Johann Sebastian Bach
Page 50
But there was another obstacle that made a positive reaction from the council difficult. Only three weeks before Bach submitted his memorandum, the council had discussed his arrangements for a substitute teacher to take over the Latin classes that traditionally formed part of the cantor’s teaching load. They concluded that M. Pezold (Gesner promoted him in 1731 to conrector) “attended to the functions poorly enough,” and suggested that “the cantor might take care of one of the lowest classes; he did not conduct himself as he should (without the foreknowledge of the burgomaster in office [he] sent a choir student to the country; went away without obtaining leave), for which he must be reproached and admonished.”10 If Bach was unwilling to teach, the council then suggested replacing Pezold with M. Abraham Kriegel, collega quartus (later tertius), to admonish Bach. Some harsh words fell at the meeting; one of the councillors stated, “Not only did the Cantor do nothing, but he was not even willing to give an explanation of that fact; he did not hold the singing class, and there were other complaints in addition; a change would be necessary, a break would have to come some time.” Another went so far as to say that “the Cantor was incorrigible.” On August 25, Burgomaster Born reported back to the council that he “has spoken with the Cantor, Bach, but he shows little inclination to work,” that is, teach the Latin classes. So the instruction was transferred to M. Kriegel, but there was more to come. On September 23, the fees for inspecting the dormitory were supposedly distributed among the three colleagues who had shared duties during the rector vacancy: the conrector received 130 talers and the tertius 100, but the cantor nothing.11 Against this background, we can understand very well the resulting posture of both parties: the council’s unwillingness to act on the cantor’s memorandum of August 23 and Bach’s annoyance with the council, as expressed in the Erdmann letter of October 28.
Bach, however, had chosen to present his “Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music” at a most opportune moment, at least from his point of view. Johann Matthias Gesner, rector of the gymnasium in Ansbach, formerly conrector and court librarian in Weimar, had been elected to the post of rector of St. Thomas’s on June 8, 1730. The city council had deliberately chosen an outsider because an internal promotion would have created much jealousy.12 Bach, too, in his letter to Erdmann spoke of living amid “envy,” apparently resulting from his greater visibility and outside recognition. So with Gesner’s arrival imminent, Bach was surely looking forward not only to renewing an old acquaintance but also to a fresh perspective for the school.13 Rector Gesner had ambitious plans for the Thomana, as evidenced by the renovation of the school building in 1731–32 at a total cost of 17,408 talers.14 Cantor Bach, for his part, was thinking of much more modest sums of money but probably neglecting to consider what the council must have spotted right away, namely that personnel costs over time ordinarily exceed capital investments. In his memorandum, Bach outlined the need for a standing instrumental ensemble of twenty to twenty-four players to complement the choir of twelve to sixteen singers (see Table 10.1). A later account by Gesner, which mentions “thirty or even forty symphoniaci” performing under Bach’s direction,15 indicates that the standard performing group indeed consisted of that number of musicians.
We can assume that Bach coordinated his plans with the rector-designate—probably during one of Gesner’s return visits from Ansbach before his move to Leipzig in September 1730—and that he consulted with Gesner before submitting his memorandum to the council, safe in the knowledge that the rector would support him. Bach’s strategy was smart. He described the worst-case scenario, juxtaposing his salaried staff—the town musicians Reiche, Gentzmer, Rother, Beyer, Gleditsch, Kornagel, and the associate (Table 8.5)—with the actual needs of his instrumental ensemble, pointing out 6 vacancies (third trumpet, timpani, viola, cello, violone, and third oboe) and making the case for supplementary personnel (two first violinists, two second violinists, two violists, and two flutists), adding up to fourteen musicians.16 Even paying these players at ordinary town musicians’ rates17 would have cost the city more than 700 talers per year and, over Bach’s remaining time in Leipzig, would have required nearly the same outlay as the entire St. Thomas School renovation. Bach purposely left out the town musicians’ assistants, university students, other Adjuvanten, and volunteers recruited from the local Collegia Musica. Naming them would have defeated the purpose of the memorandum, to make a strong case for enlarging his “salaried” ensemble, with a clear emphasis on instrumentalists; vocalists are dealt with only in an appendix because they were primarily a school matter, related to admissions policy. For political reasons, Bach provided net rather than gross quantities throughout. The “almost continual vexation” he wrote of to Erdmann included the frustrating juggling act of constantly having to fill the ranks of his ensemble with ringers, having to keep reassigning his people according to their best capabilities, and always trying not to offend anyone by his decisions. No wonder that he yearned for truly professional musicians, each a specialist on his instrument and “capable of performing at once and ex tempore all kinds of music, whether it come from Italy or France, England or Poland, just as may be done, say, by those virtuosos for whom the music is written and who have studied it long beforehand, indeed, know it almost by heart, and who, it should be noted, receive good salaries besides, so that their work and industry is thus richly rewarded.”18
Bach’s strategy of making no reference to the alternative resources available to him probably backfired. The city fathers listening to Bach’s church performances didn’t miss anything. They certainly had heard drums, even though Bach claimed not to have a timpanist. And why should they care about a third oboe, never mind the more sophisticated arguments about artistry, taste, and style, which were definitely wasted on them. Bach probably realized that and never returned to the subject. He had long learned how to manage his affairs and was not trying to renegotiate his contract; he just had a temporary flash of hope that things might be significantly improved with the arrival of a new rector and the readiness of the council for a major capital investment in the St. Thomas School. If he saw himself at a crossroads in 1730, he still made no serious move to get away. All things considered, there was hardly a better place for him than Leipzig—Telemann in Hamburg had his own struggles with the city’s senate and, in terms of performing forces, much less to work with. In Bach’s Leipzig, its churches, the university, his ensembles, his private students, his instruments, and his studio combined to provide a rich spectrum of possibilities, which he zealously pursued without fear of interference by superiors. Here the Weimar jail experience and the death of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen may have reminded him that civic government had its advantages and that he would encounter few problems in steering his own course—in that sense, he was indeed incorrigible. He did not resign, but he shifted his emphasis. After investing his primary efforts in the cantorate for six years and creating a remarkable working repertoire of church music, he would now turn more to other pursuits.
Regardless, however, the St. Thomas School continued to take up most of Bach’s time and commitments. On June 5, 1732, for the rededication of the magnificently renovated school building, Bach performed the cantata “Froher Tag, verlangte Stunden,” BWV Anh. 18 (music lost), on a text written by the collega quartus, M. Johann Heinrich Winckler. Six hundred copies of the libretto were printed, indicating that the event was well attended. Unfortunately for Bach, the Gesner regime was short-lived, lasting barely four years. According to a later report by a former student, Gesner “visited the singing lessons (otherwise rarely attended by a rector), and listened with pleasure to the performance of church pieces.”19 With the cantata “Wo sind meine Wunderwerke,” BWV Anh. 210 (librettist unknown, music lost), the St. Thomas School bid him a musical farewell. After Gesner had left for Göttingen University, his conrector, the twenty-seven-year-old Johann August Ernesti, an extraordinarily gifted and prolific scholar, was elected to the post and formally inaugurated on November 21, 1734. A welcomin
g cantata by Bach, “Thomana saß annoch betrübt,” BWV Anh. 19 (text author Johann August Landvoigt, music lost), sounded on this day, suggesting that a similar performance took place in 1730 when Gesner acceded to the rectorate, though no trace of any such composition remains. At the city council meeting on November 2, 1734, at which Ernesti’s election took place, councillor Stieglitz remarked that “his office as chair of the St. Thomas School was made very difficult by the Cantor, as the latter did not do at the School what he was obliged to do.”20 It seems that under Gesner, Bach may have managed to reduce his school activities further and delegate more work to his four assistants, or prefects.
The main reason Bach had to depend on good prefects was the simultaneous commitments to keep four churches supplied with singers every Sunday and feast day throughout the year, but he also used them for regular singing lessons, instrumental lessons, and rehearsals. An incident involving the appointment of the first, or general, prefect by rector Ernesti (who was twenty-two years Bach’s junior) over the cantor’s objections—among others, that “he could not accurately give the beat in the two principal kinds of time”21—and a dispute about the cantor’s prerogative to appoint the choral prefects22 resulted in a protracted affair that began in the summer of 1736. It left a long paper trail through February 1738, with four letters of complaint by Bach to the city council, Ernesti’s reply and rebuttal, a decree of the council, two appeals by Bach to the consistory, and finally the king’s decree.23 The conflict destroyed what must initially have been a good relationship between rector and cantor: Ernesti had served in 1733 and 1735 as godfather to Bach’s children.24 It also demonstrated that Bach stubbornly fought for his rights, eventually taking advantage of his honorary court position in Dresden to outmaneuver the rector. The royal decree of December 17, 1737, sent to the consistory in Leipzig, provides a supportive précis of Bach’s stand:
Whereas Our Court Composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, has complained to Us about the present Rector of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, Magister Johann August Ernesti, that he has had the effrontery to fill the post of Prefect without his concurrence, and with a person whose ability in musicis is very poor, and when, noticing the latter’s weakness and the resulting disorder in the music, he [the cantor] saw himself compelled to make a change and to choose a more accomplished person in his place, the said Rector Ernesti not only opposed his purpose but also, to his great injury and humiliation, forbade all the boys, in general assembly and on pain of whipping, to give their obedience in the arrangements the Cantor had made.25
The decree ends by directing the consistory to “take such measures…as you shall see fit.” On the following February 5, the consistory requested superintendent Deyling and the council to draw up a report, which has not survived to tell us the official outcome of this drawn-out case. The wording of the royal decree, however, strongly suggests that the affair was settled in favor of the court composer, if only with some further admonitions to Bach regarding his school duties. The depth of the dispute, however, is conveyed in the summary account from Johann Heinrich Köhler’s Historia Scholarum Lipsiensium of 1776:
With Ernesti Bach fell out completely. The occasion was the following. Ernesti removed the General Prefect [Gottfried Theodor] Krause for having chastised one of the younger students too vigorously, expelled him from the School when he fled [to avoid the public whipping to which Ernesti had sentenced him] and chose another student [Johann Gottlob Krause] in his place as General Prefect—a prerogative that really belongs to the Cantor, whom the General Prefect has to represent. Because the student chosen was of no use in the performance of the church music, Bach made a different choice. The situation between him and Ernesti developed to the point of charge and countercharge, and the two men from that time on were enemies. Bach began to hate those students who devoted themselves completely to the humaniora and treated music as a secondary matter, and Ernesti became a foe of music. When he came upon a student practicing on an instrument, he would exclaim “What? You want to be a beer-fiddler, too?” By virtue of the high regard in which he was held by the Burgomaster, Stieglitz, he managed to be released from the duties of the special inspection of the School [dormitories] and to have them assigned to the Fourth Colleague. Thus when it was Bach’s turn to undertake the inspection, he cited the precedent of Ernesti and came neither to table nor to prayers; and this neglect of duty had the worst influence on the moral training of the students. From that time on, though there have been several incumbents of both posts, little harmony has been observed between the Rector and the Cantor.26
Back in the early 1730s, Bach could not have anticipated anything like the prefect dispute and its consequences, but he was prepared for continuing and new conflicts. By picturing himself at a crossroads as he did in the Erdmann letter of 1730, and by declaring, “I shall be forced, with God’s help, to seek my fortune elsewhere,” he probably gained the needed self-confidence and determination, stamina and staying power. Perhaps he was reminded of his own crossroads when, in 1733, he composed the dramatic cantata Hercules at the Crossroads, BWV 213. In the middle of the piece, at the crucial turning point, the allegorical figure of Virtue poses the question (in recitative style) “Whither, my Hercules, whither?” and the accompanying basso continuo features only two notes, but notes that represent the ultimate in terms of incompatible choices: the tritone C and F-sharp. Hercules here, Bach there, and vice versa. Bach the composer knew extremely well how to negotiate musical cliffs as he confidently navigated two supposedly disagreeing harmonic landscapes, an aria in B-flat major followed by one in the totally incompatible key of A major. At the same time, he knew full well that negotiating real life was more troublesome.
DIRECTOR OF THE COLLEGIUM MUSICUM AND ROYAL COURT COMPOSER
The first reference to what became a new and major chapter in Bach’s Leipzig period can be found in the postscript to a letter he wrote on March 20, 1729, to his former student Christoph Gottlob Wecker, now cantor at Schweidnitz in Silesia: “The latest is that the dear Lord has now also provided for honest Mr. Schott, and bestowed on him the post of Cantor in Gotha, wherefore he will say his farewells next week, as I am willing to take over his Collegium.”27 From 1720, Georg Balthasar Schott had been organist of the New Church in Leipzig and, as the custom had been since Telemann’s time, also director of the city’s most prestigious Collegium Musicum. Throughout the seventeenth century, musically active university students had formed private societies that played an increasingly important role in Leipzig’s public musical life, as they were often led by the city’s most prominent professionals, such as Adam Krieger, Johann Rosenmüller, Sebastian Knüpfer, Johann Pezel, and Johann Kuhnau. In 1701, the young and energetic law student and first organist of the recently rebuilt New Church, Georg Philipp Telemann, founded a new Collegium that, he wrote, “often assembled up to 40 students.”28 He was succeeded by Melchior Hoffmann, who directed the organization for ten years beginning in 1705. A Leipzig chronicler reported in 1716 that Hoffmann’s Collegium had numbered between fifty and sixty members, performed twice weekly, and produced many virtuosos who later gained important positions as cantors, organists, and court musicians29—no exaggeration, since celebrities such as the Gotha capellmeister Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, the Dresden concertmaster Johann Georg Pisendel, and the international opera star and bass singer Johann Gottfried Riemschneider had all performed under Hoffmann. After Hoffmann’s premature death in 1715, his Collegium was briefly led by Johann Gottfried Vogler, who handed it over around 1718 to Schott and took charge of a smaller Collegium, founded on Telemann’s model by Johann Friedrich Fasch and directed, during Bach’s time, by Johann Gottlieb Görner (Table 8.2).
The activities of the “Schottische” Collegium Musicum received a significant boost in 1723 when it began a close collaboration with Gottfried Zimmermann, proprietor and operator of the city’s largest and most prominent coffeehouse. Located on Catharinenstrasse, Leipzig’s most prestigious avenue off the main market s
quare, the mansion (destroyed in World War II) contained a hall suitable for performances by large ensembles, including trumpets and timpani, and for an audience of up to 150. Zimmermann established a series of weekly two-hour concerts throughout the year, held outdoors in his coffee garden during the summer months. Although he did not sell tickets, we can assume that he attracted an audience who, before and after the concerts, would patronize his restaurant—a bourgeois emulation of the courtly practice of musique de table. He must have fared quite well with his concert series because he acquired several musical instruments specifically to support the Collegium, among them at least two violins, one viola, two bassoons, and two violones30—indicating that he was prepared to accommodate large ensembles needing a strong basso continuo group that included two bassoons and two double basses.