Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  In establishing a multifaceted canon of technical standards and compositional and aesthetic principles, The Well-Tempered Clavier is complemented, and in part preceded, by works of similarly profound ambitions. Both the Orgel-Büchlein and the Aufrichtige Anleitung explore how to invent, develop, and elaborate on a precisely delineated musical idea, one that is either derived from given material (such as the melody and affect of a hymn) or freely conceived. In a similar systematic way, both also focus on the buildup of stylistically appropriate performing skills (cantabile, or “singing,” for example) for two hands managing a two-or three-part contrapuntal structure on the harpsichord, or for two hands and two feet negotiating the complex textures of an organ setting. But as we may ascertain by comparing the Weimar Orgel-Büchlein with the later collections, the refined and advanced compositional art that characterizes the Cöthen repertoire emerged gradually over the years. And although keyboard works play a decisive role in this respect—harpsichord and organ functioning as his experimental laboratory—Bach’s musical efforts were from the outset much more encompassing and covered a broad range of instrumental and vocal compositions.

  We can easily discern Bach’s experimental forays by looking at his Cöthen repertoire: works either composed in Cöthen or written in Weimar and revised and collected in Cöthen. The serious losses of Bach’s vocal output are unfortunately paralleled in the instrumental realm—with the possible exception of the keyboard works—although we cannot judge the extent since the Obituary describes that part of Bach’s musical estate simply as “a mass of…instrumental pieces of all sorts and for all kinds of instruments.”107 Yet regardless of the fragmentary transmission, and even limiting our focus to the collections for which dated (or datable) original sources have survived, the Cöthen works as a group are strikingly consistent in their high quality and common purpose (see Table 7.7).

  In the keyboard category, the French Suites supplement the other collections by adding a crucial genre of composition (sans prélude, without prelude) otherwise missing. Taken together with the English Suites, BWV 806–811, avec prélude (with prelude) and of earlier origin, they demonstrate a new level of achievement in this genre, not just by concentrating on the suite type sans prélude but also by presenting more compact and more sharply focused stylizations of the traditional dances. In the non-keyboard categories, Bach’s compositional choices indicate clearly that here, too, he preferred to travel completely untrodden musical paths. Indeed, both collections of unaccompanied violin and cello pieces create the maximum effect with a minimum of instrumental “tools.” Once again, Bach the quintessential instrumentalist raises and redefines the technical standards of performing by fully exploiting the idiomatic qualities of the violin and cello. Remarkably, the free improvisatory and strict imitative realizations of his sonata-style movements and his suite (partita) dances with their rhythmic and textural flair reveal no deficiencies whatsoever when compared with the keyboard works from the same period. In fact, the transcription of the four-part Fugue in G minor for solo violin (BWV 1001/2) as an organ Fugue (BWV 539/2) shows how music originally designed to be played on the four strings of a violin does not, when performed on the manuals and pedal of an organ, gain in a structural sense: the two versions are merely a translation from one instrumental idiom into another.

  TABLE 7.7. Instrumental Collections from the Cöthen Period

  Bach’s unaccompanied violin and cello compositions also epitomize virtuosity, and, on account of their singularity, to a degree even greater than his keyboard works of comparable technical demands. Both sets of solo pieces demonstrate Bach’s command of performing techniques but also his ability to bring into play, without even an accompanying bass part, dense counterpoint and refined harmony with distinctive and well-articulated rhythmic designs, especially in the dance movements. Instrumental virtuosity is displayed on a less intense yet larger scale in the Brandenburg Concertos, a collection of six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments (concertos with several Instruments)—so called in the original score because the pieces feature the concerto genre in varying configurations of solo instruments. “Several instruments” actually understates the case, for Bach makes use, again in a systematic manner, of the widest imaginable spectrum of orchestral instruments. The modest title does not begin to suggest the degree of innovation exhibited in the daring combinations, as Bach once again enters uncharted territory. Every one of the six concertos set a precedent in its scoring, and every one was to remain without parallel.

  The design of the concertos reflects the composer’s own choice and shows no evidence of any external influence as, for example, a request from a commissioning patron. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, the collection does not reflect specific structure of ensembles available either to the margrave of Brandenburg or to the prince of Anhalt-Cöthen. In any case, the origin of most if not all of these concertos, at least in their earliest versions, most likely predates Bach’s Cöthen appointment. Their overall layout as well as voice-leading details, thematic-motivic treatment, and imitative polyphony definitely predate the standards set by The Well-Tempered Clavier. But there is a further consideration that argues against a Cöthen origin. Eighteenth-century protocol would have required Bach, while in the employ of Prince Leopold, to obtain formal permission for dedicating such a work to another sovereign, and it is hard to imagine that Bach could have submitted to the margrave of Brandenburg a bundle of works originally written for the prince of Anhalt-Cöthen—especially if the prince was fond of them and considered them his property. We can therefore assume that Bach carefully selected from outside the restricted Cöthen contingent the best of his concerto compositions that would properly fit into an uncommon collection. In the end, the six concertos embody a repertoire fashioned more for its instrumental diversity than for any other reason.

  The selection criteria appear to follow a scheme that highlights in half a dozen examples a maximum number of different solo instruments and their combinations (see Table 7.8). All three orchestral families are included, with their main subspecies: brass instruments with trumpet and French horn (corno da caccia); woodwinds with recorder (flauto and flauto d’echo),109 transverse flute, oboe, and bassoon; and strings with violin, piccolo violin, viola, cello, and viola da gamba. The only instrument lacking a solo function is the double bass (violone), a pivotal member of the continuo group, while another component of the continuo group, the harpsichord, is assigned a prominent, indeed exceptional, obbligato part.

  Bach juxtaposes the solo groups and their ripieno support in the opening and finale movements—modifications are made for the middle movements—with highly imaginative choices: a rich array of brass, woodwinds, and strings in an eleven-part score in Concerto No. 1; a heterogeneous treble solo of trumpet, recorder, oboe, and violin in Concerto No. 2; and a trio of violin and 2 echo recorders, where the dominating concertato violin alternatively functions as a bassetto (high bass) in Concerto No. 4. Even more surprising is Bach’s treatment of all-string ensembles: in Concerto No. 3 a ninefold solo group of three stratified trios of 3 violins, 3 violas, and 3 cellos, and in Concerto No. 6 a six-part score with two contrasting but low-register trio formations, 2 violas and cello (the “modern” four-stringers) on the one side and 2 violas da gamba and violone (the “old-fashioned” six-stringers) on the other. Another special case is presented by Concerto No. 5, which in its middle movement features transverse flute, violin, and harpsichord, the most fashionable chamber trio of the time, but which in its outer movements turns that trio into a concertino with a commanding harpsichord part—the first time in the history of the concerto that a solo keyboard instrument is so boldly integrated. Adding his quasi-signature as a composer–harpsichord virtuoso, Bach included in the dedication score for the margrave an elaborate sixty-four-measure harpsichord cadenza that would find its equivalent only later in the written-out piano concerto cadenzas of Mozart and Beethoven.

  TABLE 7.8. Concerts avec plusieurs instruments (“Bran
denburg Concertos”): Scoring

  Italics indicate scoring of middle movements.

  It has been suggested with good reason that Concerto No. 5, in an earlier version, was written for Bach’s 1717 expected meeting with Louis Marchand and that Bach was joined for the performance by his colleagues from the Dresden court capelle, violinist Jean-Baptiste Woulmyer and flutist Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin.110 This credible hypothesis may well recall Bach’s encounter with Marchand as depicted in the Obituary as an engagement “in a musical contest for superiority.” The extravagantly virtuosic harpsichord part of Concerto No. 5 indeed turns this concerto into a showpiece highlighting the brilliant technique of its performer. However, all the Brandenburg Concertos celebrate performing virtuosity, and beyond that, all of them collectively testify to the compositional virtuosity—the facility, finesse, mastery, and genius—of their creator.

  This balance of performing and compositional virtuosity both marks and circumscribes the canon of principles that Bach established in the remote and isolated environs of the Cöthen court, with the encouragement of an understanding patron. Composing desk and practice studio were never far apart in Bach’s creative life, but the Cöthen atmosphere particularly nourished his pursuit of an art that amounted to nothing less than a personal branch of musical science. The basic nature of musical competition changed as he set himself on a course distinct from that of peers like Telemann and Handel—but without ever losing interest in what they were doing. While Telemann’s concertos and Handel’s keyboard suites contributed significantly to the instrumental repertoire, they generally remained within the conventional framework. Wherever possible, Bach chose to expand that framework. But to him, striving for “musical superiority” meant much more than pushing the limits of performing skills and compositional techniques. It meant systematizing the new paths he was forging through the maze of twenty-four keys, countless genres, a profusion of styles, a myriad of technical devices, melodic and rhythmic fashions, vocal and instrumental idioms. And especially, it meant integrating the canon of compositional principles he had established, most notably in the Aufrichtige Anleitung and The Well-Tempered Clavier, not merely to teach others but to challenge himself. Only in this way could Bach assure himself of never falling below the prevailing standards and forfeiting the quest for novel solutions.

  8

  Redefining a Venerable Office

  CANTOR AND MUSIC DIRECTOR IN LEIPZIG: THE 1720s

  A CAPELLMEISTER AT ST. THOMAS’S

  “Leipzig, May 29, 1723. This past Saturday [May 22] at noon, four wagons loaded with household goods arrived here from Cöthen; they belonged to the former Princely Capellmeister there, now called to Leipzig as Cantor Figuralis. He himself arrived with his family on 2 carriages at 2 o’clock and moved into the newly renovated apartment in the St. Thomas School.”1 This item, reported by a Hamburg newspaper, was not just local news. Apparently the same people—probably Leipzig city officials—who in February had informed the press about Bach’s well-received audition wanted to announce that the princely capellmeister not only had won the appointment but also had, indeed, arrived in the city. The move signaled what would turn out to be a twenty-seven-year-long tenure as Cantor et Director Musices, Bach’s official title describing his function as cantor at the St. Thomas School and music director responsible for the four city churches. Bach would actually be the longest-serving Thomascantor since Valentin Otto, who had held the position for forty years (from 1564). During the almost year-long interval following Johann Kuhnau’s death, first choir prefect Johann Gabriel Roth—a capable and highly regarded substitute who in 1726 went as cantor to Geringswalde and in 1730 as town cantor to Grimma—bore primary responsibility for meeting both the instructional needs of the school and the musical needs of the churches,2 but now a new beginning was in sight. Of even greater significance than capellmeister Bach’s taking up the cantor’s regular duties was the expectation that he would play a crucial role in reshaping the city’s musical life, a role that only “a famous man,” in the words of the reigning burgomaster, could fulfill.

  From the beginning, the ambitions of the Leipzig city fathers—led by Dr. Gottfried Lange, burgomaster and chairman of the board of the St. Thomas Church—were the driving force in naming a new cantor. They regarded the appointment as a chance to bolster the attractiveness and reputation of the city, which was well-known as a center of trade and learning. Originally a Slavic settlement called Lipsk (urbs Libzi, place of the linden trees) and uniquely located in a fertile plain at the confluence of the Pleisse, White Elster, and Parthe Rivers, Leipzig was chartered between 1156 and 1170. It rapidly developed into a significant commercial center at the intersection of several important ancient trade routes spreading in all directions—southwest to Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Italy; west to Erfurt, Frankfurt, the Rhinelands, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and Spain; northwest to Magdeburg and either the Netherlands via Brunswick, the Netherlands and England via the port of Hamburg, or Scandinavia and Russia via the port of Lübeck; north-northeast to Berlin and the Baltic Sea ports of Wismar, Rostock, Stettin, and Stralsund; northeast to Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, Danzig, Königsberg, and the Baltics; southeast to Dresden and from there to either Breslau, Cracow, Lublin, and Russia or southeast to Prague, Vienna, and Hungary. From the twelfth century on, special imperial and papal privileges enabled the city to establish regular trade fairs, which by 1458 were held three times a year for a week to ten days each: the New Year’s Fair beginning on January 1, the Easter or Jubilate Fair in the spring (beginning on Jubilate Sunday), and the St. Michael’s Fair in the fall (beginning on the Sunday after St. Michael’s Day). By around 1710, Leipzig had surpassed Frankfurt-on-the-Main as “the marketplace of Europe,” the premier trade fair locale in the German lands, regularly attracting between six thousand and ten thousand exhibitors and visitors.3

  In contrast to Hamburg and Frankfurt, its principal mercantile rivals, Leipzig was also the seat of a university. Founded in 1409, Leipzig University provided the scene for the famous religious disputation between theology professors Martin Luther, Andreas Karlstadt, and Johann Eck in 1519 and, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, had grown into one of Germany’s largest and most distinguished institutions of higher learning. In many ways, the often mutually supportive forces of business and mercantile economy on the one hand and higher education and erudite scholarship on the other turned out to be a most powerful combination for Leipzig, unique in comparison with other renowned German university towns like Jena, Heidelberg, and Tübingen. An eminent professoriate, a dynamic and forward-looking academic youth, and a literate bourgeoisie advanced the development of the city as an unrivaled center of the book trade and of scientific and general publishing.4 These activities contributed markedly to Leipzig’s reputation, by the middle of the eighteenth century, as Germany’s intellectual capital—a place of irresistible attraction for young people desirous of superb academic schooling and general education, as was, for example, the young Goethe.

  Smaller than Hamburg and equal in size to Frankfurt, Leipzig was held back more seriously and lastingly in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War than either of those two. But beginning around 1700, the city, with some thirty thousand inhabitants,5 experienced a period of unprecedented growth and affluence, and by the 1730s boasted nine banks that handled monetary transactions.6 The prosperous, proud, and influential merchant families, many of them prominently represented on the three-tiered city council, were struck by a real building fever. By 1710, the Romanus, Apel, and Hohmann families had set the standard for opulent new edifices with ornate facades. These grand bourgeois houses, which occupied entire blocks and whose large-scale dimensions often accommodated courts as well as wings for exhibition facilities and commercial use, would transform the cityscape within but one generation. Outside the city walls, elaborate parks were laid out, complete with hothouses, orangeries, lodges, and the like; two fancy parks of the Bose family were outstanding examples of French-s
tyle horticultural design. All these enterprises fundamentally changed the architectural profile of the city and its immediate surroundings. Contributing to an atmosphere of growing bourgeois cognizance of higher culture was an interest in art collecting among prosperous citizens, merchants who built large collections of paintings, drawings, engravings, and sculptures. The grandest among them, Johann Christoph Richter’s art cabinet in his Thomaskirchhof mansion (with four hundred works by Titian, Raphael, Lucas van Leyden, Rubens, and others),7 and Gottfried Winckler’s collection (with paintings by Leonardo, Giorgione, Veronese, Tintoretto, Rubens, Hals, Breughel, Rembrandt, and others)8 at the city’s main market square were accessible to the public; Winckler offered free general admission on Wednesday afternoons from 2 to 4.9 As elegant coffeehouses contributed to the quality of social life, Leipzig saw its promotion of bourgeois gallantry, its cultivation of exquisite fashions and excellent manners, and the international flavor of its bustling business traffic—mainly in conjunction with the frequent fairs—earn it the nickname “Little Paris.”10

  Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, this vibrant period of economic expansion coupled with a reaction to the bold and ambitious moves of electoral Saxony’s powerful ruler, Augustus II (the Strong), spurred a remarkable competition with other cities—notably Hamburg, Frankfurt, and increasingly the nearby capital of Dresden—that formed the immediate backdrop for Bach’s appointment. It was the mission of the Lange faction of the city council to make Leipzig not merely the city of Apollo and Mercury, the Greek gods of trade and wisdom (as invoked by the libretto of the secular cantata “Apollo et Mercurius,” BWV 216a, of 1728–31), but a home of the visual and performing arts as well. Consequently, Picander’s libretto for BWV 36c/9 of 1725 praises Leipzig as “our Helikon,” an unabashed reference to the mountain seen as the mythological seat of the muses. Not everything went according to plan: the Leipzig opera had failed in 1720, and its building served as a penitentiary facility until the second half of the eighteenth century, there being no interest in rescuing a bankrupt operation. On the other hand, other secular musical entertainment was generally flourishing, promoted mainly by two local music societies, or Collegia Musica. One of the two, founded by Georg Philipp Telemann in 1701, operated successfully on a professional level and, on Bach’s arrival and for some time to come, continued under the able leadership of Georg Balthasar Schott, organist and music director at the New Church. Beginning in 1723, the regular weekly performances of this Collegium Musicum were staged at the premises of the entrepreneurial cafétier Gottfried Zimmermann, with outdoor performances during the summer. The other and apparently older Collegium,11 directed from 1723 by Johann Gottlieb Görner, organist at St. Nicholas’s and St. Paul’s, performed at Enoch Richter’s coffeehouse.