in June 1718
Krahl, Johann Christoph
Court trumpeter
also chamber groom
Schreiber, Johann Ludwig
Court trumpeter
died March 28, 1723
Unger, Anton
Court timpanist
also innkeeper in town; died December 1719
Members appointed 1718 and later
Gottschalck, Emanuel Leberecht
Copyist
from April 1719; previously organist at St. Agnus Church; succeeded J. B. Bach; also served as Prince Leopold’s chamber valet
Rolle, Christian Ernst
Court musician
from June, 1722; replaced Marcus; also organist at St. Agnus Church
Vetter, Carl Friedrich
Court musician
tenor; June 1718 to August 1720
Fischer, Johann Valentin
Court musician
June 1718 to June 1720
Monjou, Jean François
Court musician
from June 1719; also master of pages
Volland, Johann
Court timpanist
from early 1720; replaced Unger
, without fixed salary; also innkeeper
Wilcke (Bach), Anna Magdalena
Chamber musician
soprano; June (?) 1721 through April 1723
Associates
Bach, Johann Bernhard
Copyist
July 1718 through March 1719; temporarily replaced Göbel
Colm, Johann
Copyist (?)
June 1719 to June 1721
Two Monjou daughters
Singers
June 1720 to June 1721
Kelterbrunnen, Johann David
Dancing master
from June 1722
In 1713, a unique opportunity arose for the court to hire at one stroke a substantial contingent of excellent musicians. This came about when Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, the “Soldier King,” rose to power in not-too-distant Berlin and dissolved his father’s cherished court capelle. The young Prince Leopold, not yet of age and still on his grand tour, learned about the new Prussian king’s act of cultural barbarism, through indirect channels or perhaps through relationships formed at the Ritteracademie in Berlin. In any case, he managed to persuade his mother to hire a core group of the Berlin virtuosos for the Cöthen capelle. Indeed, she proceeded so swiftly that around the beginning of 1713, six distinguished musicians moved from Berlin to the small residential town of the Anhalt-Cöthen principality, some hundred miles away: the capellmeister Augustin Reinhard Stricker and his wife, singer and lutenist Catharina Elisabeth Stricker; oboist Johann Ludwig Rose; violinists Joseph Spieß and Martin Friedrich Marcus; and bassoonist Johann Christoph Torlé. The cellist Carl Bernhard Lienicke rejoined his former colleagues in 1716, shortly after Leopold’s accession to power, when the violinist and gambist Christian Ferdinand Abel was appointed as well (along with his brother Johann Christoph, a landscape gardener). Stricker now led a first-rate ensemble that, together with the ripienists—most of them recruited from among the local town musicians—formed a capelle of respectable size and even compared favorably, in both size and quality, with the musical establishments of much larger courts.
What made Augustin Reinhard Stricker, in his early forties, consider leaving such a favorable station after just three and a half years? One possibility is that Leopold simply dismissed him when the opportunity arose to hire Bach. Another relates to a move in 1716 by the electoral palatinate court to Neuburg on the Danube, Heidelberg, and Mannheim, where the versatile and productive musician Gottfried Finger was in the service of the new elector, Count Palatine Carl Philipp. Ten years earlier, Finger, Stricker, and Jean Baptiste Volumier had collaborated in composing the music for Der Sieg der Schönheit über die Helden, an opera performed in December 1706 at the marriage ceremonies of the future Prussian king, crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm. Stricker, primarily a singer (tenor) and composer, and his wife Catharina may have been lured away by Finger in the hope of reentering the world of opera, which had no place in Calvinist Cöthen. Indeed, Finger and Stricker collaborated again on stage works for Neuburg, Crudeltà consuma amore in 1717 and L’amicizia in terzo in 1718—the latter piece including as well contributions by Johann David Heinichen, who had given Prince Leopold music lessons in Rome.15 Hence, a scheme hatched by Leopold and the increasingly influential Heinichen to accommodate Stricker’s operatic aspirations and at the same time ease him out of Cöthen to make room for Bach seems quite plausible. Strangely, all traces of Stricker are lost soon after 1718, when he is last mentioned as electoral palatinate chamber composer.
At the end of 1717, when Bach took up Stricker’s responsibilities in Cöthen, the court capelle numbered sixteen members (not including the capellmeister) and consisted almost exclusively of instrumentalists (Table 7.1). In both size and structure, then, the ensemble differed fundamentally from the Weimar capelle (Table 6.2), reflecting its very different functions. While performances of music at the palace church services, for example, played a major role in Weimar, sacred music was clearly of secondary importance at the reformed Cöthen court. Therefore, the Cöthen capelle never included a full complement of singers (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), nor did it have any standing arrangements with a chorus musicus from the Latin school. Bach must have been particularly pleased to work with the core group of eight chamber musicians, well trained and distinguished virtuosi; five of them were former leading members of the Prussian court capelle, but the other three, Abel, Freitag, and Würdig, as well as the trumpeters and timpanist, would hardly have been inferior. Bach, as the ninth instrumental virtuoso, rounded out the group of soloists, which was complemented by at least five ripienists (including the copyist). Considering the small size of the town and the regularity of their professional collaboration, these musicians were bound to form a closely knit community. Bach apparently developed particularly warm and lasting personal relationships with some of his colleagues. So he became godfather in 1720 to Sophia Charlotta, daughter of the gambist Christian Ferdinand Abel (whose most famous son, Carl Friedrich, would become an associate of Johann Christian Bach in London and co-established the Bach-Abel concert series in 1765),16 and served as godfather in 1728—five years after he had left Cöthen—to Leopold, son of the violinist Joseph Spieß.
The membership of the capelle fluctuated quite a bit during Bach’s tenure, but the musicians who died or quit were replaced, leaving the overall size of the group stable. The net loss of one musician over Bach’s entire Cöthen period is insignificant, especially if we consider that qualified musicians could always be found among the court personnel, from the town, and from the so-called Expectanten, that is, people who served in the expectation of future possible employment.
One of the first decisions Bach had made as the newly appointed concertmaster in Weimar was to relocate the rehearsals of the capelle from capellmeister Drese’s apartment to the castle church, in order to exercise greater control over the ensemble. For essentially the same reasons, he held the Cöthen capelle rehearsals at his own house—convenient for the musicians, since they all lived in town—and collected from the court an annual rent subsidy of 12 talers for this purpose throughout his tenure as capellmeister. In a report of 1722, the cantor of Cöthen’s St. Jacobi Church extolled Bach’s regular rehearsal practice: “The princely capelle in this town, which week in week out holds its Exercitium musicum, makes an example that even the most famous virtuosi rehearse and exercise their things together beforehand.”18 This regular rehearsal schedule suggests a weekly or even more frequent program of courtly performances. In keeping with practices at other courts, musical soirées and other forms of musical entertainment must have been an integral part of courtly life at Cöthen, even though we lack specific information and, even more regrettably, most of the actual music made on those occasions. The repertoire would have consisted primarily of instrumental music for larger and smaller ensembles, concertos and sonatas in particular, as well as solo pieces such as keyboard and lute suites.19 Nevertheless, we can be sure that at least Bach’s instrumental compositions whose extant primary sources can be securely dated to the Cöthen years, such as the Brandenburg Concertos, the French Suites, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, and the Suites for solo cello (even if some of them may be of earlier origin), were performed at various courtly functions.
The only specific information we have on regular performances at the Cöthen court, however, pertains to two annual events in close proximity: Prince Leopold’s birthday on December 10 and New Year’s Day. Both occasions were filled with a great deal of music making that included vocal soloists, and the published texts of some congratulatory pieces survive. The librettist hired by the court for these events was Christian Friedrich Hunold (alias Menantes), at the time one of Germany’s most acclaimed poets, who taught poetry and rhetoric at Halle University. Hunold had made a name for himself by writing librettos for the Hamburg and Brunswick operas, set by Reinhard Keiser and Caspar Schürmann; he also wrote the text for Keiser’s 1705 Passion oratorio “Der blutige und sterbende Jesus.” Hunold
provided texts for three congratulatory cantatas presented on Leopold’s birthdays in 1718, 1719, and 1720—the term Serenata in the titles suggesting evening performances—for a sacred cantata performed on Leopold’s birthday in 1718, and for a secular cantata performed at the New Year’s Day celebration in 1720 (see Table 7.2). Bach’s music has survived for only two of the works, BWV 134a and 173a (we have the autograph score for both, also the original performing parts for BWV 134a). For all the other texts, the musical sources are either incomplete (BWV 66a, 184a, and 194a) or entirely lost, although the compositions reappeared in later reworkings as sacred cantatas. This picture extends, unfortunately, to works on texts by authors, mostly anonymous, other than Hunold (who died in 1721).
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