Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  50. The stipends are documented for 1724–29, 1731, and 1745; see Schulze 1984a.

  51. Cf. NBR, no. 142.

  52. Bach’s own soprano voice changed in Lüneburg, after his fifteenth birthday. Nineteenth-century improvements in nutrition accelerated physical growth and caused boys’ voices to change much earlier. See Behrendt 1983.

  53. NBR, no. 151.

  54. Schering 1941, p. 150.

  55. For instance, the son of town piper Gleditsch, Christian Wilhelm, who later became an art fiddler, would have been performing with his father for many years; town piper Reiche is known to have had among his adjuncts a Johann Ferdinand Bamberg, who in 1737 unsuccessfully auditioned for a Leipzig town music position (BDII, no. 405a).

  56. NBR, no. 234.

  57. See Schulze 1985.

  58. Schulze 1984, p. 52.

  59. NBR, no. 134.

  60. NBR, no. 131.

  61. NBR, no. 183, p. 176.

  62. The schedule for alternating locations of the performances can be determined on the basis of the extant original booklet for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany to Purification, 1724; see Neumann, Texte, p. 423.

  63. Detailed descriptions provided by Stiehl 1984. St. Nicholas had a large organ, originally by Johann Lange (1597–98) and substantially rebuilt by Zacharias Thayssner (1693–94): thirty-six stops on three manuals and pedal. St. Thomas also had a large instrument by Lange (1598–99) that was enlarged by Christoph Donat in 1670–71 and renovated by Johann Scheibe in 1721–22. It then also had thirty-six stops on three manuals and pedals. The small (swallow’s nest) organ at St. Thomas was originally built in 1489 and enlarged in 1630 by Heinrich Compenius. Scheibe repaired the instrument, which had twenty-one stops on two manuals an pedal, in 1720–21, but in 1741 the organ was torn down. See Dähnert 1980, pp. 180f.

  64. Stiehl 1984, p. 16.

  65. It is conceivable that the number of cantata cycles indicated by the authors of the Obituary is erroneous and that the three nearly intact annual cycles basically represent the composer’s cantata output. On this controversial point, see Scheide 1961 and Dürr 1961. Among other points, Scheide refers to an early nineteenth-century report by Friedrich Rochlitz according to which Bach supposedly would “usually” submit three cantata texts to superintendent Deyling, out of which one was chosen.

  66. The only chorale cantata of the 1724–25 cycle with pure hymn text (per omnes versus) is BWV 107. See, however, the pertinent examples in Table 8.9.

  67. It is likely that the composition of some large chorale choruses, BWV 138/1 and 95/1 in September 1723 and BWV 73/1 in January 1724, had a stimulating effect on Bach’s emerging concept of a chorale cantata cycle.

  68. See Schulze in WBK3: 115f.

  69. For an analytical discussion of the chorale cantata cycle, see Krummacher 1995.

  70. Two of them, BWV 128 and 68, open with a chorale chorus. Whether this happened by coincidence or by Bach’s request, Ziegler did not pursue the chorale cantata concept.

  71. Versuch in gebundener Schreib-Art (Leipzig, 1729).

  72. Bach and his wife had concerts in Cöthen; see NBR, no. 117.

  73. Dürr 1985, p. 56.

  74. Christoph Wolff, “Bachs Leipziger Kirchenkantaten: Repertoire und Kontext,” in WBK3, p. 17

  75. BD II, no. 243; Spitta II, p. 345.

  76. For example, Picander’s cantata for the First Sunday in Advent concludes with the chorale “Gottes Sohn ist kommen,” a setting of which (BWV 318) can be found in the 1765 edition of the four-part chorales (no. 21); none of Bach’s extant cantatas includes this hymn. Moreover, the style of the harmonization resembles that of Bach’s later (post–Jahrgang III) chorale settings.

  77. NBR, no. 146.

  78. BD II, no. 452.

  79. See facsimile in NBA/KBII/ 5, p. 61.

  80. Quote 1717

  81. See also Johann Kuhnau, Magnificat in C major, ed. Evangeline Rimbach. Madison, Wisc., 1980.

  82. We don’t know how regularly or often Bach performed his Magnificat on the high feast days of the ecclesiastical year, but we do know that at least occasionally he performed Magnificat settings by other composers; see Cammarota 1986.

  83. In the liturgy of the Good Friday morning service, Walter’s St. John Passionstood in place of the Gospel lesson and followed the chanting of Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 (instead of the Epistle lesson). The performance of the Passion was framed by two hymns, “Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund” and “O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid” see BJ1911: 58f.

  84. Glöckner 1990, p. 79.

  85. Schering 1926, pp. 23–25.

  86. NBR, no. 114.

  87. Schering 1926, pp. 25–33.

  88. NBR, no. 115. Only over a year later, in June 1725, was Bach reimbursed 3 talers 8 groschen for printing costs and harpsichord repair (BD II, no. 190).

  89. In BWV 245, Bach apparently used transverse flutes for the first time in his Leipzig church music.

  90. The five “new” movements in version II of the St. John Passiondo not represent new compositions but seem to stem from the 1717 Passion; see BC D1.

  91. None of the available editions of the St. John Passion, including NBAII/1, properly differentiate between the unfinished revision and the 1749 version of the work; see BC D 2a–e.

  92. NBR, no. 208.

  93. See Glöckner 1977.

  94. Reference is made there to “Five Passions, of which one is for double chorus” (NBR, no. 306, p. 304).

  95. Spitta II, pp. 340–45.

  96. Leaver 1983.

  97. None of the composers who set the Brockes Passion to music made use of a double choir.

  98. The two extant original performing parts marked “Soprano in Ripieno” suggest that about six singers participated (NBA/KBII/5, p. 49).

  99. NBR, no. 114.

  100. See Dürr 1963/64: 47–52.

  101. 1736 revision: choir I: SATB (solo, ripieno, including Evangelist and soliloquentes: An cilla 1–2, Uxor Pilati, Jesus, Judas, Pontifex 1–2, Petrus, Kaiphas, Pilatus); 2rec, 2trav, 2ob (d’amore, da caccia), 2v, va, va da gamba, bc (vc, vne, org); choir II: SATB (solo, ripieno), including Testis 1–2; 2trav, 2ob (d’amore), 2v, va, bc (vc, vne, org); choir III: S in ripieno. Prior to 1736: one continuo group for choir I/II; lute instead of va da gamba for nos. 56–57; 1742: va da gamba for nos. 34–35, cemb instead of org for nos. 1–68 (choir II).

  102. When Bach was elected to the post of cantor, consul Steger had requested that he “make compositions that were not theatrical” (NBR, no. 98).

  CHAPTER 9

  1. The reference to the “pater organistarum in Germania” occurs within a brief discussion of music of the Protestant Germans; see BD III, no. 798. The poem appears in Guido’s Regulae musicae rhythmicae.

  2. NBR, nos. 343–346.

  3. Bach never even responded to Mattheson’s requests in 1719 and 1731 to contribute an autobiography; see Schulze 1981.

  4. Marpurg, who wrote the preface to the second (1752) edition of The Art of Fugue, refers in 1750 to a personal encounter with Bach (BD III, no. 632) that most likely occurred on his return from Paris, in 1746.

  5. The chorales to follow more than a decade later, in 1765 and 1769, in two volumes: Johann Sebastian Bachs vierstimmige Choralgesänge. On the manuscript and printed tra dition, see BC, I/4, pp. 1288–90.

  6. NBR, no. 376.

  7. NBR, no. 374.

  8. NBR, no. 281.

  9. From the preface to the first edition; NBR, no. 378.

  10. Prefaces to the Orgel-Büchlein, Aufrichtige Anleitung, and advertisement for The Art of Fugue: NBR, nos. 69, 92, and 281.

  11. Bach after Niedt (NBR, pp. 16f.); see note 12.

  12. J. S. Bach, Precepts and Principles, facsimile edition, ed. Pamela Poulin (Oxford, 1994).

  13. Niedt, Musicalische Handleitung, 3 vols. (Hamburg, 1710, 1717, and 1721); facsim ile edition (Buren, 1976). See also Poulin (note 12), pp. 10f. and 66.

  14. Niedt’s text reads: “The thoroughbass is the m
ost complete foundation of music. It is played with both hands on a keyboard instrument in such a way that the left hand plays the prescribed notes, while the right hand strikes consonances and dissonances, so that this results in a well-sounding Harmonie for the Honour of God and the permissible delight of the soul” (Pamela Poulin, trans.; F. E. Niedt, The Musical Guide [Oxford, 1989], p. 28).

  15. See Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 9 (Leipzig, 1935; reprint 1984), cols. 891f. The Leipzig-trained Johann Adolph Scheibe, in Critischer Musikus (Hamburg, 1737), p. 33, discussed the science of musical composition in terms of “the principles on which the whole harmonic structure is based.”

  16. For example, Johann Christoph Gottsched’s “principles of philosophy” (Erste Gründe der gesamten Weltweisheit[Leipzig, 1733]).

  17. Mizler, Musikalischer Staarstecher (Leipzig, 1739–40), p. 9; the following citation, p. 83. See also Leisinger 1994, pp. 75–77.

  18. Music lost, text extant.

  19. Kuhnau’s successors as organists were Johann Adam Stolle (1710–13), N. Pitzschel (1713–14), Johann Zetzsche (1714–16), Johann Gottlieb Görner (1716–21; thereafter organist at St. Nicholas’s), and Johann Christoph Thiele (1721–74).

  20. Schering 1941, p. 17.

  21. Görner received 2 talers 15 groschen per quarter; see ibid., p. 104.

  22. BD I, p. 44.

  23. For the extensive documentation of this affair, see NBR, nos. 119–20, and BDI, nos. 9–12.

  24. Incidental fees and other income derived from university connections not included. Records of the annual fee collected by Bach (discovered in 1985 in the Leipzig University archives) completely changed the previously held view that Bach had ended his academic service by the beginning of 1726, that is, following his unsuccessful appeal to the king; see Szeskus 1987.

  25. The traditional view (since Spitta II, pp. 210–12) of Görner as a bitter and incompetent rival is purely fictional.

  26. NBR, no. 279, p. 255.

  27. The basic liturgical framework of the academic service at St. Paul’s (Christian Ernst Sicul, Neo annalium Lipsiensium continuatio, II [Leipzig, 1715–17], §16): organ prelude; hymn “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr” hymn (selected); hymn “Wir glauben all an einen Gott” sermon on the Gospel lesson; Collect, prayers, announcements, Benediction; hymn (selected). On high feasts and on Sundays during the fair only, a cantata was followed by the hymn stanza “Gott sei uns gnädig.”

  28. BDII, no. 156.

  29. According to the index in Johann Adolph Scheibe, Critischer Musikus (Leipzig, 1745), “ein elender Componist.”

  30. BD II, no. 226; nos. 225–228 cover the pertinent squabble.

  31. NBR, no. 135.

  32. NBR, no. 136.

  33. Professor Jöcher, a philosopher, historian, and bibliographer, had in 1714 been a respondent to a medical dissertation on the effect of music on man.

  34. BD II, no. 415; see also nos. 422, 424, and 424a; NBR, nos. 199–201.

  35. An instrument acquired in 1678–79 (Dähnert 1980, p. 184) and, like the organs in the Leipzig main churches, tuned to choir pitch, a whole tone above chamber pitch; the organ part of BWV 228 is therefore notated in A-flat major.

  36. The instrument cost more than 3,000 talers (the original organ contract with Scheibe of 1711 refers to a purchase price of 2,926 talers); for specifications, see BD I, p. 167, and Dähnert 1980, pp. 183–84. Gottfried Silbermann received the sum of 2,000 talers for the thirty-one-stop organ at St. Sophia’s in Dresden, completed in 1720.

  37. BDI, pp. 166f.

  38. Unlike the old small choir organ, the new Scheibe organ was tuned to chamber pitch.

  39. The organ fugue BWV 537/2 makes use of a not fully evolved da capo form, whereas the lute fugue BWV 998/2 from the mid-1730s picks up the strict da capo principle from BWV 548/2.

  40. NBR, no. 118.

  41. All other hypothetical “original” solo instruments heretofore proposed for this work present serious problems; if the finale movement, for example, is played by a transverse flute or oboe, there is hardly a spot for taking a breath.

  42. Like the Scheibe organ at St. Paul’s, the Silbermann organ at St. Sophia’s was tuned to chamber pitch.

  43. The scholarly careers and publications of the academics are described in Jöcher 1750–51.

  44. Schering 1941, p. 101.

  45. NBR, no. 328.

  46. Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811), book VI.

  47. See Lloyd Espenschied, “The Electrical Flare of the 1740s,” Electrical Engineering 74 (1955): 392–97, and Cohen 1990, pp. 64, 113.

  48. See note 46.

  49. Referred to above; see Söhnel 1983, p. 16.

  50. BD II, no. 162.

  51. Ibid.; Petzoldt 1985.

  52. See BD II, nos. 405a, 418, 426, 577.

  53. BD II, no. 249; see also no. 483.

  54. Stiller 1976.

  55. BD II, no. 309. The Partita in C minor, BWV 826, in this collection contains a capriccio.

  56. The canonic voice responds at half speed; NBR, no. 220.

  57. Neumann 1970.

  58. BD II, no. 505.

  59. According to 1756 statistics, five in the Faculty of Theology, fourteen in Law, eight in Medicine, and seventeen in Philosophy; see Müller 1990, p. 60.

  60. Numbers vary greatly. The 1723–50 matriculations: maximum, 338 (winter 1727) and 165 (summer 1727); minimum, 215 (winter 1749) and 65 (summer 1734); see Schulze 1802, pp. 70–71.

  61. Rent from seats, pews, and boxes (built-in and often heatable, called “chapels”) were the churches’ major source of income.

  62. The numerous published sermons by Deyling provide welcome insight into the learned exegetical and hermeneutical approach and polished pulpit rhetoric. The collection of essays in Petzoldt 1985 deal with sermon styles and interpretive traditions in Bach’s time.

  63. It must be noted that the population nearer the bottom of the social scale attended services at the churches with “free” seating and with no musical program, such as St. Peter’s in Leipzig.

  64. NBR, no. 151.

  65. Bach referred to it as privat information; see NBR, no. 231.

  66. See the list in NBR, pp. 316–17.

  67. NBR, no. 148.

  68. NBR, no. 252.

  69. NBR, no. 395.

  70. See NBA/KBIII/2.1 (Frieder Rempp, 1991), pp. 21ff.

  71. See BC I/4, pp. 1271ff.

  72. NBR, no. 378.

  73. See Chapter 8, p. 263.

  74. NBR, no. 315.

  75. See Dürr 1978.

  76. The “canon” of six English and six French Suites was established only after 1724.

  77. Begun November 21, 1725.

  78. Published in Spitta II, appendix, pp. 1–11.

  79. Abhandlung vom harmonischen Dreiklang (unpublished treatise, announced in 1758 in Leipzig newspapers); manuscript (begun c. 1754) lost.

  80. NBR, no. 168.

  81. NBR, no. 306, p. 302.

  82. “Good store [apparat] of the choicest church compositions” (NBR, no. 32); “artfully composed things [Sachen]” (J. S. Bach, Precepts and Principles, ed. Poulin, p. 66).

  83. Listed 1697 in a Catalogus Librorum Musicorum Scholae Thomanae by Johann Schelle, with a 1702, supplement by Johann Kuhnau. A substantial addition had occurred in 1712, when on Kuhnau’s recommendation the musical estate (375 items) of cantor Johann Schelle was purchased for 40 talers, with funds from the city. For a historical inventory, see Schering 1919.

  84. In 1729 and later, however, Bach used municipal funds to acquire new editions of Erhard Bodenschatz’s classic motet collection, Florilegium Portense (1618), for regular use at St. Nicholas’s and St. Thomas’s; see BD II, nos. 271–272.

  85. Küster 1991.

  86. A reconstruction has been attempted by Beißwenger 1992; see also Wolff 1968.

  87. As in the case of Lotti’s Missa sapientiae, which Bach seems to have obtained from him; see Beißwenger 1992, p. 304.

 
; 88. Wolff 1968, p. 227.

  89. NBR, no. 279.

  90. The only extant hymnal from Bach’s library (University of Glasgow); see BC I/4, p. 1273.

  91. NBR, no. 228.

  92. The Großes vollständiges Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschafften und Künste, the largest and most influential eighteenth-century German scholarly reference work (Leipzig, 1732–52), appeared almost twenty years earlier than the great French Encyclopédie, begun in 1751.

  93. Volume 22 (Leipzig, 1739), col. 1388, article “Musik.”

  94. NBR, no. 306, p. 305.

  95. Cf. the canons BWV 1073–1078; NBR, nos. 45, 133, 166, 242, 251, 259.

  96. NBR, no. 259.

  97. Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis (German edition) (Schwäbisch Hall, 1662), p. 364.

  98. “Avertissement” of The Art of Fugue, May 1751; NBR, no. 281.

  99. Analogous to scientia possibilium, the science of the possible, as propagated by Christian Wolff; see H. Seidl, “Möglichkeit,” Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer, vol. 6 (Basel, 1984), col. 86.

  100. Johann Abraham Birnbaum on Bach, 1739; BD II, no. 441, p. 353.

  101. Westfall 1995, p. 357.

  102. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1854), article “An dacht, andächtig (attentus, intentus, pius, devotus),” cols. 302–3.

  CHAPTER 10

  1. The actual birthday was February 23, but Bach, like other musicians, was provided lodging “for several days,” suggesting lavish festivities. Guest musicians included Anna Magdalena Bach; her sister and sister’s husband, the Zeitz court trumpeter Johann Andreas Krebs; Carl Gotthelf Gerlach as alto singer; and three others (see BD II, no. 254).

  2. Bach’s biography (completed before August 1729) in Walther Lexicon, p. 64, contains the first reference to the new title. On January 18, 1729, Bach still used his Cöthen title (BJ1994: 15), indicating that he did not receive the appointment in conjunction with the duke’s January visit in Leipzig.

  3. In the 1720s, the court capelle under the direction of Johann Gotthilf Krieger employed thirty musicians, among them Anna Magdalena Bach’s father, Johann Caspar Wilcke.