Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  In late March 1729, Bach assumed the directorship of the Collegium, immediately renamed the “Bachische” Collegium Musicum. The transition was likely a smooth one, as Schott had previously collaborated with him and, from his earliest days in Leipzig, Bach had benefited from the pool of qualified Collegium musicians for performances at St. Nicholas’s and St. Thomas’s. Moreover, throughout the 1720s, Schott had served as Bach’s main substitute whenever the latter was out of town or otherwise prevented from performing his duties31 (a function taken over after Schott’s departure by Carl Gotthelf Gerlach), another sign of the close collaborative relationship between Bach and the music directors at the New Church. Not surprisingly, the newly arrived capellmeister and famous virtuoso Bach soon participated in performances by Schott’s Collegium, an organization that prided itself on being the training ground for Germany’s finest church, town, and court musicians. In one case, on March 12, 1727, Bach led forty musicians in his Abend-Music “Entfernet euch, ihr heitern Sterne,” BWV Anh. 9 (music lost), as part of the birthday celebration for King August II (Augustus the Strong), an event held in the king’s presence that also included three hundred torch-carrying students.32 The Collegium would surely have taken part in other student-sponsored performances as well, such as that of cantata BWV 193a (music lost) on the king’s name day, August 3, 1727, the Funeral Ode BWV 198 for the queen later that year, and congratulatory pieces for university professors, including BWV 36c and 205 in 1725 and BWV 207 in 1726. Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber’s report that in 1724, before he became a student of Bach’s, “he had heard much excellent church music and many a concert under Bach’s direction”33 suggests that the capellmeister, as the city’s most eminent musician, was invited to be the Collegium’s principal guest conductor and frequent soloist from the beginning of his Leipzig tenure.34

  There is no question that the Collegium directorship amounted to a major commitment: Bach was now responsible, in addition to his regular church music obligations, for preparing and carrying out a weekly series of performances throughout the year. The schedule of these ordinaire Concerten, presented in a well-coordinated way by the city’s two Collegia, was made even more demanding by the additional commitments of the thrice-yearly trade fairs (Table 10.2). Lorenz Christoph Mizler’s 1736 Announcement of the Musical Concerts at Leipzig represents but one reference to what had become a crucial cell for the development of public concert life in Germany:

  Both of the public musical Concerts or Assemblies that are held here weekly are still flourishing steadily. The one is conducted by Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach, Capellmeister to the Court of Weissenfels and music director at St. Thomas’s and at St. Nicholas’s in this city…. The other is conducted by Mr. Johann Gottlieb Görner, music director at St. Paul’s and organist at St. Thomas’s….

  The participants in these musical concerts are chiefly students here, and there are always good musicians among them, so that sometimes they become, as is known, famous virtuosos. Any musician is permitted to make himself publicly heard at these musical concerts, and most often, too, there are such listeners as know how to judge the qualities of an able musician.35

  Complementing Mizler’s description, Johann Heinrich Zedler’s 1739 Grosses Universal Lexicon defines a Collegium Musicum as “a gathering of certain musical connoisseurs who, for the benefit of their own exercise in both vocal and instrumental music and under the guidance of a certain director, get together on particular days and in particular locations and perform musical pieces. Such Collegia are to be found in various places. In Leipzig, the Bachian Collegium Musicum is more famous than all others.”36

  TABLE 10.2. Weekly Concert Series (Ordinaire Concerten) of the Leipzig Collegia Musica

  Collegium musicum (I), directed by Johann Sebastian Bach

  Friday

  8–10 P.M. (winter)

  at Zimmermann’s coffeehouse, Catharinenstrasse

  Wednesday

  4–6 P.M. (summer)

  at Zimmermann’s coffee garden, Grimmischer Steinweg

  Tuesday and Friday

  8–10 P.M. (fair)a

  at Zimmermann’s coffeehouse

  Collegium musicum (II), directed by Johann Gottlieb Görner

  Thursday

  8–10 P.M.

  at Richter’s coffeehouse (Schellhafer Hall), Clostergasse

  Monday and Thursday

  8–10 P.M. (fair)a

  at Richter’s coffeehouse

  During the summer of 1737, after more than eight years as Collegium director, Bach temporarily withdrew from its leadership and handed it over to his colleague at the New Church, Carl Gotthelf Gerlach, who had previously substituted for him on occasion.37 The reasons for this arrangement are unknown, but the demands of the weekly concert schedule may have interfered with other plans or simply been too heavy for the fifty-two-year-old Bach.38 Nevertheless, he remained closely associated with the Collegium and even conducted one of its extraordinaire Concerten on April 28, 1738, with a performance of the cantata “Willkommen! Ihr herrschenden Götter der Erden,” BWV Anh. 13, on a libretto provided by Johann Christoph Gottsched. It is particularly regrettable that the music for this work has not survived, because Lorenz Christoph Mizler refers to it in his refutation of Johann Adolph Scheibe’s attacks on Bach’s style when he writes that “anyone who heard the music that was performed by the students at the Easter Fair in Leipzig last year…, which was composed by Capellmeister Bach, must admit that it was written entirely in accordance with the latest taste, and was approved by everyone. So well does the Capellmeister know how to suit himself to his listeners.”39

  Gerlach’s interim leadership ended on October 2, 1739, the Leipzig newspapers having announced the previous day that “the Royal-Polish and Electoral-Saxon Court Composer Bach has resumed the directorship of the Collegium Musicum.”40 Bach continued as Collegium director at least until the cafétier Zimmermann’s death in May 1741 and possibly for several more years; Gerlach took over permanently in 1746. By then, however, the situation had changed, for in 1743 sixteen Leipzig aristocrats and merchants established the “Grand Concerts” (Grosse Concert), a series that by 1750 drew audiences of two to three hundred.41 Gerlach himself was involved in this new organization, which apparently attracted the best personnel from both academic Collegia (whose activities ended in the 1750s). Considering his stature and commanding position in Leipzig, Bach was surely involved in the Grand Concerts, though more likely as a critical commentator than as a supporter or participant.42 As an ambitious father, he would have welcomed this venue for his two youngest sons.

  The “Bachische” Collegium Musicum existed for at least twelve years, from 1729 to 1741. A major focus for Bach in the 1730s, the group affected his work in at least three important ways: (1) it allowed him to perform a diversified repertoire of contemporary music that interested him; (2) it provided opportunities for composing works to be performed at the regular weekly series and at special concerts; and (3) it supported his ongoing church music projects. The Collegium also offered a rich sphere of activity for his sons and students. For example, in a testimonial of 1737 for Bernhard Dietrich Ludewig, later town organist in Schmölln, Bach writes that Ludewig “in various years frequented my Collegium Musicum with diligence, untiringly participated in the same, playing various instruments as well as making himself heard many times vocaliter.”43 No particulars are known about the specific membership, which already in Hoffmann’s time numbered fifty to sixty, but the Collegium must have been dominated by university students and certainly included all of Bach’s private students among them. Throughout Bach’s directorship, Gerlach participated as alto singer, violinist, and harpsichordist, perhaps even as a kind of assistant director.44 Also, former students still residing in Leipzig and members of the academic community at large, such as Johann Abraham Birnbaum and Louise Adelgunde Gottsched, may have regularly participated. Town musicians may have joined the ensemble: Johann Friedrich Caroli, appointed art fiddler in 1730, matriculated at Leip
zig University in 1719 and doubtless played in at least one of the academic Collegia. Johann Polykarp Büchner, bass singer at the Weissenfels court, seems to have joined the Collegium in the late 1730s—an additional example of professional musicians playing a role there.45 Finally, the concerts often featured debuts and returns of well-known guest artists, including the Dresden capellmeister Johann Adolph Hasse, his wife, the diva Faustina Bordoni, and the lutenist-composer Silvius Leopold Weiss, among many others, who came to visit Bach in Leipzig during the 1730s.

  Vocal and instrumental pieces by a great variety of composers must have been included in the weekly series of “ordinary” concerts, but it is impossible to reconstruct, even in the broadest outlines, any of the more than five hundred two-hour programs for which Bach was responsible. Pertinent performing materials from the 1730s are extremely sparse; among the traceable compositions are four orchestral overtures by Johann Bernhard Bach; the cantata “Armida abbandonata” by George Frideric Handel; the Concerto Grosso in F minor, Op. 1, No. 8, by Pietro Locatelli; three Italian cantatas (“Dal primo foco in cui penai,” “Sopra un colle fiorito,” and “Ecco l’infausto lido”) by Nicola Porpora; and the cantata “Se amor con un contento” by Alessandro Scarlatti.46 Additionally, “Mr. Bach de Leipzig” is found among the subscribers to Telemann’s Nouveaux Quatuors (flute quartets), published in Paris in 1738,47 which suggests that he wanted the pieces for the Collegium series. Although these few works and composers cannot be considered representative at all, they confirm that the repertoire was both instrumental and vocal, that Italian solo cantatas played a role, and that the newest kind of music (such as the Porpora cantatas and the Telemann quartets) was introduced.48

  Among Bach’s own works, one group of pieces particularly suitable for the Collegium series belongs in the category, popular in the early eighteenth century, of “moral” cantatas, that is, vocal compositions whose lyrical texts deal with virtues and vices (Table 10.3). The so-called Coffee Cantata, BWV 211, for example, humorously addresses a theme (coffee addiction) particularly fitting for the locale where it was performed, probably more than once. Repeat performances were likely for these works because they were not related to a specific occasion. Of particular interest to the intellectual audience would have been Bach’s dramatic cantata “The Contest between Phoebus and Pan,” BWV 201, in which the composer wittily elaborates, in the form of a singing contest, on the aesthetic criteria for high and low styles of music and presents his own preferences for the sophisticated, learned style of high art vis-à-vis the shallow manners and trivial effects of popular musical fashions. At the same time, this cantata displays the ingenuity with which Bach judiciously embraces elements of popular culture—if only in mythological and academically elevated dress—and effectively wins the laughter over to his side. The aria sung by Pan, the loser of the contest, makes use of one of the stock effects of early comic opera, the rapid repeat of a single syllable, while its pointed poetic and musical perversion, “so wa-a-a-a-ckelt das Herz” (so wobbles the heart), makes a mockery of the device. Thus, Pan receives a fool’s cap and Midas, his judge, earns himself ass’s ears. This cantata clearly belongs among the first pieces composed for the weekly series; it may well have served as a programmatic season opener for the summer or winter series of 1729 and was repeated in later seasons as well, the last time as late as 1749.49

  While it is safe to assume that most if not all of Bach’s keyboard pieces from at least 1729 to 1741 (especially parts I, II, and IV of the Clavier-Übung series and part II of The Well-Tempered Clavier) would have been presented at the weekly concerts, a core repertoire of Bach’s chamber music had an even closer connection with Collegium activities (Table 10.4). This is not to say that all works for which only Leipzig materials exist were specifically written for the Collegium; some may be of pre-Leipzig origin, others may have been written for a different purpose, and still others may result from commissions by the likes of the Berlin flutist Michael Gabriel von Fredersdorf (chamberlain to King Friedrich II of Prussia), whose name can be connected with the Flute Sonata BWV 1035 and Bach’s trip to Berlin in 1741. Nevertheless, the bulk of what has survived and an even greater lot of lost pieces would surely have been performed at the Collegium concert series; and most of the extant pieces actually suggest Leipzig origins.50

  TABLE 10.3. Moral Cantatas for the Ordinaire Concerten

  BWV

  Title (poet)

  Date

  204

  Ich bin in mir vergnügt “On Contentment” (Christian Friedrich Hunold)

  1726–27

  201

  Geschwinde, geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde Dramma per musica “The Contest between Phoebus and Pan” (Picander)

  1729

  216a

  Erwählte Pleißen-Stadt “Apollo and Mercury” [On the City of Erudition and Commerce] (Christian Gottlob Meißner)

  1729?

  211

  Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht Dramma per musica“About Coffee” (Picander)

  1734

  TABLE 10.4. Instrumental Music for the Ordinaire Concerten

  Note: The performance materials were available for multiple purposes, including lessons and performances at the St. Thomas School.

  Public announcements in the Leipzig press now and then refer to particular concerts. For example, the resumption of the concert series, temporarily suspended during the state mourning period for King Augustus the Strong, is announced for June 17, 1733, at Zimmermann’s coffee garden with the following special notice: “The beginning will be made…with a fine concert. It will be maintained week by week, with a new Clavicymbel, such as had not been heard here before, and lovers of music as well as virtuosos are expected to be present.” Although Bach became involved with Gottfried Silbermann and his fortepiano constructions in the mid-1730s, the subtle and elusive sound of the first generation of fortepianos would have been unsuitable for outdoor concerts. More likely, the instrument in question was an attractive and powerful new harpsichord, perhaps one with which Bach introduced his new concertos for harpsichord and orchestra to the Leipzig public. “Such as had not been heard here before” may serve as a kind of general motto for Bach’s Collegium programs, in which he tried to present the best and the newest in musical repertoire, artists, and instruments. And with the concertos for one, two, three, and four harpsichords, he himself set new standards for the dynamic interplay between keyboard soloist and instrumental ensemble—indeed, he established a new genre that his sons consolidated and that by the end of the century had become the most favored concerto type by far.

  Bach’s Collegium activities were not confined to the weekly “ordinary” concerts at Zimmermann's coffeehouse. The first known event outside the series in the form of “extraordinary” concerts (extraordinaire Concerten) was the performance of the cantata BWV Anh. 11 for the name day in 1732 of Augustus the Strong, presented less than half a year before the king’s death (the works previously performed in the king’s honor, BWV Anh. 9 and BWV 193a, had been guest performances during Schott’s Collegium directorship). Soon after the accession to the throne of his son, King August III, Bach started a loose sequence of special concerts dedicated almost exclusively to the electoral-royal house in Dresden, for birthdays, name days, and political events, sometimes in the presence of royal family members (Table 10.5). In contrast to the weekly series, for which few details and no programs are known, the extraordinary concerts are generally well documented, with most of the librettos, many scores, and even performing materials extant, usually with verifiable dates, often accompanied by reports in newspapers and chronicles as well as receipts and other archival references. We know, for example, that Bach usually collected 50 talers for composing a cantata in honor of the royal family,51 a fee equivalent to half of his fixed annual salary (and, incidentally, the same fee Mozart requested when he was commissioned to write his Requiem in 1791). This explains how attractive these special concerts, which were occasionally sponsored by Leipzig Uni
versity (BWV Anh. 9, BWV 215, BWV Anh. 13), must have been for him. In a number of instances, the Breitkopf music-publishing firm’s invoices to Bach (for the printing of the text both in presentation copies for the honorees and in plain booklets for the general public)52 provide information about the attendance, based on the number of copies for sale: for indoor performances at Zimmermann’s coffeehouse, 150 (BWV 205a, 214) or 200 copies (BWV 206); for outdoor performances in Zimmermann’s coffee garden, also 150 (BWV 207a, 215) or 200 copies (BWV Anh. 12, BWV 213); but for outdoor performances in front of the royal residence, Apel House on the south side of the market square, and in the presence of the king, 312 (BWV Anh. 11), 600 (BWV Anh. 13), and even 700 copies (BWV215). The sum 700 was the equivalent to over 2 percent of the city’s entire population of some 30,000, but the Leipzig chronicler Riemer reported that for this prominent event “many people came in from the country to see it”53 with nonpaying spectators added, the market square must have been crowded to capacity.

  We are also informed by Riemer about the performances themselves. We learn, for example, about the gala style in which the first anniversary of the Saxon elector Friedrich August II’s accession as king of Poland was celebrated on October 5, 1734, with the presentation of the cantata “Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen,” BWV 215, in the presence of the royal couple:

  About nine o’clock in the evening the students [at the University] here presented Their Majesties with a most submissive evening serenade [BWV 215] with trumpets and drums, which the Hon. Capellmeister, Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantor at St. Thomas’s, had composed. For this, six hundred students carried wax tapers, and four Counts acted as marshals in presenting the [text of the] music. The procession made its way up to the King’s residence [Apel House]. When the musicians had reached the Wage[weigh house on the north flank of the market square], the trumpets and drums went up on it, while others took their places in another choir at the Rathaus. When the text was presented, the four counts were permitted to kiss the Royal hands, and afterward his Royal Majesty together with his Royal Consort and the Royal Princes did not leave the windows until the music was over, and listened most graciously and liked it well.54