Johann Sebastian Bach (5 page)

The record of Bach pathology offers no new information but strengthens the suppositions that Bach's vision problems and a possible stroke suffered in 1749 were brought on by mellitic diabetes and that the “harmful medicaments and other things” (quoted in the Obituary), which cannot be further specified but were administered during his post-operative treatment, led to a fatal infection.

Peter Wollny, “Fundstücke zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs 1744–1750,”
BJ
(2011): 35–50; Andreas Glöckner, “Johann Sebastian Bach und die Universität Leipzig—Neue Quellen (Teil I),”
BJ
(2009): 159–201; Bernhard Ludewig,
Johann Sebastian Bach in Spiegel der Medizin
(Grimma, 2000).

• Anna Magdalena Bach as widow (pp. 454–55):

New documents verify that Bach's widow received, aside from the pension distributed by the town charity office, regular donations from the university and from various other sources. With this income, she had relatively good financial security until her death in January 1760. Her unmarried daughters, who had shared a dwelling with her beginning in February 1751—and also, from 1759, with her daughter Elisabeth Altnickol, who in the meantime had been widowed—received modest contributions from, among others, the university, although not until after their mother's death. Mother and daughters probably sought to better their livelihoods through their own activities, such as sewing. In any case, Elisabeth Altnickol is specifically referred to in 1771 as “seamstress.”

Maria Hübner, “Zur finanziellen Situation der Witwe Anna Magdalena Bach und ihrer Töchter,”
BJ
(2002): 245–55;
Anna Magdalena Bach: Ein Leben in Dokumenten und Bildern
, ed. M. Hübner (Leipzig, 2004).

*

I am most grateful to my publisher for making this updated edition possible.

October 2012
C. W.

Less than a decade ago, I began the preface to my
Bach: Essays on His Life and Works
by stating that “this volume may well be understood as a book about a book the author doesn't feel quite ready to write.” As far as I am concerned, things have not really changed since then. Moreover, I believe that it would be unrealistic today for anyone to attempt a comprehensive book-length study of Johann Sebastian Bach's life
and
works in the tradition of Philipp Spitta's two-volume
Johann Sebastian Bach
of 1873–80, written, astonishingly, at a time when only a small number of biographical documents had been found and published and the Bach-Gesellschaft's edition of the complete works was barely half finished. Spitta's magisterial work has challenged all subsequent generations of music historians, not so much to rewrite a full account of Bach's life and works as to update and adjust the image of Bach in order to bring it in line—as objectively as possible and as subjectively as legitimate—with the current state of scholarship. It is the second that has prompted this biographical portrait, forged on the eve of the 250th anniversary of Bach's death.

Today we have easy access both to the collected documentary materials on Bach's life and to his complete musical works and their sources. But rather than facilitating the task of a life-and-works study, the availability of the
Bach-Dokumente
and the
Neue Bach-Ausgabe
and the volume of materials they contain make it a much more challenging if not impossible scholarly enterprise. At the same time, we have become increasingly aware of sources and documents irretrievably lost as well as materials yet to be found and examined. As for the latter, while I was putting the finishing touches on the manuscript for
The New Bach Reader
, a former student of mine came across two previously unknown and highly informative Bach letters; and as this book went to press, I had the good fortune of finding the long-lost music library of the Berlin Sing-Akademie in Kyiv, Ukraine, containing key musical materials of the Bach family (primarily older and younger family members and less significantly affecting Johann Sebastian, but this book has still benefited—if only minimally). Both of these discoveries clearly indicate that the search for sources, so essential in Bach scholarship, will remain very much a work in progress. So unlike Spitta, I have accepted the more modest task of writing a biography or, more accurately, a biographical essay.

As one may expect, the subject of a biographical study determines the nature and method of the exercise; two points must be stressed in this connection. First, from all we know about Bach's life, it lacks exciting dimensions and does not lend itself to a narrative that focuses on and is woven around a chronological list of dates and events. Moreover, Bach's biography suffers from a serious lack of information on details, many of them crucial. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was clearly aware of this problem when he wrote to Johann Nicolaus Forkel, his father's first biographer, in 1775: “Since he never wrote down anything about his life, the gaps are unavoidable.” Indeed, it would not be difficult to devote entire chapters to what is
not
known about Bach's life. Thus, conjectures and assumptions are unavoidable, and this book necessarily calls for numerous occurrences of “probably,” “perhaps,” “maybe,” and the like. Yet, as I try to demonstrate in these pages, it is not impossible to reveal, even in the case of Bach, the essence of a life.

Second, Bach's music, though no substitute for biographical information (or its lack), is a much stronger and more important presence—at least for us today—than the composer's life story. While it would defeat the purpose of a musical biography if the music were marginalized, the focus must nevertheless be on musical issues of a more general nature and on music as part of the composer's intellectual profile. A discourse on Bach's development as a composer, integrated with a more detailed discussion of individual works, would be the subject of a separate study that I hope to undertake later in order to complement the present book.

The subtitle of this biographical portrait was not freely invented. The attribute “learned” appears in the letter of dismissal written in April 1723 by Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen—someone who definitely knew whom he was describing. More than a mere formula, the word provided this essay with a strong focus on the atmosphere of learning and the spirit of discovery that determined much of Bach's musical orientation and philosophy, distinguishes it so significantly from that of other major musicians, and helps reveal his aesthetic goals. But well beyond quoting, and elaborating on, Prince Leopold, this book is generally indebted to a close reading of the primary documents, which I had the privilege of reviewing in great detail in conjunction with the updated, enlarged, and revised edition of the Bach letters and documents, now collected in
The New Bach Reader
. My decision to quote historical documents whenever possible is based on my view that these sources bring freshness and immediacy into the discussion of history and that even though they may speak for themselves, they benefit from being contextualized while offering instant correctives to erroneous interpretations.

A careful reading of the available primary sources, both musical and nonmusical, is largely responsible for the contours and contents of this study and for the interpretive aspects that cannot and should not be avoided. Thus, when I stress, for instance, the importance, extent, and early maturity of Bach's compositional output before 1705, the emphasis is based not only on the relevant source materials but on my reading of them. The same is true of my conclusions about the course of Bach's life during the year 1702, his reasons for moving from Mühlhausen to Weimar, the chronological and conceptual connections between the title page of
The Well-Tempered Clavier
and his applications for the St. Thomas cantorate, and similar matters. Details of this kind, taken together, may add links and facets to a biographical narrative, which in the case of Bach resembles a highly fragmented mosaic. All the more important, then, is every attempt to walk the bridge between two poles, the down-to-earth backdrop of Bach's life and the intellectual framework of his artistry.

In more than one way, this book owes its existence to a long-established and close friendship that has led to a number of collaborative projects. When Michael Ochs, former Richard F. French Music Librarian at Harvard, moved his scene of operation to New York, he thought of twisting my arm but found much less resistance than any other publisher's emissary would have faced in persuading me to write a biographical portrait of Bach. What made the project work so smoothly from the very beginning was not only our familiarity with each other's work and work habits but, from my point of view, his remarkable understanding of the subject matter, his constructive criticism, and his considerate advice. An author cannot wish for a more competent and thoughtful editor, and I wish to thank him for seeing this project through from start to finish. With special thanks, I acknowledge the vigilant copyediting of Susan Gaustad at W. W. Norton. I also take this opportunity to express deep gratitude to my friends and colleagues Hans-Joachim Schulze, Ulrich Leisinger, and Peter Wollny (all of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig) for reading the manuscript, discussing certain points, offering many a helpful hint, and identifying errors here and there. Ruth Libbey has once again been an indispensable assistant, for which I am most grateful. John McMorrough of the Harvard Graduate School of Design kindly provided his expertise on artists' renditions of the historical choir and organ lofts at St. Thomas's of Leipzig. No one, however, has contributed to this book as much, both directly and indirectly, as my wife Barbara, with whom I have discussed, performed, studied, and listened to Bach's music for nearly forty years—my indebtedness and gratitude indeed go back that far, lovingly and completely.

C. W.

Bach and the Notion of “Musical Science”

“What Newton was as philosopher,
Sebastian Bach was as musician”
C. F. Daniel Schubart, 1784–85

Some two months after his fifty-second birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach opened a copy of a new, fashionable, and deliberately progressive music periodical and found himself the subject of a fierce attack. “Mr.——,” he read, “is the most eminent of the music makers
(Musicanten)
in——.” So began an unsigned, controversial piece of music journalism (in the form of a letter) published in 1737. Bach, like any informed reader of the time, could easily fill in the blanks—“Bach” and “Leipzig”—especially after reading what followed. And while the sentence hardly strikes us today as inflammatory, the article's author and editor of the periodical, a twenty-nine-year-old upstart named Johann Adolph Scheibe, knew that the terms “eminent” and “music maker” contradicted one another. Indeed, combining them so ambivalently was a deliberate effort at damning with faint praise. A little further into the fictitious letter, and in a similarly oblique, even ironically devout, manner, Scheibe refers to “this great man” who “would be the admiration of whole nations,” but only “if he had more amenity, if he did not take away the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style, and if he did not darken their beauty by an excess of art.”
¹

Of the numerous critical points in this vitriolic yet ultimately inconsequential piece of early music criticism, what offended Bach the most was being referred to as a
Musicant—
a mere practitioner. But Bach also had his defenders. In an elaborate response published the following year,
²
Johann Abraham Birnbaum, lecturer in rhetoric at Leipzig University, immediately took issue with the utterly inappropriate label
Musicantas applied to Bach (who was ap
parently enraged by Scheibe's assault):

 

The man in question is the Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Court Composer and Capellmeister, Mr. Johann Sebastian Bachin Leipzig…. The Hon. Court Composer is called the most eminent of the Musicanten in Leipzig. This expression smacks too strongly of the mean and low, and does not fit the titles “extraordinary artist,” “great man,” “the admiration of whole nations,” which are applied to the Hon. Court Composer in what follows. The term
Musicanten
is generally used for those whose principal achievement is a form of mere musical practice. They are employed for the purpose…of bringing pieces written by others into sound by means of musical instruments. As a matter of fact, not even all the men of this sort, but only the humblest and meanest of them, usually bear this name, so there is hardly any difference between
Musicanten
and beer fiddlers. If one of those musical practitioners is an extraordinary artist on an instrument, he is called not a
Musicant
but a virtuoso. And least of all does this disdainful name apply to great composers and those who have to conduct choruses. Now, let the reasonable reader himself decide whether the praise that is due the Hon. Court Composer can be fully expressed by calling him the most eminent of the
Musicanten
. This is in my opinion the same as wishing to pay a special tribute to a thoroughly learned man by calling him the best member of the last class of schoolboys. The Hon. Court Composer is a great composer, a master of music, a virtuoso on the organ and the clavier without an equal, but in no sense a
Musicant
.
³

 

The controversy caught the fancy of Johann Mattheson of Hamburg, the most productive and influential writer then on the German musical scene, who weighs in on the disputed terminology in a 1740 collection of musical biographies: he readily admits that the term
Musicant
, “so much contested and resisted by some people,” is usually applied to singers and instrumentalists, but he attributes its low regard to arrogance, for “some despise the beautiful name of cantor and organist,” and “some even don't want to be called capellmeister, but only chamber or court compositeur.”
⁴
Mattheson was deliberately tweaking Bach—who had by then acquired all of these titles—perhaps to express his frustration over Bach's persistent refusal to submit any autobiographical material for his long-planned biographical anthology, though he had been requested to do so for more than twenty years.
⁵
In fact, for private purposes Bach had actually put down a bare outline of his professional career for a family Genealogy he was compiling around 1735:

 

No. 24. Joh. Sebastian Bach, youngest son of Joh. Ambrosius Bach, was born in Eisenach in the year 1685 on March 21. Became

At no time had Bach shown any interest in writing a more elaborate autobiographical statement, and he hardly needed to remind himself that his life was not exactly filled with exciting events. (For a chronology of Bach's life, see Appendix 1.) Still, his plan for a concise Genealogy would have made him ponder what it meant to have been born into a tradition that claimed not only a past but also, as he could see in his own children, a future. “Love and aptitude for music” (in the words of the Obituary),
⁷
the single dominating force in the life of several generations of Bachs, had pointed the way for him as well, from his first modest job as “court musician” to positions ranging from organist to capellmeister and cantor. Curiously, Bach refrained from calling himself a composer (while specifically applying the term to his uncles) but assumed, with good reason, that titles such as “capellmeister” and “music director” themselves implied the function of composer. Moreover, he knew that the most prestigious title, “Electoral Saxon and Royal Polish Court
Compositeur,”
was yet to come, though not for three long years after he had applied for it.
⁸
That title, which would unambiguously refer to his compositional activities, was finally awarded by the Dresden court in 1736, just after he had finished compiling the Genealogy (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach later emended his father's entry accordingly). Birnbaum, in his published defense, replaces the image of Bach the music maker with that of Bach the virtuoso, and—by consistently referring to his subject as “the Hon. Court Composer”—emphasizes the importance of Bach the composer.

 

In amassing material for the Genealogy, Bach gathered manuscript scores of works by those older family members who were composers, because he realized that only their music, not their performing activities, would document and preserve the clan's musical legacy. (The collection, known as the Old-Bach Archive, would later be preserved by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel.) In this way, he could confirm his admiration for his father's cousin Johann Christoph Bach, whom he regarded as a “profound composer,” and his father-in-law Johann Michael Bach, an “able composer”
⁹
he could perform their music and then reflect on his own contributions to musical composition—contributions of a nature, quality, and extent that were unprecedented in the family.

Not coincidentally, Bach found himself at work in 1733 on a special project that would occupy him for some time to come. On July 27 of that year, he dedicated to the electoral court in Dresden the
Missa
in B minor—the Kyrie and Gloria of what would become the
B-minor Mass:
“To your Royal Highness I submit in deepest devotion the present small work of that science which I have attained in
musique.”
¹⁰
Stripping the phrase of the conventional formalities and courtly protocol, the statement reveals what this work was to represent: his achievements in the science of music. He was not a
Musicant
but someone who held the directorship of music in Leipzig's two principal churches; he considered himself a musical scholar producing works of musical science.

Characterizing Bach's compositional art in any general way proves an elusive task, but a strikingly passionate attempt was made by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and Bach's student Johann Friedrich Agricola in their Obituary of “The World-Famous Organist, Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach”: “If ever a composer showed polyphony in its greatest strength, it was certainly our late lamented Bach. If ever a musician employed the most hidden secrets of harmony with the most skilled artistry, it was certainly our Bach. No one ever showed so many ingenious and unusual ideas as he in elaborate pieces such as ordinarily seem dry exercises in craftsmanship.”
¹¹

More often than not, superlatives such as these provoke skepticism, but this statement—though penned under the immediate burden of loss and the pressure of time—presents a remarkably apt summation of Bach's most important musical accomplishments. It emphasizes that his music truly demonstrates the power of polyphony, an intrinsic harmonic structure, and an imaginative and original approach in the design of complex works. No specific compositions are mentioned, such particulars being deemed unnecessary by the Obituary authors. And indeed, any of the works, whether the
B-minor Massor the St. Matthew Passion, The Well-Tempered Clavieror the Orgel-Büchlein, the Brandenburg Concertos
or the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, corroborate and deepen the judgment rendered above.

In the closing section of the Obituary, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Agricola enumerate further talents of Bach's: his ability to recognize without an instant's hesitation the intricate developmental potential of a musical subject, his inclination toward a serious style without rejecting the comic, his facility in reading large scores, his fine musical ear, and his skill in conducting. The confident declaration that “Bach was the greatest organist and clavier player that we have ever had” is followed by observations regarding his art of improvisation and his use of “strange, new, expressive, and beautiful ideas,” his “most perfect accuracy in performance,” his invention of a new fingering system, his intimate knowledge of organ construction, his facility in tuning the harpsichord, and the fact that “he knew of no tonalities that, because of impure intonation, one must avoid,” a noteworthy comment in those days when few keyboard performers dared to wander beyond keys with three sharps or flats.

The Obituary also associates Bach's music with “polyphony in its greatest strength,” with employing “the most hidden secrets of harmony with the most skilled artistry,” and with “ingenious and unusual ideas” pervading “elaborate pieces.” This extremely flattering language must be understood against the background of criticism to which Bach was subjected, most directly in Scheibe's infamous attack: that he lacked “amenity,” that his style was “turgid and confused” rather than natural, and that he darkened the beauty of his works by applying “an excess of art.”

Birnbaum, in his function as Bach's mouthpiece articulating the composer's views on art and nature, elegantly counters Scheibe's broadside:

 

The essential aims of true art are to imitate nature, and, where necessary, to aid it. If art imitates nature, then indisputably the natural element must everywhere shine through in works of art. Accordingly it is impossible that art should take away the natural element from those things in which it imitates nature—including music. If art aids nature, then its aim is to preserve it, and to improve its condition; certainly not to destroy it. Many things are delivered to us by nature in the most misshapen states, which, however, acquire the most beautiful appearance when they have been formed by art. Thus art lends nature a beauty it lacks, and increases the beauty it possesses. Now, the greater the art is—that is, the more industriously and painstakingly it works at the improvement of nature—the more brilliantly shines the beauty thus brought into being. Accordingly it is impossible that the greatest art should darken the beauty of a thing.
¹²

 

Birnbaum's argument draws in part on
Gradus ad Parnassum
(Steps to Parnassus), a 1725 counterpoint treatise whose author, Johann Joseph Fux, refers to “art which imitates and perfects nature, but never destroys it.”
¹³
Bach owned a copy of this important Latin treatise
¹⁴
and may well have directed Birnbaum to emphasize the ancient Aristotelian principle “art imitates nature,” a dictum that lay at the heart of what Bach considered musical science. For Bach, art lay between the reality of the world—nature—and God, who ordered this reality.
¹⁵
Indeed, Leipzig philosophers subscribed to that relationship, especially when defining beauty and nature. “What is art? An imitation of nature,” writes Bach's student Lorenz Christoph Mizler in the same year and place as Birnbaum's defense of Bach.
¹⁶
It follows, then, that musical structure—
harmonia,
in the terminology of Bach's time—ultimately refers to the order of nature and to its divine cause. Or, put more lyrically, “Music is a mixed mathematical science that concerns the origins, attributes, and distinctions of sound, out of which a cultivated and lovely melody and harmony are made, so that God is honored and praised but mankind is moved to devotion, virtue, joy, and sorrow.”
¹⁷