Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  There is no question that the academic climate and surroundings of the St. Thomas School and Leipzig University shaped Bach’s thinking and had a profound impact on his daily work. After all, the community of students and colleagues formed the core of his audience. As a performer-composer, he had no competition in town. He moved among the distinguished scholars of the academic community: his professorial colleagues at the St. Thomas School, the erudite Lutheran clergy, and his academic friends. Their daily work and the level and content of their intellectual discourse, ranging from conservative theological and philosophical orthodoxy to progressive rationalism, influenced his own thinking. And the products of their scholarship provided the immediate context for his own musical products. While not directly comparable in terms of actual content (after all, we don’t even know which books by his Leipzig colleagues Bach read), they were related in terms of their function as educational, enlightening, and uplifting contributions to the intellectual environment at large.

  Bach was drawn into the narrower realm of Leipzig University for purely external reasons as well, for he remained an Isenacus, a burgher of Eisenach, for his entire life. He never acquired Leipzig citizenship, but benefited from the privileged status and legal protection of the “university relatives”: after his death, for example, the university functioned as probate court for his estate. Yet his horizon was forged neither by the small localities in which he lived and worked, including the unassuming city of Leipzig, nor by the narrow range of his travels. As compared with the cosmopolitan orientation and experience of colleagues like Handel and Telemann, Bach’s world was defined not so much by geographic boundaries as by the greater universe of scholarship, which knows no boundaries and where the very concepts employed in approaching the world are themselves a topic of intellectual inquiry. Just as Leipzig academicians ranging from conservative to progressive in this age of reason were seeking to discover the laws governing God’s creation and explain the causes and principles of nature, Bach undertook his own empirical and open-ended inquiry into the secrets and principles of music in order to offer his own resounding explanations and reverberating demonstrations.

  MUSIC DIRECTOR AT THE UNIVERSITY

  The long-standing arrangements between the Academia Lipsiensis (Leipzig University), one of the oldest German universities, and the cantors at St. Thomas’s pertained especially to the divine service held for the academic community at St. Paul’s, the University Church, four times a year (on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, Whitsunday, and the Reformation Festival). The connection was evident as well at the so-called Quartals-Orationes—academic orations held each quarter—and other ceremonial academic events. Owing to the established personal union of the St. Thomas cantorate and the academic music directorate, there was no question about who would compose the ceremonial music when the university celebrated its three-hundredth anniversary in 1709. So cantor Kuhnau, who also held a law degree from the university, wrote for the occasion “Der Herr hat Zion erwehlet,” a cantata performed on December 4.18 The following summer, however, when the university increased its academic worship services at St. Paul’s from four per year to weekly on Sundays throughout the year, the previous arrangements—involving the Thomascantor only on a part-time basis—had to be substantially modified. An organist had to be appointed for the New Divine Service, as the newly instituted Sunday service was called (Kuhnau himself had served as organist for the four annual academic services until this point),19 and concerted music had to be provided for the feast days outside of what was now dubbed the Old Divine Service and for the Sundays during the trade fairs. As long as he could, Kuhnau resisted any effort to appoint a second academic music director in charge of the New Service, fearing that it would only result in a further drain on the limited personnel resources available in the city for music. The activities of the Collegium Musicum at the New Church under the direction of Telemann and his successors had taught Kuhnau an unpleasant lesson in unwelcome competition, and he worried that St. Paul’s would become a home for the city’s other Collegium Musicum. For a while, therefore, performances by members of the latter Collegium took place irregularly and informally, and definitely without financial support from the university. But after Kuhnau’s death and during the vacancy of the cantorate, the opportunity arose for a reorganization of the church music at St. Paul’s.

  Johann Gottlieb Görner, a former Kuhnau student, St. Thomas School alumnus, organist at St. Nicholas’s since 1721, and leader of one of the two Collegia Musica in town, had for some time conducted the concerted music at St. Paul’s “out of his own free will and without asking for anything.” Now on April 3, 1723, only a few weeks before Bach’s election to the St. Thomas cantorate, the university agreed to Görner’s request and appointed him music director for “the New Divine Service, at ordinary Sunday and feast day sermons,” specifying that “the old music, however, for the quadrimester festal sermons remain with the town cantor.”20 Bach, then, took up his Leipzig office with the additional obligation of academic music director, but the Thomascantor was no longer the only one holding that title. Moreover, in the absence of any formal contract for either Bach or Görner with the university, the division of responsibilities was less clear than it should have been; not surprisingly, problems arose during Bach’s first half-year in Leipzig over compensation and incidental fees connected with his university duties, that is, the cantata performances at the Old Service and the singing of motets at the quarterly academic orations. At the time of his negotiations with the city council in the spring of 1723, he was led to believe that he could expect 12 talers from the university for the Old Service alone, a situation symptomatic of the informal and disastrously inaccurate manner in which Burgomaster Lange and others made projections of the cantor’s prospective annual income of 1,000 to 1,200 talers—the city fathers probably being unaware of the arrangements the university had just made with Görner. So Bach was understandably taken aback when he ended up with only half the expected amount. He suspected that the modest salary Görner received for the New Service was actually taken from what used to be paid to the cantor for the Old Service,21 and he was probably right, even though the university council insisted that payments for the two different services were “entirely unrelated.”22

  The problems were not wholly financial, however. Bach also wanted a more clearly defined role with respect to musical functions at the university over and above those at the Old and New Services. He based his argument on the premise that before the creation of the New Service, the cantor and music director of the Old Service was in charge of all musical performances at the university. And to support this view, he called on the widows of his two predecessors, Sabina Elisabeth Kuhnau and Maria Elisabeth Schelle, as witnesses. But by the fall of 1725, with two years having gone by, the discussions going nowhere, and the university owing him a substantial amount of money, he decided to appeal directly to the highest authority, King Friedrich August I, the university’s protector. Bach formally complained about the loss of honoraria for “the Directorium of the music at the conferring of doctoral degrees and other solemn University occasions in St. Paul’s,” activities that “used to belong, indisputably, at least as far as music was concerned, to the Old Divine Service.” Since he was invited to play a recital on the Silbermann organ of St. Sophia’s Church in Dresden on or before September 20, 1725, Bach could hand-deliver his first letter of September 14 to the court. Yet this and two subsequent letters of November 3 and December 31 did not bring about the desired result. For the king’s decision, communicated to the university by a written decree dated January 21, 1726, affirmed the university’s position in the matter.23

  Because the cantor at St. Thomas’s reported as a municipal officer to another jurisdiction, Bach could hardly have realized that from the university’s perspective, its autonomy was at stake. When the cantorate changed hands, the university authorities seized the opportunity to keep its affairs more strictly separate, leaving Bach caught in the middle
of an increasingly suspicious and rivalrous relationship between the city and the university. It may only gradually have dawned on him what it actually meant to have signed a pledge prepared for him by the city council specifying, in part, that he should “not accept or wish to accept any office in the University” without their consent. Clearly, neither the city nor the university was eager to share the cantor. Yet despite such an inauspicious beginning, Bach conscientiously attended to the Old Service, taking his ensembles four times a year across the city to St. Paul’s, just a three-minute walk from St. Nicholas’s and no more than seven minutes away from St. Thomas’s, for a repeat performance of the cantata. He carried out this task for twenty-seven years, receiving a fixed annual fee of 13 talers 10 groschen,24 a bit more than one-eighth of his fixed cantor’s salary—not bad, really, for four cantata (repeat) performances per year, compared with the sixty due at the city’s principal churches. The conducting of motets for the quarterly orations (included in that fee) he normally delegated to one of his choir prefects, so a portion of what he collected from the university he did not even have to personally “earn.” He and Görner seem to have gotten along quite well, or Bach would not have supported Görner’s appointment as organist at St. Thomas’s in 1729 (see Table 8.2).25 After all, the two collaborated on a weekly basis from 1723 to 1750, and upon Bach’s death Görner as a family friend and “university relative” was appointed guardian for the children Johann Christoph Friedrich, Johann Christian, Johanna Carolina, and Regina Susanna Bach.26

  As compared with the divine service at Leipzig’s principal churches, the academic worship at St. Paul’s, both the Old Service and the New, was centered on the sermon, with a sharply abbreviated liturgy that was largely limited to congregational hymn singing.27 The cantata performance in the Old Service took place after the sermon, which always dealt with the Gospel lesson of the day, and a subsequent hymn. Since the academic service began at 9 A.M. and the sermon would not end until well after 10, enough time remained for Bach and his vocal-instrumental musicians to relocate, even if the main service at St. Thomas’s or St. Nicholas’s lasted the full three hours from 7 to 10, as it always did on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, Whitsunday, and the Reformation Festival. The cantata performed at St. Paul’s would ordinarily be the same work that had been presented earlier that morning, as it would be too much of a strain to consider anything but a repeat performance—all the more since there would have to be a further repeat in the early afternoon, at the Vespers of the church that had not heard a cantata performance at the morning service.

  St. Paul’s, a thirteenth-century hall church that was considerably expanded between 1471 and 1521 by the addition of a late-Gothic chancel, had served as the university’s house of God from 1409. It was fitted in 1710–12 with double galleries in order to increase its seating capacity, a direct result of the decision to establish a regular service there every Sunday. The church (which survived World War II but was demolished in 1968 in order to make room for a new building of Karl Marx University) fulfilled a secular function as well in that it operated as the university’s main auditorium. Most of the larger academic ceremonies took place there, including the quarterly orations. Right at the beginning of Bach’s Leipzig tenure, on August 9, 1723, a ceremonial gathering took place at the Auditorium Philosophicum of the Fürsten Collegium (Princes’ Collegium) on the Ritterstrasse, on the occasion of the birthday of Duke Friedrich II of Saxe-Gotha, who was visiting the university. The rector and professors attended, and the oration dedicated to the guest of honor was, as the local press reported, “accompanied by an exquisite music that Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach had composed to special Latin odes, which were printed for such purpose.”28 Neither the music nor the text of these Latin odes, BWV Anh. 20, survives, but the evidence suggests that Bach tended to be called on for particularly important and ceremonial occasions, even though such assignments could provoke the question of whose area of responsibility was involved.

  Indeed, the question arose in 1727 at one especially prominent event, when the university community paid homage to the deceased Saxon electoress and queen of Poland, Christiane Eberhardine. The estranged wife of Augustus the Strong, Christiane had decided to uphold her Lutheran faith after her husband converted to Roman Catholicism to make himself eligible for the Polish crown. The memorial oration planned for October 17 was organized by a student group of young noblemen, headed by Hans Carl von Kirchbach. As their ambitious plans included the performance of mourning music, Kirchbach approached the two most eminent Leipzig authors, commissioning the text from Johann Christoph Gottsched, professor of philosophy and poetics at the university and head of the Deutsche Gesellschaft, a literary society (to which Kirchbach belonged as well), and the music from Bach. As soon as Johann Gottlieb Görner got wind of this plan, he filed a complaint with the university, fearing a precedent if Kirchbach were permitted to bypass him by going directly to the Thomascantor, and he requested that Kirchbach be asked either to commission him instead of Bach or to pay him an indemnity. But Kirchbach—who, like others, may have considered Görner a “lousy composer”29—claimed, when he appeared on October 9 before the university administration, that he had already promised the music to Bach and paid him the honorarium, and that Bach already “had for eight days been at work composing.”30 A compromise was reached by having Kirchbach immediately ask Bach to sign a pledge, formulated by the university secretary and dated October 11, 1727. Its crucial passage reads: “Now, therefore, I recognize that this is purely a favor, and hereby agree that it is not to set any precedent…. likewise that I am neverto make any claim to the directorship of the music in St. Paul’s, much less contract with anyone for music for such solemnities or otherwise, without the consent and permission of a Worshipful University here.”31

  As could easily have been anticipated, Bach refused to sign the document because he still had his own unresolved claims against the university with regard to the division of responsibility. Yet he probably worked out a quiet understanding with Görner, who, after all, was compensated by Kirchbach with 12 talers, and the entire affair remained a one-time event. Despite a less than smooth start, Bach finished the composition of the Tombeau de S. M. la Reine de Pologne, BWV 198, delicately scored for four voices and “instruments douces” appropriate for a royal funeral music (2 transverse flutes, 2 oboes d’amore, 2 violas da gamba, 2 lutes, strings, and continuo), and the performance took place as scheduled—with the two parts of the work framing the oration delivered by Kirchbach himself. The Leipzig chronicler described the notable event:

  In solemn procession, while the bells were rung, the Town Officials and the Rector and Professors of the University entered St. Paul’s, where many others were present, namely, princely and other persons of rank, as well as not only Saxon but also foreign Ministers, Court and other Chevaliers, along with many ladies.

  When, then, everyone had taken his place, there had been a prelude by the organ, and the Ode of Mourning written by Magister Johann Christoph Gottsched, member of the Collegium Marianum, had been distributed among those present by the Beadles, there was shortly heard the Music of Mourning, which this time Capellmeister Johann Sebastian Bach had composed in the Italian style, with Clave di Cembalo, which Mr. Bach himself played, organ, violas di gamba, lutes, violins, recorders, transverse flutes, &c., half being heard before and half after the oration of praise and mourning.32

  Bach chose to disregard the poetic structure of Gottsched’s rhymed Funeral Ode by reorganizing and subdividing the nine equally shaped stanzas asymmetrically in order to set them in the Italian manner, that is, in the form of recitatives and arias. Whether or not the poet was happy with that decision, he continued his occasional collaboration with Bach, begun in 1725 with the Wedding Serenata, BC G 42, by accepting another joint commission in 1738, BWV Anh. 13 (the music for neither work survives). The latter represented a commission on behalf of the university for an official reception in April 1738 for the royal family from Dresden. In antic
ipation of the visit, the university council, chaired by rector Christian Gottlieb Jöcher,33 had resolved “(1) that a cantata be ordered, (2) that the same be composed by the cantor, Mr. Bach, and (3) that the latter be entrusted with the direction of the music”34—evidence of the unequivocal preference for Bach on the part of the academic leadership when it came to illustrious events. And they came through handsomely, with a fee of 50 talers for the cantor.

  Closer to home, a more modest funeral service was held almost exactly two years later, on October 20, 1729: Johann Heinrich Ernesti, rector of the St. Thomas School, had died at age seventy-seven, and since he had also been a university professor, the service took place at St. Paul’s. Bach set the music on the scriptural text that served as basis for the sermon, Romans 8:26–27 (“The Spirit helps our infirmities”), in the form of a double-choir motet with concluding chorale. For this piece, “Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf,” BWV 226, Bach would have used his two best vocal ensembles, the first and second choirs of the St. Thomas School. According to the extant performing materials, the singers in the choir loft were accompanied by the small organ35 and reinforced by doubling instruments, choir I supported by strings and choir II by woodwinds.

  Of Bach’s performances at St. Paul’s outside the Old Service, only these two mourning services can be documented, though there were surely others, and not solely vocal-instrumental ensemble music in conjunction with academic events. It must have interested Bach especially that St. Paul’s housed a new organ, built by Johann Scheibe, with fifty-three stops on three manuals and pedal, at the time one of the largest and finest instruments anywhere in Germany.36 At the invitation of the university rector, Bach himself had examined the instrument when it was finished in December 1717 and when Görner was organist at St. Paul’s. For the first time in his life, an organ was available to Bach for which “he could not find enough praise and laud, especially for its rare stops which were newly made and could not be found in many organs.”37 And because he would collaborate with the organ builder Scheibe for twenty-five years until the latter’s death in 1748 (see Table 5.2), we can be sure that Bach made use of the organ at St. Paul’s whenever he needed an instrument for teaching, practicing, or public performances.