For Bach, a steadfast working relationship with his best students must have been particularly important, and at times even crucial, not only for what they learned from him but also for what he picked up from them: from their academic studies (for which he may occasionally have envied them) and from their musical interests and contributions, as his own changing stylistic orientation in the 1730s and 1740s definitely reflects. He may also have hoped that they would carry on his ideas—perhaps remembering the encouraging words said to him by the venerable old organist Reinken: “I thought that this art was dead, but I see that in you it still lives.”81 But if such wishful thinking ever crossed Bach’s mind, it did not come true, as none of his students came remotely close to Bach’s mastery in either composition or performance or in his intellectual control over and penetration of musical subject matter. They did, however, play all the more decisive a role in the preservation, dissemination, and veneration of their teacher’s incomparable music. In particular, their faithful spreading of his musical methods and principles shows that Bach’s inordinate investment in the teaching of his musical philosophy was by no means in vain. On the contrary, scores of students and their pupils’ students helped organize and eventually consolidate Bach’s lasting influence, a phenomenon that none of Bach’s contemporaries sustained. Neither Handel nor Scarlatti, Rameau, nor Telemann ever engaged so fully in the kind of teaching that Bach enjoyed throughout his life. More important, none of them could, as Bach did, put their teaching on an academic stage—the secret that allowed his smallish world to burst into a limitless orb.
MATERIALS AND METAPHYSICS
Bach used the word “apparatus” to designate his personal music library and “things” to refer to individual musical works82—plain terms suggesting a matter-of-factness that does not in the least signal the importance these materials actually held for him. The shelves in his study, the so-called composing room in the cantor’s apartment, and the adjacent walls contained both his private library and the music collection of the St. Thomas School—altogether several hundred printed and manuscript items of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century materials.83 Bach made no major additions to the old choral library of the St. Thomas School (of which only a few scattered remnants have survived),84 and his decision not to include, for example, Johann Kuhnau’s musical estate signified his intention not to bank on the repertoire of even the preceding generation, let alone earlier repertoires. Nevertheless, the old collection provided an opportunity to examine works by antecedents in the cantorate, such as those by Johann Hermann Schein, Sebastian Knüpfer, Johann Schelle, Heinrich Schütz, Christoph Bernhard, Johann Rosenmüller, Augustin Pfleger, Samuel Friedrich Capricornus, and other German composers; or by Giacomo Carissimi, Marco Peranda, Giovanni Battista Bassani, Giovanni Valentini, and other Italians. Bach’s easy access to extremely rare manuscript and printed works by the sixteenth-century composers Thomas Crequillon and Nicolaus Rost or by such obscure minor figures as Albericus Mazak and Heinrich Fresman even suggests that Johann Gottfried Walther may have obtained the pertinent bio-bibliographic information for his Musicalisches Lexicon from his Leipzig cousin.85 Except for some isolated cases, however, there is no evidence that Bach made practical use of the old choral library, which held, according to Kuhnau’s testimony, some scores that were “quite torn” and “eaten away by mice.” One such exception is Bach’s own preparation of the performing parts, with supporting cornetto, trombones, and basso continuo, of the six-part Missa sine nomine from Palestrina’s Liber V. Missarum of 1590.
Rather than capitalizing on the old library, Bach continued to build, with his own money, a personal collection of vocal and instrumental music for study and performance purposes whose origins went back to his youth. Although the true extent and actual makeup of this collection cannot be judged from the available evidence, a list of representative composers hints at the catholic scope of Bach’s “apparatus”:86
German composers
older generation (b. 1620–49): Johann Christoph and Johann Michael Bach, Dieterich Buxtehude, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, Johann Jacob Froberger, Johann Caspar Kerll, Johann Adam Reinken
middle generation (b. 1650–79): Johann Bernhard, Johann Ludwig, and Johann Nicolaus Bach, Georg Böhm, Johann Krieger, Johann Pachelbel, Johann Christoph Pez, Johann Christoph Schmidt, Johann Hugo von Wilderer
younger generation (b. 1680–): Johann Friedrich Fasch, Carl Heinrich and Johann Gottlieb Graun, George Frideric Handel, Johann Adolph Hasse, Johann David Heinichen, Conrad Friedrich Hurlebusch, Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, Johann Ludwig Krebs, Christian Petzolt, Johann Christoph Richter, Georg Andreas Sorge, Gottfried Henrich Stölzel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Gottfried Walther, Jan Dismas Zelenka
French composers
older generation (b. 1620–49): Jean-Henri D’Anglebert, Jacques Boyvin, André Raison
middle generation (b. 1650–79): François Couperin, Charles Dieupart, Pierre Du Mage, Nicolas de Grigny, Louis Marchand
Italian composers
early classics: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Girolamo Frescobaldi
older generation (b. 1620–49): Giovanni Legrenzi, Marco Giuseppe Peranda, Giuseppe Torelli
middle generation (b. 1650–79): Tomaso Albinoni, Giovanni Battista Bassani, Antonio Biffi, Antonio Caldara, Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Lotti, Agostino Steffani, Antonio Vivaldi
younger generation (b. 1680–): Francesco Conti, Francesco Durante, Pietro Antonio Locatelli, Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
In its quality, breadth, and depth, Bach’s personal music library easily matched the larger collections assembled by contemporaries such as Heinrich Bokemeyer in Wolfenbüttel, Johann Mattheson in Hamburg, and Jan Dismas Zelenka in Dresden. If anything, however, Bach’s collection was more diversified than most others, especially in its holdings of keyboard music and instrumental repertoires. We know, for example, that he played a key role in the transmission of Buxtehude’s organ works. Moreover, his wide connections made it possible for him to obtain important new pieces of music literature, even from far away. Thus, one of the earliest traces north of the Alps of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater leads to Bach’s library, less than ten years after the Neapolitan origin of this unpublished work. Bach’s interest in the piece, to the extent that he arranged it in a German paraphrase, “Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden,” BWV 1083, demonstrates that he was as anxious to keep stylistically up-to-date as he was attracted by exemplary works of widely varying genres, styles, and techniques. Bach apparently acquired most of his music library from close friends and colleagues such as Zelenka in Dresden87 and through the channels of the Leipzig book trade.
Bach’s practical music collection was complemented by theoretical books, but the subsequent losses in this realm are so serious that we can obtain only a most superficial impression of its scope and orientation. We have direct evidence that he owned Angelo Berardi’s Documenti armonici of 1687 (manuscript copy), the German edition of Johann Joseph Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum of 1742 (translated and annotated by his student Mizler), Heinichen’s Der General-Bass in der Composition of 1728, Niedt’s Musicalische Handleitung of 1710, Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon of 1732 (also its first installment of 1729), and Andreas Werckmeister’s Orgel-Probe of 1698, but the only book that survives with an ownership mark in Bach’s hand is the Latin edition of Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum of 1725.88
Similarly, of Bach’s substantial theological library, only a single item has come down to us: the three-volume 1681 edition of the Lutheran Bible, with detailed commentaries by Abraham Calov. All the other books—more than fifty titles, many of them multivolume works—are known exclusively through the inventory of Bach’s estate.89 This 1750 list indicates that Bach had assembled an extensive scholarly collection of theological literature with emphasis on Lutheran classics, in particular two editions of Martin Luther’s complete works (the seven-volume “Altenburg” edition of 1661–64 and the eight-volume “Jena” edition
of 1555–58) and several copies of major works by the reformer (for example, his commentary on the Psalms). Of particular importance are Bible commentaries such as Johann Olearius’s three-volume Haupt Schlüßel der gantzen Heiligen Schrift (Main Key to the Entire Holy Scripture) of 1678 and books of a homiletic character (especially sermon collections in several volumes by such leading figures as August Pfeiffer, Heinrich Müller, and Erdmann Neumeister). These works, especially those relating to the Calov Bible, which shows heavy underlining, annotations, and many other traces of regular use, shed light on Bach’s reading habits and on his study of biblical exegesis in preparation for his own settings of scriptural texts and sacred poetry.
Of all the books and manuscripts owned by Bach, only his theological library is carefully recorded (with monetary valuation) in the estate inventory of 1750. Nevertheless, we must ask whether Bach’s theological collection was actually larger than the list indicates and included works other than those of seventeenth-century and older authors, especially books by younger Leipzig theologians, colleagues such as Christoph Wolle, with whom he had a personal relationship. We must also ask why other categories of Bach’s library are completely missing from the inventory. What happened to books on theory and on organ building, to hymnals, collections of sacred and secular poetry (Franck, Lehms, Neumeister, Picander, etc.), contemporary theological books, and other literary and scholarly volumes? The quasi-shelf-warmers seem to dominate the list—largely old-fashioned theological items left after materials more useful to the heirs had already been picked over. For example, in the category of hymnals, the inventory contains only the Wagner Gesangbuch of 1697, the best-organized collection of hymns (without notation of melodies) available at the time and for Bach surely a frequently consulted reference. But Bach’s copy of this unwieldy eight-volume work remains untraced, whereas Michael Weisse’s 1538 Bohemian Brethren hymnal with melodies did survive, though it was not included in the estate list.90 We can only conclude that the more appealing library materials were removed and distributed before the book inventory was compiled and the theological leftovers were parceled out.
On a related subject, an auction receipt (explaining how Bach complemented his Calov Bible, acquired in 1733, with the copy of the Altenburg edition of Luther’s collected works that Calov had used for his commentary) provides welcome information about Bach’s acquisition and collection methods: “These Teütsche und herrliche Schrifften des seeligen Dr. M. Lutheri[German and Magnificent Writings of the Late Dr. Martin Luther] (which stem from the library of the eminent Wittenberg general superintendent and theologian Dr. Abraham Calov, which he supposedly used to compile his great German Bible; also, after his death, they passed into the hands of the equally eminent theologian Dr. J. F. Mayer), I have acquired at an auction for 10 rthl., anno 1742, in the month of September.”91 Although an isolated document, this receipt suggests that Bach may have gone about developing his library in a particularly systematic manner, that he was interested in the provenance of his acquisition, that he was willing to pay as much as a tenth of his fixed annual salary at a book auction, and most important, that he saw himself, if only privately, as a biblical interpreter in the succession and company of these eminent theological scholars. But for Bach, theological and musical scholarship were two sides of the same coin: the search for divine revelation, or the quest for God.
The 1739 definition of music in the Großes Universal Lexicon,92 Johann Heinrich Zedler’s monumental encyclopedia of knowledge, bears the unmistakable stamp of the old cosmological argument for the existence of God. Music is defined as “everything that creates harmony, that is, order. And in this sense it is used by those who assert that the whole universe is music.”93 Bach would not have disagreed with the unknown author of this article. Since seventeenth-century scientists had demonstrated that the planets and the earth were governed by the same laws, the relationship between cosmic harmonies and audible music, let alone the incomparably small world of musical composition concerned with manipulating tones, appeared even more strongly unified. So, as the universe of divine creation was felt to be ever more complex and interconnected, the idea of its unity had become, for a musician of Bach’s intellectual disposition, more conclusive and compelling, and at the same time more inviting of his participation.
For Bach the performer, composer, teacher, and musical scholar, his daily work—the production and realization of music—was regulated by the very same unifying forces, as he demonstrated in one of his most simple yet meaningful compositions: the canon BWV 1072 for eight voices and two choirs, which he entitled Trias harmonica (the harmonic triad). The work reveals, with disarming logic and clarity, his philosophy of music as governed by the principle of counterpoint, not just in the figurative sense of achieving an absolute synthesis of theory and practice, but notably in the strictest sense of a compositional technique designed to show “polyphony in its greatest strength” and to master “the most hidden secrets of harmony,” to quote from the Obituary.94 Indeed, the little canon shows that a triad is not merely a sound made up of vertically organized intervals, but the inevitable result of accumulated contrapuntal (horizontal) lines that also govern the rhythmic structure. In other words, the canon illustrates that the vertical and horizontal organization of musical polyphony is intrinsically regulated by the rules of counterpoint, the most central principles to which the composer Bach subscribed.
The oldest source for BWV 1072 happens to be an engraved example in Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg’s Abhandlung von der Fuge of 1753, but comparison with similar canons suggests that Bach originally wrote it in the form of a riddle canon as an album entry for a colleague or student.95 In enigmatic notation (Marpurg published only its resolution), the endless canon would read . But how could this rudimentary melody resolve in a plain triad, presumably one in C major?
The riddle consists in finding the solution to the crucial instruction “for 8 voices and two choirs.” If four voices present the melody in successive entries at half-note distances, that group constitutes choir I. Choir II then consolidates the triadic sound by presenting the same melody in inverted form, that is, starting with the note G, again in successive entries at half-note distances but with the first entry occurring a quarter-note beat after the first entry of choir I. This way, the two choirs represent two distinct entities that join in creating a harmonic triad—a simple exercise, yet one that has many implications (Ex. 9.1).
First, the melody of the canon is based on the hexachordum naturale, the natural hexachord (six-note scale) of the medieval diatonic scale, ascending from C to A. The diatonic scale permits only two other hexachords that have the same intervallic structure: the hexachordum molle, ascending from F to D (with a B-flat, therefore mollis (minor) = soft B), and the hexachordum durum, ascending from G to E (with a B-natural, therefore durum (major) = hard B). The natural hexachord is the only one that does not have to deal with the ambiguity of the note B; and whether produced by the proper numerical division of the octave, by the natural harmonic series (as created, for example, by a trumpet in C), or by just intonation, it creates the C-major triad, the acoustically purest of all triads, which represents the natural, God-given, most perfect harmonic sound.
Second, the canon melody differentiates between consonant and dissonant notes: the dissonant ones are written exclusively as passing tones, thus stressing the fundamental contrapuntal law that dissonances are permitted only on weak beats. The canon melody also features the classic contrapuntal rule of introducing smaller note values by way of an augmented (dotted) note; and the relationship of choirs I and II implies the rhythmic phenomenon of syncopation. Moreover, the short two-measure melody, if not repeated, extends exactly over the length of a nota brevis, or breve, which serves as the cornerstone of the medieval system of musical mensuration. Before the invention of the clock, large units of time could be measured only by the movement of the earth, creating seasons as well as day and night and the lunar calendar, while small units of time could be ma
rked only by the beat of the human pulse. But then the system of measured music, as developed and first described in Franco of Cologne’s thirteenth-century treatise Ars cantus mensurabilis, offered a way to link the beat of the human heart to the time scheme of the universe. His key unit for measuring time was the breve, called tempus musicum—a term, incidentally, used by Bach in another riddle canon, BWV 1078, to demarcate successive canonic entries.96 The Trias harmonica canon, on the other hand, demonstrates the division of the tempus musicum unit by contrapuntal means, so that the pure C-major triad resounds in quarter-note beats that project, together with the transitional dissonances, a continuing chain of eighth-note beats. In other words, the counterpoint defines not just the vertical sound, but time and the horizontal rate of speed as well.
Third, the little canon not only defines time in purely musical—that is, audible—terms, it also defines space. Two-dimensional space is demarcated in a visual manner, by the notation itself, the up-and downward direction of notes. Three-dimensional space is introduced by the double-choir feature, two spatially separate entities presenting distinct material. Additionally, the canon addresses the phenomenon of progressive and regressive time in that it can be performed forward and backward. The piece ingeniously demonstrates the creation of the harmonic triad by way of four simultaneously applied contrapuntal methods—normal and inverted, and forward and retrograde motion—and added to this musical space-time capsule is the dimension of unity and infinity, for a canon infinitusre sounds endlessly. In his modest canon, Bach subjects the concepts of space and time and their complex interrelationship (a main philosophical theme of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries) to a treatment that actually captures both natural phenomena in a single musical event.
Johann Sebastian Bach Page 48
