If, in passing through Weissenfels on his August trip to Schleiz, Bach indeed visited the Wilcke family, it could not have been a first encounter with Magdalena because she had been in Cöthen in June. Was she there, then, for an audition, and was Bach now offering her a job? Had she already been given the position in June, and was Bach now visiting with the parents in order to ask for their daughter’s hand? Quite possibly, Magdalena joined the Cöthen capelle around or before June 15, 1721, in the high-ranking post of chamber musician. In this case, Bach must have been assured of her extraordinary qualifications, either from an audition at some point in the spring or from a performance on some earlier occasion (the latter may have happened at the neighboring court of Anhalt-Zerbst).77 Considering the close connections between the various central German principalities, the audition may have been held in any of several places. Moreover, considering the complex interrelationships among the musicians and their families, it would have been unusual for Bach not to have encountered at some time the extended Wilcke family of musicians.78
When Magdalena Wilcke celebrated her twentieth birthday in Cöthen on September 22, 1721, having reached top rank and pay in a princely capelle with her first professional appointment (above that of her father and brother),79 she could rightfully anticipate a most promising career as a singer. And she definitely planned to continue her professional life when the capellmeister asked her to marry him. Bach himself supported her intention, and thus she remained fully active in the capelle until their move to Leipzig. The Bach household had continued to run smoothly, managed by Johann Sebastian’s sister-in-law Friedelena Bach, with the help of a maid named Anna Elisabeth.80 Still, when on December 3, 1721—nearly one and a half years after Maria Barbara Bach’s death—the widowed Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena Wilcke “were married at home, by command of the Prince,”81 it certainly brought a dramatic and generally uplifting change for Bach and his four children. And they seem to have celebrated the happy event in opulent style. Around the time of the wedding, Bach contracted a major shipment of Rhine wine, at a discount granted him by the Cöthen Ratskeller: four pails and eight quarts (one pail = sixty-four quarts) for 84 talers 16 groschen (more than a fifth of his annual salary).82 In all likelihood, the wedding was attended by many members of the Bach and Wilcke families and by friends and colleagues at the Cöthen court, as the date selected for the ceremony, the Wednesday after the first Sunday in Advent, insured that weekend church obligations would not prevent any of the guests, most of them musicians, from attending.
Probably not long after the wedding but sometime in 1722, Anna Magdalena started an album in which Johann Sebastian entered compositions for her to play in order to improve and cultivate her keyboard skills or that he would play to entertain her. She herself wrote the title page, Clavier-Büchlein vor Anna Magdalena Bachin, Anno 1722, and a few headings, but the musical entries are written exclusively in Johann Sebastian’s hand. They include, at the beginning, composing scores of five short yet highly refined harpsichord suites, BWV 812–816—first versions of pieces that would eventually become the set of the six so-called French Suites. Besides these suites of stylish dances, representing the most fashionable genre of galant keyboard music, the album also includes a chorale prelude on “Jesu, meine Zuversicht,” BWV 728, and an easy-to-play (unfinished) Fantasia pro Organo in C major, BWV 573, indicating that Bach wanted his wife to feel at home on his own instrument as well. Unfortunately, as the album has survived in a dreadfully mutilated state, with only twenty-five leaves remaining out of about seventy to seventy-five, the precious document provides information that is more suggestive than exhaustive about the couple’s intimate and serious musical companionship.
By around the time of their first anniversary and two years after the Hamburg trip, Bach made a serious bid for the position of cantor at St. Thomas’s and music director in Leipzig, which had fallen vacant with the death on June 5, 1722, of Johann Kuhnau. What motivated him? He had apparently grown frustrated with the Cöthen situation and did not see much of a future there—despite the fact that his good relations with Prince Leopold had not changed and that he had, as he later put it, “intended to spend the rest of my life” at the court. The capelle budget suffered a cut in 1722 that signaled trouble; to make things worse, the violinist Martin Friedrich Marcus had to be dismissed and was not replaced. Some long-standing internal quarrels within the princely family flashed up noticeably in August 1722 over issues of power sharing and feudal pensions that undermined Prince Leopold’s authority and resulted in severe losses of income for his court.83 Leopold’s continuing health problems posed an additional risk for Bach. Moreover, the smoldering religious feud between two Protestant constituencies—the Lutheran minority championed by the princess mother versus the Calvinist majority supported by the reigning prince and his retinue—was now directly affecting Bach’s family. For example, the fact that he and Anna Magdalena had been married at home, following the custom for second marriages, meant that Bach—a Lutheran marrying a Lutheran—was exempted from paying the fee of 10 talers to the Lutheran St. Agnus Church. But since the exemption had been made “by command of the prince,” thus establishing an unwelcome precedent, it resulted in an official, annoying complaint.84 A more serious situation arose out of some setbacks to the Lutheran school that Bach’s children attended. A memorandum to the princess mother dated 1722 addresses the lack of space and shortage of teachers, citing an extreme example of 117 children being lumped into one class. In addition, the theological, educational, and moral qualifications of the school’s inspector, St. Agnus pastor Paulus Berger, were earnestly in question.85 All this commotion in the court and school formed the immediate background for Bach’s intentions “to seek his fortune elsewhere,” a phrase he also used in his 1730 letter to Georg Erdmann.86
News about Leipzig, about forty miles away, was not hard to come by in Cöthen. On August 11, 1722, without much delay, the Leipzig town council had elected Georg Philipp Telemann to the cantorate. Having begun his musical career in 1701 in Leipzig, where, as a law student at the university, he founded a Collegium Musicum and also served briefly as organist and music director of the New Church before he departed for Sorau in 1704,87 Telemann was well remembered in the city. He also fulfilled the ambitious expectations of the council in that he was a famous musician who, both as music director in Frankfurt and then as cantor and music director in Hamburg, had held comparable municipal positions. In many ways, Telemann was a natural choice, but after weighing his options seriously for three months, he declined the appointment in November 1722. The Hamburg city council had improved his financial situation so that the Leipzig post no longer seemed as attractive, even though the musical and academic establishment at St. Thomas’s was better than that at the Johanneum. Also, Hamburg let him simultaneously take over the directorship of the opera at the Goose Market and the leadership of the Collegium Musicum, an offer that ultimately must have tipped the balance. Since Telemann auditioned for the St. Thomas post in August, he would have passed two times through Cöthen on his way to and from Leipzig. It is quite possible that he interrupted his trip at least once, probably on his return to Hamburg, to see his friend Bach and his eight-year-old godchild Carl Philipp Emanuel. Thus Bach may have learned about Telemann’s negotiations and, later, even about the turn of his plans before anyone in Leipzig knew. Was it perhaps Telemann himself who encouraged Bach to throw his hat into the ring when the competition was reopened?
The Leipzig authorities were now back where they had started, and the inner city council—the executive body of the larger, three-tiered council—began, at a meeting on November 23, 1722, to reevaluate the remaining five of the original set of candidates from which they had chosen Telemann: Johann Friedrich Fasch, capellmeister to the court of Anhalt-Zerbst; Georg Lembke, cantor in Laucha; Christian Friedrich Rolle, cantor at St. John’s in Magdeburg; Georg Balthasar Schott, organist and music director at the New Church in Leipzig; and Johann Martin Steindo
rff, cantor at the cathedral of St. Mary in Zwickau.88 Also, two new names had come up in the meantime: Andreas Christoph Duve, cantor at St. Mary’s in Brunswick, and Georg Friedrich Kauffmann, organist and music director in Merseburg. But the councillors were unable to agree on a rank list of these seven, and they also disagreed about the selection criteria. Two factions with conflicting views had formed, one primarily interested in an academically trained, solid teacher, the other chiefly in a musical luminary who would help upgrade the city’s rather dull musical scene and make it more comparable to places like Frankfurt and Hamburg, not to mention their electoral Saxon capital of Dresden, on which the more ambitious of the Leipzig councillors kept a permanent eye.
By the time of the next meeting on December 21, another two names had sprung up: Christoph Graupner, capellmeister to the court of Hesse-Darmstadt, and Johann Sebastian Bach. According to the council minutes, Burgomaster Gottfried Lange presented
those who were to be subjected to examination for the cantorate…namely, Capellmeister Graupner in Darmstadt and Bach in Cöthen; Fasch, on the other hand, declared that he could not teach, along with his other duties, and the candidate from Merseburg requested again that he be admitted to examination.
Resolved: Rolle, Kauffmann, and also Schott should be admitted to examination, especially with regard to the teaching.89
The stage was now set for the second round, and the group headed by the influential Burgomaster Lange, who also chaired the board of the St. Thomas Church and who had previously been a law professor at Leipzig University and a government official in Dresden, prevailed. Two court capellmeisters, Graupner and Bach, turned out to be the favorites; the third capellmeister, Fasch, was dropped from consideration because he “could not teach.” Graupner was ranked ahead of Bach, for two reasons. First, like Telemann, he was a familiar figure in Leipzig; an alumnus of the St. Thomas School, he had also been a private pupil of former cantors Schelle and Kuhnau. Second, from 1704 to 1706, he had studied law at Leipzig University. In fact, the only major candidate without a university education was Bach (all his predecessors in the St. Thomas cantorate since the sixteenth century and all his successors until well into the nineteenth century were university trained)—evidence that the Leipzig authorities had no doubts about Bach’s academic qualifications and chose in his case to ignore all conventions. Besides, Bach was by no means unknown in Leipzig. In 1717, he had examined the new organ at St. Paul’s Church upon the invitation of the university; and Burgomeister Lange, at a later point in the proceedings of the city council, pointedly remarked that “Bach excels at the keyboard.”90 Lange, who had been a ministerial assistant to Count Flemming in Dresden at the time of the Marchand affair, may have been one among “the large company of persons of high rank” who heard Bach play at the count’s mansion.
The clear preference given to the two candidates of capellmeister rank is also reflected in the fact that each was asked to present two cantatas, one before and one after the sermon, at his audition, set for the second Sunday after Epiphany (January 17, 1723, Graupner) and Estomihi Sunday (February 7, Bach). The other candidates had to content themselves with one cantata performance each.91 Graupner, however, received special recognition in that he was invited to present, outside of the officially scheduled cantorate trials, a Magnificat for the 1722 Christmas Vespers at St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas’s Churches. Two days before his audition, on January 15, the city council discussed the cantor’s appointment again and basically agreed, in advance of the formal trial performance, to offer Graupner the job, with the warning from Burgomaster Lange that “precaution should be taken to see that he could obtain dismissal from his court.”92 Meanwhile, in Cöthen, Bach prepared for his audition by setting to music two texts that were sent to him from Leipzig, “Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe” (in a six-movement structure) and “Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn” (in three movements), cantata poetry that closely resembles the verses found in Graupner’s audition pieces, “Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden” (seven movements) and “Aus der Tiefen rufen wir” (three movements). The poet is not known, but the most probable candidate seems to have been Burgomaster Lange, who not only had a track record as a poet and opera librettist93 but also showed a keen personal interest in shaping the Kuhnau succession in what he thought would be the right way. Would that turn out to be the right way for Bach as well? Perhaps composing texts of the kind he had not set since Weimar helped Bach overcome doubts he harbored about making the right move: “At first, indeed, it did not seem at all proper for me to change my position of Capellmeister for that of Cantor. Wherefore, then, I postponed my decision for a quarter of a year; but this post was described to me in such favorable terms that finally (particularly since my sons seemed inclined toward [university] studies) I cast my lot, in the name of the Lord, and made the journey to Leipzig, took my examination, and then made the change of position.”94
When Bach arrived in Leipzig for his examination and audition, he brought along with him the finished cantata scores and most of the performing parts. On February 8, the Monday after the cantorate trial, he was reimbursed 20 talers for his expenses, the same amount allowed Telemann, though Bach had a much shorter distance to travel, suggesting that he stayed in Leipzig for more than a week. (Telemann spent exactly two weeks there when he auditioned the previous year.) Bach and the Leipzig authorities needed time for all kinds of discussions relating to the position, but of utmost importance for Bach were the preparations for performing the two cantatas, “Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe,” BWV 22 (for SATB, oboe, strings, and continuo), and “Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn,” BWV 23 (for SATB, 2 oboi d’amore, strings, and continuo). These were ambitious compositions: BWV 23, with its expansive duet solos, clearly follows the model of the Cöthen congratulatory cantatas, while BWV 22 more readily foreshadows the cantata type that would prevail in the first months of Bach’s tenure as the new cantor. From the original sources of the two works, we can deduce that the performing materials brought along from Cöthen needed to be completed. We can see as well that Bach decided to extend BWV 23 by one movement, the elaborate chorale setting “Christe, du Lamm Gottes,” BWV 23/4, adding to the orchestra a cornetto and three trombones to double the choir parts and giving the work, with the text and melody of the German Agnus Dei, a more liturgical character. This movement was not a newly composed piece but was taken from a finished work, most likely the Weimar (or Gotha) Passion of 1717, BC D1, which Bach brought along to Leipzig in his baggage—perhaps to be able to show an example of a large-scale composition, perhaps to offer it for performance in case such a work was needed for the upcoming Good Friday Vespers. The need apparently did not arise, but in the added finale to BWV 23 the people in Leipzig were given a taste of what such a work might be like. Although hardly anyone would have known then how promising it really was, newpapers in Leipzig and elsewhere reported on the audition for the cantorate by the “the Hon. Capellmeister of Cöthen, Mr. Bach…the music of the same having been amply praised on that occasion by all knowledgeable persons.”95 Oddly, and perhaps significantly, none of the other auditions left a trail in the newspapers.
Despite the favorable impression left in Leipzig, Bach returned to Cöthen without the promise of a job; Graupner had been chosen before Bach had even arrived on the scene. But Lange’s fears came true: Landgrave Ernst Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt did not grant his capellmeister the requested dismissal, and Graupner was forced to decline the Leipzig offer, as he informed the Leipzig authorities on March 22. On April 9, almost two weeks after Easter, the city council returned to the matter of the cantorate, but unfortunately the minutes of this important meeting have survived only incompletely. We can see, though, that the faction preferring a teacher-cantor took the lead: after
the man who had been favored [Graupner]…the others in view were the Capellmeister at Cöthen, Bach; Kauffmann in Merseburg; and Schott here, but none of the three would be able to teach [academic subjects] also, and in Telemann’s case considera
tion had already been given to a division [of the duties].
Appeals Councillor Platz: The latter suggestion he considered for several reasons somewhat questionable; since the best could not be obtained, a mediocre one would have to be accepted; many good things had once been said about a man in Pirna.96
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