Johann Sebastian Bach (58 page)

As could easily have been anticipated, Bach refused to sign the document because he still had his own unresolved claims against the university with regard to the division of responsibility. Yet he probably worked out a quiet understanding with Görner, who, after all, was compensated by Kirchbach with 12 talers, and the entire affair remained a one-time event. Despite a less than smooth start, Bach finished the composition of the
Tombeau de S. M. la Reine de Pologne
, BWV 198, delicately scored for four voices and “instruments douces” appropriate for a royal funeral music (2 transverse flutes, 2 oboes d'amore, 2 violas da gamba, 2 lutes, strings, and continuo), and the performance took place as scheduled—with the two parts of the work framing the oration delivered by Kirchbach himself. The Leipzig chronicler described the notable event:

 

In solemn procession, while the bells were rung, the Town Officials and the Rector and Professors of the University entered St. Paul's, where many others were present, namely, princely and other persons of rank, as well as not only Saxon but also foreign Ministers, Court and other Chevaliers, along with many ladies.

When, then, everyone had taken his place, there had been a prelude by the organ, and the Ode of Mourning written by Magister Johann Christoph Gottsched, member of the
Collegium Marianum
, had been distributed among those present by the Beadles, there was shortly heard the Music of Mourning, which this time Capellmeister Johann Sebastian Bach had composed in the Italian style, with
Clave di Cembalo
, which Mr. Bach himself played, organ, violas di gamba, lutes, violins, recorders, transverse flutes, &c., half being heard before and half after the oration of praise and mourning.
³²

 

Bach chose to disregard the poetic structure of Gottsched's rhymed Funeral Ode by reorganizing and subdividing the nine equally shaped stanzas asymmetrically in order to set them in the Italian manner, that is, in the form of recitatives and arias. Whether or not the poet was happy with that decision, he continued his occasional collaboration with Bach, begun in 1725 with the
Wedding Serenata
, BC G 42, by accepting another joint commission in 1738, BWV Anh. 13 (the music for neither work survives). The latter represented a commission on behalf of the university for an official reception in April 1738 for the royal family from Dresden. In anticipation of the visit, the university council, chaired by rector Christian Gottlieb Jöcher,
³³
had resolved “(1) that a cantata be ordered, (2) that the same be composed by the cantor, Mr. Bach, and (3) that the latter be entrusted with the direction of the music”
³⁴
—evidence of the unequivocal preference for Bach on the part of the academic leadership when it came to illustrious events. And they came through handsomely, with a fee of 50 talers for the cantor.

Closer to home, a more modest funeral service was held almost exactly two years later, on October 20, 1729: Johann Heinrich Ernesti, rector of the St. Thomas School, had died at age seventy-seven, and since he had also been a university professor, the service took place at St. Paul's. Bach set the music on the scriptural text that served as basis for the sermon, Romans 8:26–27 (“The Spirit helps our infirmities”), in the form of a double-choir motet with concluding chorale. For this piece, “Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf,” BWV 226, Bach would have used his two best vocal ensembles, the first and second choirs of the St. Thomas School. According to the extant performing materials, the singers in the choir loft were accompanied by the small organ
³⁵
and reinforced by doubling instruments, choir I supported by strings and choir II by woodwinds.

Of Bach's performances at St. Paul's outside the Old Service, only these two mourning services can be documented, though there were surely others, and not solely vocal-instrumental ensemble music in conjunction with academic events. It must have interested Bach especially that St. Paul's housed a new organ, built by Johann Scheibe, with fifty-three stops on three manuals and pedal, at the time one of the largest and finest instruments anywhere in Germany.
³⁶
At the invitation of the university rector, Bach himself had examined the instrument when it was finished in December 1717 and when Görner was organist at St. Paul's. For the first time in his life, an organ was available to Bach for which “he could not find enough praise and laud, especially for its rare stops which were newly made and could not be found in many organs.”
³⁷
And because he would collaborate with the organ builder Scheibe for twenty-five years until the latter's death in 1748 (see Table 5.2), we can be sure that Bach made use of the organ at St. Paul's whenever he needed an instrument for teaching, practicing, or public performances.

Contemporary descriptions of the service for Queen Christiane Eberhardine make specific references to an organ prelude and postlude that, given the importance of the ceremonial event, only Bach could have played. A particularly fitting piece would be the Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544, the prelude of which would have drowned out the instrumental ensemble's tuning for BWV 198, also in B minor;
³⁸
the autograph fair copy of BWV 544 dates from 1727–31. Beyond such speculation, however, it must be emphasized that Bach's activities as an organ recitalist are generally the most inadequately recorded; reports are limited to organ examinations and dedications or to concerts played out of town (see Table 7.5). Not a single recital is documented for Leipzig, yet it would be absurd to conclude that Bach never played there in public and that his reputation as “world-famous organist”—so the heading of the Obituary—was not based on his exposure to Leipzig audiences for nearly three decades. Although no longer holding a post as organist, he remained active as an organ composer and virtuoso throughout his Leipzig years. His output of organ music, even if limited to the repertoire with original and datable sources (see Table 9.1), is distributed evenly over time, and out-of-town public recitals are documented as late as 1747 in Berlin. And works like the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548, demonstrate Bach's remarkable ability to lift the genre of prelude and fugue to an entirely new level, well beyond the scope of
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, giving it a distinct organistic profile and virtuoso showpiece character. Moreover, BWV 548 in particular reveals the performer-composer's formidable command not only in sustaining great length (the prelude runs over 137 measures and the fugue over 231) but also in balancing improvisatory and constructive elements. Both the prelude and fugue integrate concerto-like features into their innovative large-scale designs, the prelude displaying a complex ritornello structure ABA-B(c/b)-A-B(c/b)-A (the middle sections of B introduce new material [C] in alteration with modified B material [b]), and the fugue an unprecedented “antidevelopmental” da capo form A-B(b/a-c/a-b/a-a-c)-A (B consists of interludes [b, c] with citations and elaborations of the fugue theme [a]).
³⁹

T
ABLE
9.1. Representative Organ Works from the Leipzig Period

 

The best, if not the only suitable, place for the display of Bach's organistic art would have been St. Paul's. Leipzig musicians, like actors, dancers, and performing artists of all kinds, were regularly offered rich opportunities for showcasing their talent during the three annual trade fairs, when schools were closed and the whole population became caught up in the fair bustle. In such a context, Bach the organ virtuoso would have been a major attraction, but the combination of St. Paul's grand organ—for a long time the largest instrument in all of Saxony—and the city's renowned organist would have proved even more spectacular. As for the content of a typical Bach recital in Leipzig and the show of appreciation for the master of the keyboard, it would have resembled his out-of-town programs. A characteristic example, an appearance in Dresden, is reported in newspapers of September 21, 1725:

 

When the Capell-Director from Leipzig, Mr. Bach, came here recently, he was very well received by the local virtuosos at the court and in the city since he is greatly admired by all of them for his musical adroitness and art. Yesterday and the day before, in the presence of the same, he performed for over an hour on the new organ in St. Sophia's Church preludes and various concertos, with intervening soft instrumental music in all keys.
⁴⁰

 

Here is evidence that during at least one of the two consecutive recitals on the thirty-one-stop Silbermann organ, Bach introduced a novel genre: organ concertos with accompanying string instruments, in all likelihood prototypes of works that were soon integrated into cantata sinfonias of the third
Jahrgang
and, still later, transformed into harpsichord concertos. Some of them may even have been devised as organ concertos from the outset: the original version of the concerto BWV 1053 is a prime candidate.
⁴¹
Whether or not the 1725 recitals in the Saxon capital were a preview of what was planned for the upcoming St. Michaelmas Fair in Leipzig, we can take for granted that Leipzig audiences were exposed to the same exciting organ performances and innovative repertoires as concertgoers in Dresden, only more frequently; and where else in Leipzig would Bach have played if not at St. Paul's?
⁴²
Fittingly, the university's auditorium, the place where Bach would practice, teach, and present his improvisations and newest works, was the venue in Leipzig most closely identified with scholarship, with both the cultivation of traditional erudition and the creation of new knowledge. In the musical world, Bach was peerless, the absolutely dominant figure in Leipzig. Those with whom he had to match wits—to a considerable extent in the public arena—were the academic luminaries of the university.

P
ROFESSORIAL
C
OLLEAGUES AND
U
NIVERSITY
S
TUDENTS

From his first days in Leipzig, Bach cultivated and maintained connections with the city's political, commercial, and clerical establishment as well as its intellectual elite. In particular, he could rely on support from the highest-ranking state dignitary, General Joachim Friedrich von Flemming, governor of Leipzig. Representing the Saxon electoral court and residing at the Pleissenburg, not far from the St. Thomas Church, Count Flemming had hosted Bach at his mansion in Dresden for the Marchand contest in 1717. As one of the Thomascantor's staunchest patrons, he commissioned congratulatory cantatas to be performed as serenades (
Abend-Music
) on his birthday, August 25. We know of two such works for which the music is lost, BWV 249b (1726), and BWV Anh. 10 (1731), both with lyrics by Picander; a third work, BWV 210a, with adjusted text underlay referring to Flemming, was presented between 1727 and 1732. But apart from the normal business he regularly had to conduct with town, church, and university officials, the contacts that provided Bach with the most important challenges and interactions were with the professoriate of the university.

Yet Bach was by no means integrated into the close-knit academic community. He knew well that without university study, let alone a degree, he lacked the formal qualifications required in academe. Moreover, his other connections mattered to him: the offspring of a town piper, he felt comfortable in craft circles that included organ builders, other instrument makers, and musicians in general. His court music experience and, in particular, his incontestable standing as a keyboard virtuoso made him a welcome and respected insider in all domains of professional music making. Indeed, like many of his musician colleagues, he may well have disdained the exclusive and often arrogant world of the professoriate. Nevertheless, Leipzig offered him challenges whose social aspects must have been difficult for him to accept but whose intellectual side he had no reason to avoid. Just the opposite: the increased intellectual dimension noticeable in Bach's Leipzig works reciprocates these challenges. He not only delivered what was expected of him, but more often than not he took up the gauntlet and returned it in the form of musical daring.

Bach's daily routine put him in frequent touch with representatives of the university. For example, his superior in church activities was Salomo Deyling, superintendent of the Leipzig church district, who simultaneously held the distinguished chair of
professor
primariusin the Faculty of Theology. Bach maintained a respectful distance from this eminent theologian eight years his senior, dealing with him primarily on the bureaucratic level. But there were others among the Leipzig professoriate with whom Bach had direct or indirect relations of a more fruitful kind, ranging from the collegial to the personal:
⁴³