Part 2
Bach’s Arnstadt days were drawing to a close. This is not to intimate that when he left it or any other town in which he had filled positions he never returned to them. Throughout his life he traveled repeatedly over familiar ground, either to participate in family meetings, to inspect organs, give recitals or engage in other social or professional activities. To be sure these wanderings were limited to a few hundred miles in Central and Northern Germany. But such as they were he took them often and gladly, either alone or with members of his family.
YEAR AT MÜHLHAUSEN
At Mühlhausen, in Thuringia, the death of Johann Georg Ahle, in December 1706, left a void in the organ loft of the Church of St. Blasius. It was not long before Bach was asked on what terms he would take over the post of his renowned predecessor. He asked a larger sum than the salary paid to Ahle but substantially the same as he had been earning at Arnstadt; also, a quantity of firewood “to be delivered at his door,” some corn, and a conveyance to move his household goods. By June 1707, the appointment was his, the town obviously so eager to secure him that it wasted no time in negotiations. Conceivably the Arnstadt Consistory was not dissatisfied to be so conveniently rid of an irascible and troublemaking hothead.
Mühlhausen had an impressive background of musical traditions but Bach entertained nobler aims for the Church of St. Blasius than the more easygoing ideals of Ahle. For this purpose he went to a not inconsiderable private expense to improve the organ and enlarge the musical library of Mühlhausen’s churches. The town council seconded his efforts in many ways even if some people resented the independence and progressive though disturbing projects of a young man of twenty-two. At this period he inherited a respectable sum of money from a maternal uncle in Erfurt, and the chances are that the magnificent cantata numbered 106 and entitled _God’s Time is the Best_, was composed for the funeral of this Tobias Lämmerhirt, which Bach dutifully attended. Soon afterwards he retraced his steps to Arnstadt and there, on October 17, 1707, in the neighboring village of Dornheim he married Maria Barbara. Their honeymoon was devoted to visiting different members of the Bach family scattered through the neighboring countryside.
The good will of the community made it possible for Bach to demand repairs and improvements on the organ of St. Blasius. Moreover, he was called upon to compose a work for a highly important Mühlhausen civic function, the annual election of the town councilors. It was for this event that he wrote a grandiose _Ratswahl Kantate_, whose music exhibits the influence of Buxtehude heightened by his own incomparable genius. In a burst of generosity the city fathers voted to publish the work. It was the only one of Bach’s cantatas printed in his lifetime. Otherwise, there is no record that, aside from the cantata _God is my King_, a single such work of his was given in the Mühlhausen churches, though from the creative standpoint he can scarcely have been idle.
Despite the high esteem Bach enjoyed in Mühlhausen he remained there only a year. The municipal heads and the authorities of the Church of St. Blasius regretted his going but were unable to prevent it. He conceded frankly that he wanted to improve his material position. Yet, a deeper reason lay at the back of his departure. It was at the bottom the byproduct of a religious question. For some time a reaction had been developing against certain dogmatic formularies in the Lutheran body. The dissidents, known as Pietists, gradually came to sword’s points with the orthodox sect, and Mühlhausen, especially, became a hotbed of Pietism, whose adherents strongly opposed the use of music in public worship. This, of course, flew violently in the face of Bach’s ideal, which was the betterment of music in the church and its heightened employment to sacred ends. It became solely a question of time when such a situation would render his position at St. Blasius untenable. The Consistory was so well disposed to Bach that it promptly agreed to a variety of modifications in the organ which he had recommended. Before these were carried out he had given notice of his departure and his employers realized they could do nothing about it. He promised, however, to come over to Mühlhausen from nearby Weimar in order to see how the alterations were being executed.
WEIMAR
Weimar, to which he now removed, became Bach’s home for the next ten years, and here were created some of his mightiest works, particularly those for organ. The town was, even at that period, a cultural center. Its Duke, Wilhelm Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar, a pious, serious-minded ruler, engaged Bach not only as organist, but also as _Kammermusikus_, i.e., as a member of his household orchestra. A close friendship also developed between Bach and the young but shortlived Johann Ernst, son of Bach’s earlier Weimar patron. Exceedingly musical, the youth was a talented violinist, took lessons from the _Kammermusikus_, and composed several works of conspicuous merit, three of which Bach later transcribed for clavier and which, for a long time, passed for violin concertos by Vivaldi. The acquaintances and close friendships Bach formed at the Weimar court were numerous and valuable, with musicians, writers and educators prominent among them. The ducal “Kapelle” varied in size and constitution according to circumstances. Sometimes, when opera was performed, it included singers. The instrumentalists proper seem to have numbered eleven. The conductor was one Johann Samuel Drese; the concertmaster, from 1714 on, Bach.
One of the concertmaster’s duties was to provide cantatas for a variety of occasions and, beginning in 1714, he wrote a number of them. His choir consisted of twelve singers. Wilhelm Ernst had from the first been impressed by Bach’s powers as an organist. The musician’s diverse labors were gratifyingly recompensed and in nine years he had doubled his income. At its smallest it was twice as large as at Mühlhausen. It is claimed that never in his life did Bach have at his disposal an organ truly worthy of his powers and even at Weimar the instrument was inferior to that in Mühlhausen. Nevertheless, the organ works he composed at Weimar exceeded anything he had ever done before in sumptuousness of inspiration, imaginative grandeur, and technical exaction.
One hears comparatively little of Maria Barbara. Bach’s wife appears, however, to have been a fitting helpmeet to her busy husband, handling his household and his numerous pupils with tact and discretion and bearing him children with regularity. Some of these died early, others lived till a ripe age. In 1710 was born his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, a genius in his own right and ever his father’s favorite, but all his life wayward and something of a black sheep. At this stage one might as well mention two other musically outstanding sons of Bach among the twenty children he was to beget. The more prominent of these was Carl Philipp Emanuel, who served Frederick the Great and whose reputation as a pianist and composer was such that, whenever in the latter part of the eighteenth century, it was a question of Bach, people usually meant Philipp Emanuel. Another, Johann Christian (Bach’s son by his second wife), lived and died in London, composed operas, and became an intimate of the youthful Mozart.
During the years of his Weimar residence Bach made three journeys which are conspicuous among the brief ones that punctuated his life. One was to Cassel toward the end of 1714, presumably to examine a new organ. Possibly, too, he accompanied his ducal master on a ceremonial visit. Like Weimar, Cassel had a reputation for culture and evidently the Duke would have been pleased to exhibit the prowess of his own court organist. A reference to Bach’s incredible virtuosity on this visit has come down to us. “His feet, flying over the pedals as though they were winged,” wrote an observer, “made the notes reverberate like thunder in a storm till the prince, confounded with admiration, pulled a ring from his finger and presented it to the player. Now bethink you, if Bach’s skilful feet deserved such bounty what gift must the prince have offered to reward his hands as well?” Other stories of his miraculous playing had long circulated throughout the country. People said it was a habit of his to climb into the organ loft of an inconspicuous rural church and so astound people with his improvisations that the cry would go up: “That must be Bach or the Devil!” The tale, one can depend on it, is a myth.
Another trip was to Halle, birthplace of Handel. True, he did not go there in search of his greatest contemporary (though he made several sincere yet ineffectual attempts to meet him) but to examine a new organ. His playing created so profound an impression that the Collegium Musicum made an earnest effort to secure him for Halle. Bach was flattered but, because of his Weimar connections, unable to accept. The Halle council, believing he was seeking higher pay, was irritated. Nevertheless, a little later it summoned Bach in company with Johann Kuhnau and Christian Friedrich Rolle to inspect the organ of the Church of Our Lady. The officials omitted nothing that might please their distinguished guests. A staff of servants and coachmen was placed at their service, a reception was held at which the chief musical personages of the town were summoned to meet them and, after the organ had been examined in great detail, the visitors were entertained at a banquet whose culinary abundance and gastronomic quality may be judged from the following bill of fare which has come down to us:
_1 piece of Boeuf à la mode_ _Pike with anchovy butter sauce_ _1 smoked ham_ _1 dish of peas_ _1 dish of potatoes_ _2 dishes of spinach with sausages_ _1 quarter of roast mutton_ _1 boiled pumpkin_ _Fritters_ _Candied lemon peel_ _Preserved cherries_ _Warm asparagus salad_ _Lettuce salad_ _Radishes_ _Fresh butter_ _Roast veal_
As Bach returned safely to Weimar, it may be assumed he passed up a few of the courses! He was even paid a fee for the little outing. It came to $4.50.
The third trip carried him to Dresden. There, under the rule of Augustus II, musical life flourished. In 1717 a season of Italian opera was in full blast. It was not opera, however, which fascinated Bach. He looked upon it with gentle condescension and, even in later years, was in the habit of chaffing his son, Friedemann, with the question: “Well, shall we go over to Dresden and listen to the pretty little tunes?” What did attract Bach was the presence at the Saxon court of the celebrated French clavecinist and organist, Louis Marchand. Bach had studied his compositions closely and admired them. A gifted but intolerably arrogant person, Marchand had fallen into disgrace in Versailles and found it prudent to emigrate. An official of Augustus II conceived the idea of summoning Bach from Weimar and arranging on the spot a musical contest between the two. Such is, at least, the traditional story. Whatever the exact truth may have been, Bach arrived on the scene of the proposed contest at the specified hour but Marchand, afraid of a rival whose prowess he well knew, left Dresden secretly and let the match go by default. Bach thereupon performed alone, stirring his hearers to unlimited admiration. Marchand returned to France where he lived, apparently none the worse for his ignominious failure, till 1732.
Things, however, were shaping for a change in the life of Bach. In 1716 the conductor of the ducal orchestra, Johann Samuel Drese, died. For two years Bach had filled the post of concertmaster and seems to have felt that he was next in line for the conductorship. It went, on the contrary, to Drese’s son, a man of mediocre attainments. Bach was hurt and further embittered by the fact that no more cantatas of his composition were being ordered, and his notorious temper speedily got the better of him. He had made the acquaintance of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, whose sister had married a younger member of Weimar’s ducal family. Intensely musical, that sovereign in the summer of 1717 had asked Bach to become his Kapellmeister. Bach shortly afterwards sent an application for his release to Wilhelm Ernst, apparently mincing no words. The Duke flew into a rage. We read in the diary of one of the court secretaries: “On November 6, 1717, Bach, till now Concertmaster and Court Organist, was put under arrest in the justice room for obstinately demanding his instant dismissal.” The infuriated genius remained a jailbird only till December 2. His detention appears to have been profitably employed for it enabled him to begin work on his _Orgelbüchlein_. About a week later he left Weimar for Cöthen, eighty miles to the northeast, with his wife and four children.
KAPELLMEISTER WITH PRINCE LEOPOLD
At Cöthen he began a new life. For one thing, he no longer filled the post of organist. The court of Prince Leopold was of the Calvinistic faith. Church services, being of a particularly austere nature, required no organ playing of a virtuoso type or the production of sacred cantatas, such as Bach had hitherto been turning out in quantity. Yet Leopold was an ardent music lover, whose tastes ran to instrumental composition. He maintained an orchestra of eighteen of which Bach now became Kapellmeister. Such cantatas as he wrote in Cöthen were secular ones, chiefly in honor of his employer. For the most part his creative energies were now concentrated on concertos, suites, sonatas, and clavier works including some of his very greatest.
[Music: Contemporary score for three minuets by Bach.]
Instrumental music before Bach’s day had scarcely achieved what might be called an independent life. In the creations of his Cöthen period we discover, in effect, the most vigorous roots of our symphonic literature—especially in the four suites (or “overtures,” as Bach called them) and the six “Brandenburg” Concertos! Scholars have been unable to decide definitely whether the former were composed in Cöthen or in Leipzig. At all events they were performed before the Duke and also before the Telemann Musical Society in Leipzig, of which the composer was subsequently director. The third suite, in D, is the one comprising the exalted and incomparable _Air_, which achieved, long afterwards, a popularity of its own in the transcription of it for the G string by the violinist August Wilhemj. Yet every movement of each suite constitutes a priceless jewel of instrumental music.
The Brandenburg Concertos are in a somewhat different case. They were composed for Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg and a son of the Great Elector, whom Bach appears to have met on a journey with Prince Leopold. Christian Ludwig had a hobby of collecting concertos by various composers and he commissioned Bach to write him “some pieces.” In an elaborate preface couched in extraordinary French and dated “Cöthen, March 24, 1721,” the composer begged his noble patron to accept these products of his “slight talents” and to “overlook their imperfections.” Whether the private orchestra of the Margrave played the works or not we cannot say. Neither do we know if Bach’s gift was even acknowledged. After Christian Ludwig died, the catalogue of his richly stocked library had no mention of Bach’s half dozen “trifles.” The precious masterpieces turned up in a mass of scores offered for sale in job lots!
It is practically certain, however, that the Brandenburg Concertos were performed by the princely Kapelle at Cöthen in Bach’s presence, for the composer had been wise enough to make copies of his scores. They are not concertos in the modern sense of the term, but continuations and developments of those “concerti grossi” of masters like Torelli, Vivaldi, and Corelli. In various permutations and combinations they contrast groups of solo instruments (the “concertino”) with the background of the “tutti.” The “concerti grossi” of Handel furnish examples of the same principle of balance and diversity. The fact that none of the Brandenburg Concertos is in a minor key and that somber moods are rare, points to the probability that they were written for entertainment purposes.
Their variety is astonishing, with no two quite alike. The first, in F major, is the only one which calls for horns; and for the performance of this concerto two horn players were specially engaged at Cöthen. The second, likewise in F, requires a trumpet—the solitary appearance in the entire set of this instrument. To choose between the Brandenburg Concertos, to determine their relative musical worth is impossible. Yet in some respects the sixth, in B flat, if perhaps the least frequently played, is the most unusual. No violins are used in its scoring. The employment of two violas, two viole da gamba, and cello gives the work a peculiar dark string color wholly its own.
Let us mention here the wondrous concerto for two violins, another sublime inspiration of Bach’s Cöthen days. It is probable that it was played by the concertmaster, Josephus Spiess, and the excellent violinist, Johann Rose (who also played the oboe and taught fencing to the court pages!), with the composer conducting the orchestral accompaniment.
And Prince Leopold, himself, who not only enjoyed music but played it well, doubtless took part in the sonatas for clavier and viola da gamba. He could not do without his musicians apparently and, when, in 1718, he went to take the “cure” at Carlsbad, he had a sextet from his Kapelle accompany him. Bach was one of the retinue. The following year the Kapellmeister made a pilgrimage to nearby Halle in an effort to meet Handel, who had come to the Continent to engage singers for his operatic ventures in London. But neither at this time nor on a subsequent occasion when he tried to make the acquaintance of his great contemporary was he successful. Handel had already returned to England, seemingly far less eager to meet Bach than Bach was to meet him.
In May 1720, Prince Leopold again went to take the Carlsbad waters and once more Bach was in his train. The visit was somewhat longer this time and it ended grievously for the composer. When he set out he left his wife in the best of health and spirits. When he came back he found her dead and buried. With Maria Barbara gone there was, apparently, no one to look after Wilhelm Friedemann, Philipp Emanuel and Johann Gottfried Bernhard, the eldest not more than ten. The blow seems to have struck Bach the more heavily because, engaged in worldly music-making as he now was, he lacked the spiritual consolation of churchly activities and the communion with his inner self which he enjoyed in the organ loft.
An opportunity for a trip to Hamburg was provided by the sudden death of the organist at St. Jacob’s Church of that city. Along with a number of other noted players Bach was invited to pass on the qualifications of new candidates for the post. This gave him a chance to renew old ties and stimulate new interests. Adam Reinken was still alive and in his presence as well as before a number of municipal authorities Bach improvised astounding variations on the chorale “By the Waters of Babylon,” one of Reinken’s specialties, till the veteran conceded in amazement to his younger colleague: “I thought this art was dead, but I see it still lives in you.”
The Hamburg journey was but an interlude, however inspiring. There was no possibility of an organ position in that town. And another problem was now occupying him—the question of his children’s education. Friedemann had received his first clavier lessons from his father shortly before Maria Barbara’s death. The world has been the gainer through this instruction administered the youngster by such a formidable teacher. With his own hands Bach wrote out a _Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach_. On the first page are set down the various clefs. More important for posterity is a transliteration of the ornaments, or “Manieren,” showing precisely how they are to be executed. Then follow exercises in fingering, hand positions, and much else. The little book is a valuable illustration of Bach’s own methods of discipline and pedagogy.
Nor are these the only things for which generations of pianists have to thank the Bach of the Cöthen period. It was for teaching purposes that he composed masterpieces like the Two- and the Three-Part Inventions. To furnish practical illustration of the advantages of the system of equal temperament he advocated for tuning, he composed, while still in Leopold’s service, the first book of the _Well-Tempered Clavier_, that miraculous series of twenty-four preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys, which is the Bible of pianists to this day. The second book was written in Leipzig many years later.
It was not long before Bach realized that if his children were to be brought up in the traditions of rectitude he had himself inherited, they could not remain without a mother’s care, the more so as his many occupations left him little leisure to oversee a company of lively youngsters. And so on December 3, 1721, Bach took to himself a second wife, Anna Magdalena Wilcken, the daughter of a court trumpeter of Weissenfels. A gentle, lovable soul, musical, devoted to her great husband and the mother of a fresh host of children, she was as ideal a helpmeet for Bach as her predecessor had been.
A week after his Kapellmeister’s marriage, Prince Leopold took a wife in his turn. But the lady, the prince’s cousin, quickly troubled the musical atmosphere of the Cöthen court. Her tastes were for masquerades, dances, fireworks, illuminations and other forms of tinseled show, not for concerts of orchestral and chamber music. Bach called her an “amusa”—a person of no culture. Her installation at Cöthen was the prelude to Bach’s departure. As so often happened in his career, however, a more or less inopportune incident created a situation from which he might profit.
LEIPZIG AND THE ST. JOHN PASSION
This particular incident was the death, half a year after Bach’s second marriage, of Johann Kuhnau who, for more than twenty years, had held the Cantorship of St. Thomas’s School in Leipzig. Whether or not the post seemed to Bach himself as desirable as a Kapellmeistership, the sudden vacancy attracted a flock of candidates, some of them men of distinction. Most preferable in the eyes of the Leipzig civic council was George Philipp Telemann who in Bach’s day ranked higher in the esteem of many musicians than Bach himself. Another was Christoph Graupner of Darmstadt. We need not pursue in detail the complicated negotiations and the extensive intrigue the choice of Kuhnau’s successor involved. Telemann was offered the job and things progressed so far that the authorities debated whether the address welcoming him should be in Latin or in German. But Telemann, who already held a lucrative position in Hamburg, determined to find out which town would offer him the better inducement. Hamburg increased his already considerable stipend, so in Hamburg he remained. Graupner, on the other hand, would have come gladly. But his Darmstadt masters declined to release him.