Johann Sebastian Bach — Part 2: Inspiration From The Master, Buxtehude; Year At Muehlhausen; Weimer

INSPIRATION FROM THE MASTER, BUXTEHUDE

One may be sure that the immense inspiration he received from Buxtehude was as potent and influenced the current of his genius as fully as had Böhm and Reinken a little earlier.

That he exhibited his own powers on the Lübeck organ and profited by the example and suggestions of Buxtehude is clear.

Forgetting the flight of time and his obligations in Arnstadt, Bach let the winter months slip by.

It is even possible that he weighed the question of stepping into the shoes of the seventy-year-old master.

But there was a condition attached to that which made him hesitate as it had Handel and Mattheson before him.

Whoever wanted Buxtehude’s job had to take Buxtehude’s daughter in the bargain.

The lady, it appears, was not especially well favored and she was all of twenty-eight—scarcely the most alluring prospect to a young man only twenty, and one which involved the further possibility of having to house the father-in-law for as long as the Lord might choose to spare him!

[Illustration: Bach at the organ.

_From a contemporary engraving by Rudolf Schäfer_] The year of 1706 had dawned before Bach turned reluctantly toward Arnstadt once more.

He took occasion to make a few side trips on the way, stopping over at Hamburg and Lüneburg to greet old associates and friends.

By the end of January he was back in the organ loft of St. Boniface.

His return was not exactly a love feast.

The congregation and Consistory were looking for a capable, mild-mannered organist, not a disquieting virtuoso.

But in a relatively short period Bach had become just that.

He was plainly above the musical heads of the townsfolk.

There were murmurings of discontent which were duly brought to his attention.

He paid not the slightest heed, till finally the Consistory proceeded to lay down the law.

The authorities had quite a number of bones to pick with their refractory young genius.

They had given him a leave of one month, not of four.

He answered that he imagined his substitute was competent to fill his shoes for the extra time.

Far from being placated the worthy elders then reproached him for accompanying the church hymns with all sorts of brilliant and audacious improvisations, full of unexpected harmonies and variations which left the congregation groping blindly for the melody.

When people had remonstrated that his preludes, interludes and postludes were too long, he had gone to the other extreme and made them too short.

And there was worse to come: when he was practicing at St. Boniface, people had been scandalized to overhear the voice of a “strange maiden,” singing to his accompaniment!

Such things could not be tolerated any more than an organist whose relations with his choir were so bad that he refused to rehearse it.

So he could take his choice—either do what the Consistory required or else....

Bach did neither one thing nor the other but lived for a while in an uneasy state of compromise.

He was not in the least minded to renounce the company of the “strange maiden”—probably the same one he was seeing home the night Geyersbach and his rowdies attacked him.

She was none other than his cousin, Maria Barbara, and daughter of Bach’s uncle Michael from nearby Gehren.

It was not long before he proposed to the musically talented girl and was accepted—the first case of intermarriage between two of the Bach stock.

In the fullness of time she became the mother of two of Bach’s most gifted sons.

We have not alluded so far to the compositions which had their origin during Bach’s Arnstadt sojourn nor are they, obviously, among his most memorable.

One, however, occupies a place of its own among his clavier works.

It is the famous _Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother_, a piece of program music clearly based on the example of the _Bible Sonatas_ of Johann Kuhnau.

The occasion of the _Capriccio_ was the forthcoming journey of Bach’s brother, Johann Jakob, to take service with Charles XII of Sweden, then campaigning in Poland.

The work, in four movements, is of a pricelessly humorous character.

The first part represents the traveler’s friends, a nervous company apparently, who try to dissuade him from an adventure which they regard as full of hazards.

In the second movement one person after another points out the assorted dangers he anticipates and does so in a fugue of delightfully comic effect.

This is followed by a slow movement, _Adagissimo_, built over a pathetic ground bass, in which sobbing chromatic phrases lament the inability of the friends to change the wanderer’s mind.

As they groan and wail Bach drowns out their noisy sorrows in a lively fugue on the postillion’s horn; and the “beloved brother” is off on what promises to be a wholly pleasant and profitable journey.

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 . 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.