Johann Sebastian Bach (28 page)

 

Forkel, who was born in 1749 and was of Mozart's generation, paid special attention to Bach's importance for the clavier—that is, harpsichord, clavichord, and fortepiano—just at a time when playing of the clavier, particularly the fortepiano, was spreading among a broad constituency of bourgeois society. And at a time when organ playing and organ music had assumed more of a peripheral role, Forkel realized the central position of the organ in Bach's life and works, especially in his formative years. Though himself not an accomplished organist, he discusses the subject matter with remarkable insight and, noting the close interrelationship of performance and composition, underscores Bach's idiomatic treatment of the instrument. Although he points out that many of the principles of Bach's clavier playing “may also be applied, in general, to his playing on the organ,” he recognizes that “the style and mode of managing both instruments [that is, instrument types] are as different as their respective purposes.” Apart from the technical makeup, placement, and function of the organ as a typical church instrument, he discusses the distribution of voices and the effect of “open harmony” (in which the voices are spread out from high to low) and explains: “By this means, a chorus, as it were, of four or five vocal parts, in their whole natural compass, is transferred to the organ.”

The vocal spacing of lines that Forkel brings up here is intimately connected with Bach's early attempts at creating a truly idiomatic organ texture. Two kinds of deceptive cadences that are closely related yet different in terms of their successful realization provide a case in point. In the early D-minor Toccata, BWV 565, Bach seems unperturbed by the narrowly spread fermata chord (Ex. 5.1), whereas the later Passacaglia, BWV 582, shows a mature approach in well-spaced “vocal” textural design (Ex. 5.2).

Forkel continues:

 

In this manner, Bach always played the organ; and employed, besides, the obbligato pedal, of the true use of which few organists have any knowledge. He produced with the pedal not only the fundamental notes, or those for which common organists use the little finger of the left hand, but he played a real bass melody with his feet, which was often of such a nature that many a performer would hardly have been able to produce it with his five fingers….

To all this was added the peculiar manner in which he combined the different stops of the organ with each other, or his mode of registration. It was so uncommon that many organ builders and organists were frightened when they saw him draw the stops. They believed that such a combination of stops could never sound well, but were much surprised when they afterwards perceived that the organ sounded best just so, and had now something peculiar and uncommon, which never could be produced by their mode of registration.

This peculiar manner of using the stops was the consequence of his minute knowledge of the construction of the organ and of all the single stops. He had early accustomed himself to give to each and every stop a melody suited to its qualities, and this led him to new combinations which, otherwise, would never have occurred to him. In general, his penetrating mind did not fail to notice anything which had any kind of relation to his art and could be used for the discovery of new artistic advantages. His attention to the effect of big musical compositions in places of varying character; his very practiced ear, by which he could discover the smallest error, in music of the fullest harmony and richest execution; his art of perfectly tuning an instrument, in so easy a manner—all may serve as proofs of the penetration and comprehension of this great man….

His profound knowledge of harmony, his endeavor to give all the thoughts an uncommon turn and not to let them have the smallest resemblance with the musical ideas usual out of the church, his entire command over his instrument, both with hand and foot, which correspond with the richest, the most copious, and uninterrupted flow of fancy, his infallible and rapid judgment by which he knew how to choose, among the overflow of ideas which constantly poured in upon him, those only which were adapted to the present object—in a word, his great genius, which comprehended everything and united everything requisite to the perfection of one of the most inexhaustible arts, brought the art of the organ, too, to a degree of perfection which it never attained before his time and will hardly ever again attain.
⁴⁷

 

In the chapters on “Bach the Clavier Player” and “Bach the Organist,” Forkel presents a most instructive, well-founded, and, in the last analysis, indispensable commentary on what the Obituary had previously conveyed in much less explicit terms, in the declarative sentence “Bach was the greatest organist and clavier player that we have ever had.” Moreover, by declaring that “his great genius…comprehended everything and united everything,” he draws the quintessence and proper conclusion out of a largely technical discussion that helps explain Bach's notion of musical science, a concept that also included a thorough knowledge of organ construction. According to the Obituary, Bach “not only understood the art of playing the organ, of combining the various stops of that instrument in the most skillful manner, and of displaying each stop according to its character in the greatest perfection, but he also knew the construction of organs from one end to the other…. No one could draw up or judge dispositions for new organs better than he.”
⁴⁸

We must keep in mind that the organ represented one of the most complicated—and in the case of the Dutch and north German instrument types, also the largest—“machines” in existence from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The sound-producing miracle behind an ornamental and symmetrical facade of glistening metal pipes embodied the science of mechanical engineering, physics (acoustics), chemistry (metallurgy), and mathematics as well as architecture and the handicraft of carpentry and plumbing. It comprised a myriad of individual parts using all sorts of metal, wood, leather, ivory, cloth, and other materials. Its combination of wind chests, bellows, ranks of pipes, and keyboards was capable of producing colorful sonorities of different dynamic ranges, whose spectrum and volume depended on the size of the instrument.

Bach's hands-on experience, self-directed study, natural curiosity, and frequent contact with skillful organ builders made him an organ expert of the first rank whose indisputable competence was recognized early on and put to use by himself and others throughout his professional life. The importance of his involvement in various organ designs, rebuildings, and repairs must not be underestimated; the documented cases (Table 5.3) can only be considered representative. And what began as a virtually exclusive focus on organ building later expanded to include numerous other types of keyboard, woodwind, and string instruments in whose design, construction, and sonorities he became keenly interested (see Chapter 11).

Bach's written examination reports demonstrate an impressive thoroughness; he missed hardly any minutiae. Forkel gives us some idea of how Bach tested the instrument from its console: “The first thing he did in trying out an organ was to draw out all the stops and to play with the full organ. He used to say in jest that he must first of all know whether the instrument had good lungs. He then proceeded to examine the single parts.”
⁴⁹
The Mühlhausen project, for which we have Bach's first surviving report, shows the high degree of importance he attached to the configuration, character, and balance of stops within the organ. He cared in particular about the
gravitas
of the instrument, granted ideally by a new
Untersatz
, a thirty-two-foot stop, but he thought of improving it also by changing the shallots and enlarging the resonators for the existing
Posaune
, a sixteen-foot reed stop. He proposed the exchange of the
Gemshorn
stop for “a
Violdigamba
8 foot, which would concord admirably with the 4-foot Salicional.” He then differentiated between pipe materials, requested “good 14-ounce tin” for the three
Principalia
in the facade of “the new little
Brustpositiv
,” and asked that the “
Stillgedackt
8´, which accords perfectly with concerted music,” be made of “good wood” because that would sound “much better than a metal
Gedackt
.”
⁵⁰

T
ABLE
5.3. Bach's Organ Projects and Examinations

 

In his report on the Hildebrandt organ at St. Wenceslas's in Naumburg, which he tested in 1746 together with Gottfried Silbermann, Bach writes that in a regular examination “every part specified and promised by the contract” had to be inspected, “namely keyboards, bellows, wind chests, channels, pedal and manual action, with its various parts, registers and stops pertaining thereto, both open and stopped, as well as reeds.”
⁵¹
Accordingly, he notes in the same report that “each and every part has been made with care” and that “the pipes are honestly delivered in the material specified,” but suggests that the organ builder “go through the entire organ once more, from stop to stop, and watch out for more complete equality both of voicing and of key and stop action.” The Scheibe organ at St. Paul's Church in Leipzig showed more deficiencies; Bach suggests precautions “to forestall sudden blasts of wind” remedies “in respect to inequality of voicing” so that the lowest pipes of several stops “shall not speak so coarsely and noisily, but rather produce and maintain a clear and firm tone” and adjustments so that “the touch of the organ” be made “somewhat lighter” and “the keys not go down so far.”
⁵²
He could also look well beyond the customary aspects, as he does in the same 1717 report, where he finds fault with “the whole structure of the organ” and the fact “that it will be hard to get at every part,” yet sympathizes with the organ builder because “he was not granted the additional space he requested in order to arrange the structure more conveniently.” He also advises that the part of a window that “extends behind the organ should be shielded on the inside by a little wall, or by a heavy piece of sheet iron, to avoid further threatened damage from the weather.” Bach never dealt unfairly with organ builders, whom he considered to be close colleagues. On the contrary, “his justice to the organ builders…went so far that, when he found the work really good and the sum agreed upon too small, so that the builder would evidently have been a loser by this work, he endeavored to induce those who had contracted for it to make a suitable addition, which he, in fact, obtained in several cases.”
⁵³

Most important, Bach knew how to get patrons and congregations pleased and excited about their new organ by demonstrating what might be done with it, however unconventional. A posthumous report on Bach's 1739 dedication of the Trost organ at the Altenburg palace church reads:

 

For an organist, to yield to the singing congregation is better than to have it his way. Only a few are able to direct the congregation as the old Bach could do, who, on the great organ in Altenburg, played the Credo hymn [“Wir glauben all an einen Gott”] in D minor, but for the second stanza lifted the congregation to E-flat minor, and for the third one even up to E minor. That, however, only a Bach and an organ in Altenburg could make happen. This, all of us are not, and have not.
⁵⁴

CONCERTMASTER IN WEIMAR, 1714–1717

A C
AREER
C
HOICE

“On Friday, March 2, 1714, His Serene Highness the Reigning Duke most graciously conferred upon the quondam Court Organist Bach, at his most humble request, the title of Concertmaster, with official rank below that of Vice-Capellmeister Drese, for which he is to be obliged to perform new works monthly. And for rehearsals of those, the musicians of the capelle are required to appear on his demand.”
¹
It was apparently Bach himself who requested this promotion to the newly created post of concertmaster of the Weimar court capelle. He was in a position to do so because he had been offered the post of organist and music director at Our Lady's Church in Halle. The exact spelling-out of the Weimar rank indicates that the duke was unwilling to put Bach on an equal footing with the vice-capellmeister, even though Bach's salary since the spring of 1713 had risen even above that of the capellmeister.

Bach's formal charge to perform newly composed church pieces once a month was based on a model created in 1695 for then vice-capellmeister Georg Christoph Strattner, which regulated the monthly division of labor for Sunday performances at the palace church in such a way that the capellmeister Johann Samuel Drese was responsible for three Sundays and the vice-capellmeister Strattner for one. We can assume that this schedule continued when Drese's son Johann Wilhelm attained the vice-capellmeistership after Strattner's death in 1704. With Bach now entering the scheme of alternation, it seems that he asked for an equal share with the vice-capellmeister, so that the two of them were assigned to one monthly performance each as the aging and increasingly impaired capellmeister reduced his load. Prior to this formal arrangement, Bach was probably asked to take over a Sunday performance only occasionally, when a special need arose—a situation he would have chafed at as being inadequate—so he now aimed at regularizing both his role and his schedule.

Rather than having two vice-capellmeisters with one simultaneously serving as court organist and thereby holding a more privileged position, the court administration agreed to Bach's “humble request” to reshape his original appointment and include him as concertmaster in the leadership team of the court capelle. It was an ingenious solution. Creating a new position with a respectable title was in itself a novel idea at the Weimar court, and while the duties attached to the job cut into those of the capellmeister and vice-capellmeister, their ranks at the top of the court capelle hierarchy could remain intact. But what were the specific functions of the concertmaster? Beginning in the later seventeenth century, the larger court establishments employed for their capelle a “Maitre de Concert,” or “Concert-Meister,” as leader of the instrumentalists—“Regente bey der Instrumental Music,” as Johann Mattheson put it.
²
Musicians appointed to such a post would discharge their primary duties from the first-violin chair; they were also responsible for all technical aspects of the performances, from making up the ensemble according to the varying requirements to organizing the rehearsals, positioning the players, and conducting performances, especially those of a purely instrumental nature.

The reference to rehearsals in the concluding sentence of his appointment notification confirms that Bach was indeed put in charge of these tasks. Additional instructions from the court at the time of Bach's promotion seem to reflect certain demands he had made for improving the quality of the performances. For example, the court issued a directive that “the rehearsing of the pieces at the home [of the capellmeister] has been changed, and it is ordered that it must always take place at the
Kirchen-Capelle
[the music gallery in the palace church], and this is also to be observed by the Capellmeister.” It is clear that this new regulation refers not just to performances of pieces composed by the concertmaster but to all pieces. Bach must have stood behind this major change, which reflects nothing less than an indirect reprimand of the capellmeister and, by extension, of the vice-capellmeister for maintaining too lax a regime. That Bach claimed and was given more authority is reflected in the order that “the musicians of the capelle are required to appear on his demand”—apparently in order to improve discipline and achieve better musical results. Although the wording of the promotion announcement and the changing of rehearsal venue applied specifically to church music, the consequences were surely felt throughout the activities of the court capelle. Through the duke's discreet yet forceful action, the balance of power within the capelle had definitely shifted to Bach. At the same time, the fact that the upper ranks remained unchanged likely remained a source of continuing troubles and frustrations for him.

The concertmaster appointment was the result of negotiations that extended over at least three months. It all began with the attractive offer to succeed Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, Handel's teacher, who for twenty-eight years had occupied the distinguished post once held by Samuel Scheidt at Our Lady's in Halle. After a lengthy search process, the Halle church board elected Bach as Zachow's successor on December 13, 1713; a proffer agreement was negotiated the following day and approved by the board on January 11, 1714. The contract then was sent to Bach in duplicate by special courier, with the expectation that he would immediately return one signed copy. Instead, and apparently while the courier was waiting,
³
Bach wrote back to August Becker, chairman of the church board, on January 14, informing him about a delay in his “final decision” for the following reasons:

 

First, that I have not yet received my definite dismissal and, second, that in one and another respect I should like to have some changes made, in respect of the salary as well as of the duties; concerning all of which I will inform you in writing in the course of this week. Meanwhile, I am returning the one copy [of the agreement], and since I have not yet received my definite dismissal, you will not take it amiss, my Most Honored Sir, that I am at the moment not yet able to engage myself elsewhere by signing my name before I am really released from service here. And as soon as we can agree upon the
station, I shall appear at once in person and show by my signature that I am really
willing to engage myself in Your Honors' service. Meanwhile, I beg you, Most Honored Sir…to make my excuses to [the church board] that at the present moment time has not allowed me to give any categorical decision, both because of certain obligations at Court in connection with the Prince's birthday and because the church services in themselves did not permit it; but it shall be given this week formally and without fail.
⁴
Bach was buying time, and he had good reasons for doing so. The weeks after December 14 were indeed filled with major obligations: first, the festivities on Christmas Day, marking the seventeenth birthday of Prince Johann Ernst, which because of the prince's keen musical interests may well have developed into a minor music festival; and second, the frequent church services during the Christmas season. Asking for his dismissal from court service at such a time would have been particularly awkward, so it made sense to postpone the matter until the middle of January. He is, in fact, unlikely to have formally requested his dismissal before January 14, but since his visit to Halle (lasting over two weeks) could not have been a secret at the Weimar court, he may only have hinted at his success and then received a signal that his salary might be increased. The promised letter to Halle is lost, but the minutes of the church board meeting of February 1 allude to Bach's attempt at renegotiating the agreement and mention a request for “a supplement to the salary,” which was refused. Instead, Bach was given an ultimatum “to make a definite decision within two days.” Again, his reply has not survived, but at a meeting of the board on March 1, it was recorded that Bach had “declared himself negatively.”
⁵

This decision created great disappointment in Halle and some consternation among the church board members, who sensed deceptive dealings on Bach's part. Reacting to their astonishment, Bach reminded August Becker in a sternly worded letter of March 19 that he had not, after all, applied for the post. “The Most Honored Collegium applied to me,” he wrote, and only then “I presented myself.” How Bach's invitation to present himself in Halle came about may be surmised, with the chief pastor of Our Lady's, D. Johann Michael Heineccius, playing a decisive role. Earlier, Heineccius supported an ambitious project of Zachow's to have a new organ built for the church; Zachow, however, did not live to see his project through. A contract with the organ builder Christoph Cuntzius of Halle was finally signed on September 30, 1712, just seven weeks after Zachow's death, calling for a very large instrument comprising sixty-five stops on three manuals and pedal and an equally enormous fee of 6,300 talers. As things stood, this project of unprecedented size and expense—for the organ builder as well as for the city of Halle—would have to be undertaken without close supervision by a competent resident organist. Clearly, a well-recognized consultant was needed, and the Weimar court organist Bach was only about sixty miles away, half a day's coach trip. Heineccius might have learned about Bach and his reputation as an organ expert from Weimar's general superintendent Lairitz, from theological colleagues, or from the organ builder Cuntzius and his network.
⁶
Although Bach's consultantship in Halle has not been documented,
⁷
his presence there for more than two weeks in late 1713 and the special treatment he was to receive there can hardly be explained otherwise; moreover, Bach later served, along with Johann Kuhnau of Leipzig and Christian Friedrich Rolle of Quedlinburg, on the committee to examine the finished organ in the spring of 1716.

Bach's trip to Halle at the invitation of the church board, sometime between November 28 and December 1, 1713, was not intended to promote him as a candidate for the Zachow post, although he must have known that the vacancy had not yet been filled. Four distinguished organists who made the final cut, Gottfried Kirchhoff of Quedlinburg, Valentin Haußmann of Schafstädt, Melchior Hoffmann of Leipzig, and Simon Conrad Lippe of Magdeburg, had already auditioned for the job before the process was interrupted: King Frederick I of Prussia died on February 25, 1713. During the subsequent state mourning period (one year), which affected Halle as part of electoral Brandenburg, public performances of concerted music were prohibited. The church board, eager to save money, saw no reason to seek a quick solution to the Zachow succession and put the matter on hold. Melchior Hoffmann, organist of the New Church in Leipzig, was commissioned to set to music a mourning text by pastor Heineccius and to present the work at the official state memorial service for the Prussian king on May 1. The choice of Hoffmann for this important and highly visible event indicates that he was then considered the leading candidate. Yet the position was still open when Bach traveled to Halle, presumably to advise on the large-scale organ project. He was put up at the city's most luxurious hotel, the Inn of the Golden Ring, located on the market square right across from Our Lady's Church. All his expenses were paid, as the innkeeper's itemized invoice to the church board shows.
⁸

Bach ate and drank well—his 18 groschen would buy thirty-two quarts of beer at retail price. While there, he was apparently approached about the vacant position at Our Lady's and asked “to present himself,” which he did. But as he indicated in his letter of January 14, he had planned to leave directly afterward: “I, after presenting myself, should immediately have taken my leave if the request and courteous invitation of D. Heineccius had not compelled me to compose and to perform the piece you know of.”
⁹
So Bach agreed to a formal audition, and on the spot—presumably in his comfortable and well-heated hotel room, cheered by tobacco and brandy—he composed a cantata to a text provided by pastor Heineccius, prepared the performing materials, rehearsed the piece, and performed it. The church board managed to circumvent the restrictions of the ongoing state mourning period either by staging a nonpublic performance at the church or, more likely, by finding a way to lift the restrictions for a public performance on the second Sunday in Advent, December 10 of that year, or during a weekday service. Moreover, Bach was paid an honorarium of 12 talers for his audition piece,
¹⁰
a gesture entirely out of line with established practices. In every way, Bach's treatment by the church and town authorities proves that they attached extraordinary importance to having the court organist, organ expert, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach in town.

The identity of the test cantata Bach wrote in Halle has, unfortunately, not been established,
¹¹
but it impressed the church authorities so deeply that they chose to ignore the previous list of candidates, including Melchior Hoffmann, and elected Bach as Zachow's successor, on December 13. The minutes of the church board meeting record not only the majority vote but also that Bach was asked to appear, probably on the following day, and that “the organist post was offered to him, for which he duly thanked the
Collegium
and accepted the position.”
¹²
On the next day, December 15, Bach returned to Weimar.