Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  On the basis of a detailed inventory, the value of Bach’s possessions—including cash; silverware and valuables; pewter, copper, and brass objects; clothing; home furnishings; and theological books—was determined by the university probate court. The hearing took place on November 11, 1750, in the presence of the entire family: Anna Magdalena, who was present but, as a woman, could not legally speak for herself, was represented by Graff as trustee; Carl, who could not attend, was represented by Friedemann as trustee; Lieschen was represented by her husband Johann Christoph Altnickol as trustee; Gottfried Heinrich was represented by Hesemann, and the four minors by Görner.94 Bach had not died a poor man—he even owned a share, valued at 60 talers, in a small mining business—but neither was he wealthy. At the end, he held 231 talers in cash, more than double his annual base salary. His salary and additional earnings had easily supported his large family, and while he could have used excess funds to build up some savings, he chose not to do so. Instead, he bought books and instruments, and surely helped finance his ambitious performances. The grand total of the Bach estate (money, securities, and all movable goods, with the notable exception of music and books on music) came to almost 1,160 talers, from which liabilities of some 152 talers had to be subtracted. Of the entire estate, the widow received one-third, with the remaining two-thirds divided equally among the children.95

  The legal procedures of November 11 seem to have gone smoothly and amicably, apart from a minor dispute recorded in the court papers. The three siblings from Bach’s first marriage questioned the claim of their youngest stepbrother, Johann Christian, that his father had given him, during his lifetime, three claviers and a set of pedals. (These four instruments had, for this reason, not been included in the inventory’s list of seven keyboard instruments.) But since Christel’s claim was verified by witnesses (his mother, Altnickol, and Hesemann), the matter was quickly put to rest.96

  After Bach’s death—perhaps even before, with him having some say—it was arranged that Gottfried Heinrich would live in the Altnickol household at Naumburg, where he died in 1763 at the age of thirty-nine; and that Johann Christian would move with Carl to Berlin, where he remained until 1755, when he left for Italy. Anna Magdalena remained in Leipzig with three daughters, Catharina Dorothea, Johanna Carolina, and Regina Susanna. Next to nothing is known about their lives after Bach’s death, but the women seem to have eventually lived together in rather poor circumstances. The inheritance was soon used up, and a payment of 40 talers that the widow received from the city council in 1752 for her gift of several copies of The Art of Fugue would not have lasted long either.97 (The figure represented 40 percent of Bach’s base salary, though, and the city council’s generosity—no matter of course—shows their respect for the deceased.) Anna Magdalena lived on the Hainstrasse, apparently in an apartment at the house of the attorney Graff, where she died on February 27, 1760, at the age of fifty-nine. Listed in the burial registry as Almosenfrau, a woman supported by charity, she had, after her inheritance and other means were used up, received some income from the welfare bureau maintained by the city council.98 A mere Quarter School escorted her casket to the same cemetery where, almost ten years earlier, her husband had been buried. In later years, the Bach daughters received monetary support from their brother Carl in Hamburg, who arranged for the payments through his publisher, Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf.99 However, when the youngest, Regina Susanna, survived all her sisters and brothers, there was no one to support her until Friedrich Rochlitz, the first editor of the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung and a former choral scholar at the St. Thomas School under the cantor Doles, published a call in the May 1800 issue of his periodical to support the last surviving daughter of the “great Sebastian Bach.” The plea did not fall on deaf ears, and a considerable amount was collected on her behalf by Breitkopf & Härtel (Beethoven never realized his promise to dedicate the proceeds from a publication or concert to this purpose). In the journal’s issue of the following May, Regina Susanna publicly and “with tears of joy” expressed her thanks. She died eight years later.

  It seems highly peculiar that the most important part of Bach’s estate, his compositions and his complete music library (manuscript and printed music, books on music and music theory), were omitted from the estate inventory. We must conclude, then, that these materials were neither evaluated nor distributed according to the established scheme of division. The collection is also conspicuously absent in the probate hearing record. While the documentation of a separate procedure dealing with Bach’s compositions and music library may conceivably have been lost, the complete lack of any cross-reference within the detailed court documents speaks against it. We can presume, then, that the distribution of the musical estate was settled separately beforehand, and, more likely than not, was guided by Bach himself. He apparently left no written will, or else the dispute over the keyboard instruments claimed by Johann Christian would hardly have arisen. This son’s witnessed statement, on the other hand, that he had received them as a gift from his father indicates that before his death, Bach had made some decisions about what to leave to whom. For the composer himself, there was no question that the musical estate was by far the most valuable part of his bequest. It actually made good sense that the musical instruments, the only portion of the musical estate whose material value could be appraised, were treated as part of the whole estate (and actually made up roughly one-third of its grand total). Similarly, the theological books were added to the saleable part (valued about one-tenth of the instrument collection), whereas the musical treatises and other books on music had an ideal value that, from a musician’s point of view, far exceeded their material value. Bach seems to have thought carefully about his musical bequest and perhaps even compared notes with the Leipzig luthier Johann Christian Hoffmann, who was formulating a will in 1748 that included Bach.100 How much easier it was to deal with items such as lutes, violins, strings, bows, tools, and wood!

  As Bach had himself inherited music from his ancestors and placed great value on it, he could reasonably expect that his children would do the same for his own work and that it would, in fact, become the newest and largest section of the Old-Bach Archive. He may have had this thought in mind when he prepared fair, or “archival,” copies of his principal works, such as the unaccompanied violin pieces, The Well-Tempered Clavier, and the St. Matthew Passion, and when he made or arranged for duplicate copies of his works. He could feel reasonably sure that the musical tradition would carry on in his family and, considering the stream of students he had taught, that his own work would indeed have a future well beyond the realm of the family.

  For various reasons, it makes good sense to assume that the division of the musical estate was determined, at least to a large extent and in its basic outlines, by Bach himself and that the family members willingly followed his guidelines. The fact that no dispute seems to have arisen over a matter as crucial as this one speaks for it. Everyone in the family was aware that the musical estate was a veritable treasure chest, even though it could hardly be cashed—at least not for its ideal value, as Anna Magdalena learned when her offer to the St. Thomas School of the performing parts of the chorale cantata cycle was accepted for what was certainly a fraction of their worth. (But she at least fared better than the widow of Johann Kuhnau, for whose musical estate the cantor Bach had expressed no interest.) Moreover, the cantata repertoire was divided up in a way designed to maximize the material, a plan that could hardly have been developed during the few days surrounding the funeral, the only period after Bach’s death when the entire family was assembled. Finally, the time frame within which the division of the musical estate was decided was much too short for serious consultations among family members in and out of Leipzig. Anna Magdalena’s discussion with the Thomasrector Ernesti about acquisition by the St. Thomas School of the chorale cantatas took place before August 29, 1750,101 indicating that the widow knew by then which portion of the music was hers. It seems plausibl
e, therefore, that the musical estate was basically settled by the time of the funeral, a circumstance that could hardly have been achieved without clear oral or written instructions from the deceased. More likely than not, the health crisis of May–June 1749 impressed on Bach the necessity of providing for the future—of his music, as well as his family’s. Much of his life’s work, definitely the great bulk of the vocal oeuvre, including Passions and oratorios, existed as unique materials on his music shelves and had never been copied for outside use. And as both older sons had come to visit their father at least once during the fall, winter, and spring of 1749–50, there would have been ample time for Bach to consult with them on this all-important matter.

  In the absence of any documentation, we must look at transmission patterns to determine how the musical estate was divided. The cantata manuscripts, for example, were split up so that each Jahrgang (annual cycle) would be shared by at least two heirs:102

  Jahrgang I: Alternating scores and parts to Carl Philipp Emanuel; complementary parts and scores probably to Johann Christoph Friedrich (“Friederich” on the wrapper to parts of the cantata BWV 76, the first of cycle I).

  Carl’s portion of the first cycle has survived; much of his own estate that included his father’s works ended up first in the hands of the collector Georg Poelchau, then went to the Berlin Singakademie. From there, the cantatas were acquired in 1854 by the Royal Library, Berlin (today Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin).103 Friederich’s portion of the cycle has been lost.

  Jahrgang II: Parts to Anna Magdalena; scores and duplicate parts to Wilhelm Friedemann.

  Bach’s widow gave her portion (altogether forty-four sets of parts) to the St. Thomas School, where they have survived. Friedemann sold some of the scores to Johann Georg Nacke, cantor in Oelsnitz; most of them ended up later in the collection of Franz Hauser and eventually in the Royal Library, Berlin. The remainder of the scores are, for the most part, lost.

  Jahrgang III: Heir of parts is unknown; scores and duplicate parts to Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian (“Carl u Christel” on wrapper to parts of the cantata BWV 39, the first of cycle III).

  After Christel’s departure from Berlin, Carl’s collection incorporated his brother’s materials, probably by purchasing them from him so that the twenty-year-old could finance his trip to Italy. The complementary portion of the cycle has not survived.

  Friedemann apparently also had the privilege of picking from Jahrgang I and III pieces for the high feast days on which he had to present performances in Halle.104 For the relatively small number of cantatas not belonging to the three cycles listed above, no transmission pattern emerges that would permit us to draw further conclusions about the division of Bach’s estate. The same holds true for the Passions, Masses, and oratorios. For example, the complete scores and parts for the St. Matthew and St. John Passions and for the Christmas Oratorio came into Carl’s possession, probably to be shared with Christel, who never returned to a position in Germany. Carl also held the score of the B-minor Mass. Considering this fact, together with Forkel’s statement that the annual sets of cantata materials “were divided after the author’s death between the elder sons, and in such a manner that Wilhelm Friedemann had the larger share,”105 we may ask which large-scale works Carl’s brothers received. Besides the St. Mark Passion, for which only the libretto survives, what other large-scale works may have been lost?

  Most everything that went to Bach’s second son—the most careful curator of his father’s materials—has survived,106 while Friedemann’s share of the estate has come down to us in incomplete and scattered form,107 because after resigning his post at Our Lady’s in Halle and never again taking up employment, he invariably found himself in economic trouble and gradually sold off his inheritance. He once offered the bulk of the scores of the chorale cantata cycle to Forkel for 20 louis d’or, but Forkel did not have the money for the purchase.108 In 1778, Friedemann asked Johann Joachim Eschenburg of Brunswick to auction off the remainder of his part of the estate: “À propos, did Your Honor give Your Musicalia into auction? My departure from Braunschweig was so hasty that I could not compile a catalog of my relinquished music and books. I do remember The Art of Fugue by my father and Quantz’s manual for the flute. Your honor has kept in good faith the other church Musiquen and annual cycles, as well as books, and promised me to convert them, with the advice of a knowledgeable musician, into cash through auction.”109 The fate of these materials apparently sold on Friedemann’s behalf remains completely unknown. And what happened to Johann Christoph Friedrich’s inheritance is another sad story. After Friederich’s death in 1795, his son Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst (capellmeister in Berlin) received little or nothing. Later, the widow seems to have sold off most of the inheritance: when the collector Georg Poelchau went to Bückeburg in 1817, he found among the meager leftovers only three autograph manuscripts by Johann Sebastian.110

  The survival rate of the instrumental music in Bach’s estate likewise differs according to the individual heirs. Again, Carl’s share is the most complete (including the autograph of the organ trio sonatas and The Art of Fugue), Friedemann’s greatly diminished and scattered, Friederich’s almost nonexistent (only the autograph of the unaccompanied violin works survives), and Christel’s minimal (and probably for the most part merged with Carl’s; among the very few identifiable items from Christel’s share is the autograph of the organ Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544). Taking all shares together, the majority of the autograph scores of the instrumental works, including keyboard music, have not survived. Among the few instrumental autograph sources that survived entirely outside of the Bach estate is the score of the Brandenburg Concertos, dedicated and sent to the margrave of Brandenburg in 1721. In the realm of keyboard music, however, Bach’s extensive teaching activities opened important secondary channels of transmission. Most of the keyboard works were copied by students, beginning with the Weimar pupils Johann Caspar Vogler and Johann Tobias Krebs. Therefore, very few if any keyboard works, especially those composed after 1714, have been lost. That is not true of the earlier works, which, after about 1710, Bach no longer considered useful as teaching models because he deemed them technically and stylistically outdated. Typically, many early works, such as the Toccata in D minor, BWV 565, and also vocal works such as the Actus tragicus, BWV 106, became accessible only after Bach’s death in sources originating after 1750.111

  Considering the extant manuscript and printed repertoire stemming directly from Bach’s library (including works by other composers copied by him or in his possession and books on music) and the complex issue of provenance, many questions remain open. Presumably, the bulk of the estate went to the four musical sons. But did Anna Magdalena really receive only the parts for the chorale cantatas? Could Gottfried Heinrich have ended up completely empty-handed? What about the Bach daughters and the son-in-law Altnickol?112 Most such questions cannot be answered, but a picture emerges of a musical estate that is much larger than we generally imagine.

  The transmission of Bach’s estate was influenced not only by the fate and the actions of the direct heirs but also by other factors. For example, the process of historical selection always favors works that show innovative features; more conventional items tend to become marginalized. Already the summary worklist of the Obituary falls victim to this principle. It lists specifically the works that have no or few counterparts: organ trio sonatas or other works with obbligato pedal, preludes and fugues through all twenty-four keys, pieces for unaccompanied violin and cello, concertos for one to four harpsichords, and the like. But ordinary concertos, suites, and sonatas are covered by the catch-all category “a mass of other instrumental pieces of all sorts and for all kinds of instruments.”113 Typically, Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote in 1774: “The 6 Clavier Trios [BWV 1014–1019, not even listed in the Obituary’s summary catalog]…are among the best works of my dear departed father. They still sound excellent and give me much joy, although they date back more than fifty years.
They contain some Adagii that could not be written in a more singable manner today.”114 In comparison, ordinary trios such as sonatas for two violins and continuo would not have deserved any special mention; consequently, their chances for survival were considerably smaller. No wonder that very few works of this type have been preserved, although Bach almost certainly produced dozens of them, mainly before 1723. Some relics have been found in recycled and revised versions among the organ trio sonatas; perhaps even the composer himself may have lacked any interest in keeping the more conventional earlier versions. It must be stressed, though, that simply equating the survival of a work with its artistic quality distorts the truth. The two Passions According to St. Matthew and St. Mark offer a case in point. It is inconceivable that the lost St. Mark Passion surpasses, in compositional and aesthetic terms, the St. Matthew. But does this diminish the value of the former and reconcile us to the loss? The St. Markof 1731, composed four years after the St. Matthew, in all likelihood incorporated a more modern vocal style—in recitatives, arias, and choruses, including those adopted from other works—and certainly also an updated style of chorale harmonization. Its loss means that our understanding of Bach’s vocal music of the 1730s remains highly fragmentary.

  Another example pertains to vocal works written for special occasions, containing direct textual references to the unique event. The two large-scale works written for the funeral of Prince Leopold of Cöthen had no practical value after 1729—not even for the composer, except that of a potential musical quarry. We should not be surprised that the rate of loss among the secular congratulatory cantatas and similar compositions is proportionately the greatest by far. For instance, of twenty-four documented cantatas in honor of members of princely courts, the music for only ten scores has survived. There is no question, however, that the truly significant losses of Bach’s music in all genres were caused by the division of his musical estate into multiple shares. And these losses would have been even greater, especially in the realm of keyboard music, had there not been a secondary transmission through the activities of Bach’s students and others.