Johann Sebastian Bach (23 page)

Because Bach's contract with the St. Blasius Parish Convent concerning his overall duties and earnings was vague on specifics, it fails to mention that he also held a subcontract, as his predecessors had, with St. Mary and Magdalen's Church of the Augustinian Convent, the so-called Brückenhof Church.
⁶⁸
This smaller church, attached to the St. Mary and Magdalen's School for girls (founded at the old St. Augustine's nunnery in 1565, in anticipation of the Lutheran Reformation's acceptance), contained a new one-manual organ, built for 228 florins by Johann Friedrich Wender in 1701–2, at the same time the organ at the New Church in Arnstadt was under construction.
⁶⁹
Traditionally, the organists of St. Blasius's and St. Mary's Churches alternated playing the weekly services for the girls' school, each receiving annually 4 florins 16 groschen, plus four bushels of wheat and sixteen “malters” of rye. Bach participated in this rotation from the very beginning, as his first payment is recorded for the Holy Cross quarter (July-September) of 1707.

Similar alternating arrangements for the two principal town organists existed with three other churches—St. Kilian's, All Saints, and Holy Cross—again with additional remuneration. Although payment records have not survived, a more detailed contract set up for Bach's second successor, Christoph Bieler, provides the necessary information and also tells us about the organist's duties at St. Blasius's. According to this 1730 document, the organist was expected “to play
figural[iter]
and
choral[iter]
”—that is, to perform preludes, fugues, and chorale elaborations as well as accompany congregational hymns—“on all Sundays and feast days and extraordinary holidays [Marian feasts and those commemorating the apostles] at the Matins, morning, and afternoon services of St. Blasius's, and at the so-called week churches [where no Sunday services were held] of St. Mary-Magdalen's, St. Kilian's, All Saints, and Holy Cross in alternation with the organist at
B
[eatae]
Mar
[iae]
Virg
[inis].”
⁷⁰
Not specifically mentioned are two services at St. Blasius's on Tuesdays and Fridays, nor is it noted that Matins services were not held on most Sundays and feast days. In a normal week, then, Bach was responsible for altogether six services—two more than in Arnstadt, though for some additional pay. Furthermore, since Mühlhausen provided many more opportunities for weddings, funerals, and other special services at extra pay, his total income was considerably greater than it had been before.
⁷¹

Bach's increased workload may have been partially offset with the help of assistants. The first documented pupil “who learned the playing of the clavier from Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach, and stayed with him the whole time from 1707 until 1717,” was Johann Martin Schubart,
⁷²
although the much younger Johann Caspar Vogler is reported to have received Bach's instruction in Arnstadt as a ten-year-old.
⁷³
Both gifted youngsters certainly worked with Bach in Mühlhausen, inaugurating a steady stream of private students that ended only with his death. Schubart later succeeded Bach in Weimar, and after Schubart's early death in 1721, Vogler became his successor. Typically among professional musicians, pupils who achieved a certain proficiency could serve as apprentices and associates, roles that Schubart may have filled to ease his teacher's burdens.

The structure of the divine service in Mühlhausen did not differ much from that in Arnstadt. The service followed either the Schwarzburg Agenda of 1675, prescribed for the three Schwarzburg counties of Rudolstadt, Arnstadt, and Sondershausen but widely adopted throughout Thuringia, or the electoral-Saxon
Agenda, Das ist, Kirchen-Ordnung
(Leipzig, 1691).
⁷⁴
The electoral-Saxon formulary differed from the Schwarzburg (Table 4.2) in only minor musical aspects:

• the Kyrie and Gloria were preceded by a polyphonic Introit motet for the specific Sunday or feast day (choir);
  
• the Sanctus was performed polyphonically, on high feast days only (choir);
  
• one of two Communion hymns, “Jesus Christus unser Heiland” or “Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet,” was sung (congregation and organ).
  

The local hymnbook in use was the
Vermehrtes Gesang-Buch
of 1686, containing texts without melodies, and edited by Superintendent Frohne's father, Johann Bernhard Frohne, reissued in 1697 and 1703 and revised by Johann Adolph Frohne himself in 1713.

Both principal churches of the city, St. Blasius's in the lower part
(Unterstadt)
and St. Mary's in the upper part (
Oberstadt
), were originally built in the thirteenth century. The first reference to St. Blasius's stems from 1227, and the oldest bell in one of the two massive church towers bears a casting mark of 1281. In 1560–63, after the late-Gothic hall church had been enlarged, Jost Pape of Göttingen built an organ on a separate gallery at the west end of the central aisle, the instrument Joachim a Burck first played. After extensive but apparently ineffective repairs executed in 1676 by Jost Schäfer of Langensalza, the organ was substantially rebuilt and enlarged in 1687–91 by Mühlhausen's own Johann Friedrich Wender, according to plans drawn up by Johann Georg Ahle.

This fairly large instrument, with thirty stops on two manuals (
Oberwerk
and
Rückpositiv
) and pedal, was the organ Bach played the most in Mühlhausen, and it served him well. That he found small defects here and there should not surprise, considering that major parts were by then almost 150 years old. However, that Bach could persuade the parish convent to undertake a large-scale renovation and further expansion of the organ less than twenty years after the previous major overhaul speaks for the respect and admiration the young organist had won during little more than half a year in the job. On February 21, 1708, consul Conrad Meckbach, who had also been a council member when the rebuilding under Johann Georg Ahle was undertaken, submitted for discussion Bach's new plans for the organ. The following day, organ builder Wender was queried about Bach's design and estimated a cost of 250 talers for materials and labor. After further discussion and negotiations, all within only two days, a sum of 230 talers was approved for the ambitious project.
⁷⁵

Bach's “Project for New Repairs to the Organ” demonstrates thorough technological expertise and great musical imagination.
⁷⁶
He deals with problems of the wind chests and stresses the importance of stable and stronger wind pressure, especially for a new thirty-two-foot pedal sub-bass stop that he proposed in order to give the organ “the most solid foundation” and for the larger pipes he requested for the sixteen-foot pedal
Posaune
. A thirty-two-foot stop must have been a particular dream of his ever since he encountered such a stop as part of Reinken's organ in Hamburg (in 1768, Johann Friedrich Agricola quotes Bach as giving “assurance that the 32-foot
Principal
and the pedal
Posaune
in the organ of St. Catharine's in Hamburg spoke evenly and quite audibly right down to the lowest C”).
⁷⁷
Bach suggests replacing a few old stops with new ones that would offer a more varied sound, in particular “a
Fagotto
of 16-foot tone…which is useful for all kinds of new
inventiones
and sounds very fine in concerted music.” Special effects would be created by a new set of chimes
(Glockenspiel)
in the pedal that, according to Bach, was “desired by the parishioners.” The most important matter, however, was the addition of an entire third manual
(Brustpositiv)
with seven carefully chosen metal and wood stops of different pitches, shapes, scales, and sound qualities—giving the whole organ more character, timbre, and flexibility for both solo and accompanying purposes.

The approval of these renovations apparently occurred at a most opportune moment for Bach, when major church and city officials were very proud of their new organist. Less than three weeks earlier, on February 4, 1708, he had presented his first large-scale vocal-instrumental composition at the annual inauguration of the city council, honoring the newly elected burgomasters, Adolf Strecker and Georg Adam Steinbach, and the forty-eight council members (elected for life). The ceremonial service took place at St. Mary's, but according to established tradition, the town council election music, known as the “little council piece,” was always repeated at St. Blasius's on the following Sunday in the Vespers service.
⁷⁸
Since in 1708 February 4 fell on a Saturday, the two performances of the state music, whose text also included a reference to Emperor Joseph I, took place on successive days. On February 11, Bach collected the honorarium of 3 talers that his predecessor Ahle had also received annually for the same purpose.
⁷⁹
However, the expenses for the customary publication of the text booklet and the music—10 talers for the printer and 8 groschen for the bookbinder—were much higher than in previous years.
⁸⁰
Bach had composed a work of unusual proportions and complexity that made the performances of earlier council pieces pale by comparison, as most everyone would have immediately noticed. Ahle's council pieces generally consisted of strophic arias with instrumental accompaniment. No longer a little piece, Bach's “Gott ist mein König,” BWV 71, was a full-fledged multimovement cantata, a “Congratulatory Church Motet” according to its original title.
⁸¹

The large St. Mary's Church with its several galleries and lofts had long invited polychoral music. But never before had the four-hundred-year-old church witnessed a performance with as spectacular and diversified a vocal-instrumental ensemble as it did that February in 1708, under the skilled direction of its new organist. Bach had taken a newer kind of compositional structure as his model: Buxtehude's famous Lübeck
Abend-Musiken
, which were known to have featured polychoral design. The autograph score of BWV 71 clearly lays out its polychoral plan, involving altogether seven different performing units:

The tutti ensemble, combining all the units, is heard only in the first and last movements (Table 4.5). The inner movements, meanwhile, display a variety of vocal-instrumental combinations that closely match the expressive needs of the text—juxtaposing in movements 4–5, for example, the trumpet choir in “Durch mächtige Kraft erhältst du unsere Grenzen” (Through mighty power You preserve our borders) with the two contrasting woodwind choirs in “Tag und Nacht ist dein” (Day and night are Yours). Bach's refined treatment of the vocal-instrumental scoring demonstrates his ability to deal with highly differentiated patterns of sound, a skill that his experience with the organ would have taught him. But just as impressive is his sophisticated application of different compositional designs in the seven movements—for example, the integrated aria and chorale elaboration in movement 2, fugal setting in 3, chaconne in 4, and a French-style choral song (with a liturgical litany ending) in 6; his construction of the overall tonal scheme, entailing both sharp and flat keys; and finally, his wide-ranging rhythmic patterns in duple and triple meters, with further “affective” designations (“animoso” and “un poco allegro” in movement 1, “andante” in 2, “lente” in 3, “vivace” in 5, “affetuoso e larghetto” in 6, and “allegro,” “andante,” and “vivace” in 7).

T
ABLE
4.5. “Gott ist mein König,” BWV 71: Structural Layout

The cantata BWV 71 put Bach on the map, so to speak: it was published well ahead of works by his contemporaries Telemann and Handel, both of whom went on to outstrip him by far in general popularity (and not one of Bach's post-Mühlhausen vocal works found its way into print during his lifetime). The “council piece” impressed the Mühlhausen authorities so deeply that even after he had moved away, they invited Bach to provide the cantatas for the two subsequent years, 1709 and 1710, and brought him back from Weimar to perform them.
⁸²
Although the text and music for these later pieces are lost despite their having been printed, as BWV 71 had been, two other vocal works can be firmly dated to the Mühlhausen period: the cantata “Aus der Tiefen rufe ich zu dir,” BWV 131, and the incompletely transmitted
Wedding Quodlibet
BWV 524, both of which survive in autograph sources. Perhaps the motet “Ich lasse dich nicht,” BWV Anh. 159, belongs to this group as well; it comes down to us in a fair copy of 1712–13, but its unusual French rondeau structure, thematically based on Lully,
⁸³
and its general relationship with BWV 71/6 suggest an earlier origin. That the score of BWV 131 bears the notation “set to music at the request of Herrn D. Georg: Christ: Eilmar” indicates a special relationship that Bach had developed with the archdeacon of St. Mary's in Mühlhausen, whom he later invited to stand as godfather to his first child.
⁸⁴
The phrase may also imply that pastor Eilmar provided the text for this cantata. And it is conceivable that Eilmar, probably against Superintendent Frohne, supported Bach in establishing what he called “a well-regulated church music,” meaning regular performances at Mühlhausen's main churches of modern-style concerted vocal music—that is, cantatas. With the examples of BWV 71 and 131, Bach had certainly proven to the people of the imperial city that he was able and eager to direct them toward new musical horizons.