Johann Sebastian Bach
J.S. Bach was born at Eisenach,
Thuringia, on March 21, 1685, the youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach and
Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. Ambrosius was a string player, employed by the town
council and the ducal court of Eisenach. Johann Sebastian started school in
1692 or 1693 and did well in spite of frequent absences. Of his musical
education at this time, nothing definite is known; however, he may have picked
up the rudiments of string playing from his father, and no doubt he attended
the Georgen Church, where Johann Christoph Bach was organist until 1703.
By 1695 both his parents were dead, and he was looked after by his eldest
brother, also named Johann Christoph (1671-1721), organist at Ohrdruf. This Christoph
had been a pupil of the influential keyboard composer Johann
Pachelbel, and he apparently gave Johann Sebastian his first formal
keyboard lessons. The young Bach again did well at school, until in 1700
his voice secured him a place in a select choir of poor boys at the school at
the Michaels Church, Lüneburg.
His voice must have broken soon after this, but he remained at Lüneburg for
a time, making himself generally useful. No doubt he studied in the school
library, which had a large and up-to-date collection of church music; he
probably heard Georg Böhm, organist of the Johannis Church; and he visited
Hamburg to hear the renowned organist and composer Johann Adam Reinken at the
Katharinen Church, contriving also to hear the French orchestra maintained by
the Duke von Celle.
He seems to have returned to Thuringia in the late summer of 1702. By this
time he was already a reasonably proficient organist. His experience at
Lüneburg, if not at Ohrdruf, had turned him away from the secular
string-playing tradition of his immediate ancestors; thenceforth he was
chiefly, though not exclusively, a composer and performer of keyboard and
sacred music. The next few months are wrapped in mystery, but by March 4, 1703,
he was a member of the orchestra employed by Johann Ernst, Duke von Weimar
(brother of Wilhelm Ernst, whose service Bach entered in 1708). This
post was a mere stopgap; he probably already had his eye on the organ then
being built at the New Church in Arnstadt; for, when it was finished, he helped
to test it, and in August 1703 he was appointed organist--all this at the age
of 18. Arnstadt documents imply that he had been court organist at Weimar; this
is incredible, though it is likely enough that he had occasionally played
there.
At Arnstadt, on the northern edge of the
Thuringian forest, where he remained until 1707, Bach devoted himself to
keyboard music, the organ in particular. While at Lüneburg, he had apparently
had no opportunity of becoming directly acquainted with the spectacular,
flamboyant playing and compositions of Dietrich
Buxtehude, the most significant exponent of the north German school of
organ music. In October 1705 he repaired this gap in his knowledge by obtaining
a month's leave and walking to Lübeck (more than 200 miles [300 kilometres]).
His visit must have been profitable, for he did not return until about the
middle of January 1706. In February his employers complained about his absence
and about other things as well: he had harmonized the hymn tunes so freely that
the congregation could not sing to his accompaniment, and, above all, he had
produced no cantatas. Perhaps the real reasons for his neglect were that he was
temporarily obsessed with the organ and was on bad terms with the local singers
and instrumentalists, who were not under his control and did not come up to his
standards. In the summer of 1705 he had made some offensive remark about a
bassoon player, which led to an unseemly scuffle in the street. His replies to
these complaints were neither satisfactory nor even accommodating; and the fact
that he was not dismissed out of hand suggests that his employers were as well
aware of his exceptional ability as he was himself and were reluctant to lose
him.
During these early years, Bach inherited the musical culture of the
Thuringian area, a thorough familiarity with the traditional forms and hymns (chorales)
of the orthodox Lutheran service, and, in keyboard music, perhaps (through his
brother, Johann Christoph) a bias toward the formalistic styles of the south.
But he also learned eagerly from the northern rhapsodists, Buxtehude above all.
By 1708 he had probably learned all that his German predecessors could teach
him and arrived at a first synthesis of northern and southern German styles. He
had also studied, on his own and during his presumed excursions to Celle, some
French organ and instrumental music.
Among the few works that can be ascribed to these early years with anything
more than a show of plausibility are the Capriccio sopra la lontananza del
suo fratello dilettissimo (Capriccio on the Departure of His Most
Beloved Brother, 1704, BWV 992), the chorale prelude on Wie schön
leuchtet (How Brightly Shines, c. 1705, BWV 739), and the
fragmentary early version of the organ Prelude and Fugue in G Minor (before
1707, BWV 535a). (The "BWV" numbers provided are the standard catalog
numbers of Bach's works as established in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis,
prepared by the German musicologist Wolfgang Schmieder.)
In June 1707 Bach obtained a post at
the Blasius Church in Mühlhausen in Thuringia. He moved there soon after and
married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach at Dornheim on October 17. At
Mühlhausen things seem, for a time, to have gone more smoothly. He produced
several church cantatas
at this time; all of these works are cast in a conservative mold, based on
biblical and chorale texts and displaying no influence of the
"modern" Italian operatic forms that were to appear in Bach's
later cantatas. The famous organ Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565),
written in the rhapsodic northern style, and the Prelude and Fugue in D
Major (BWV 532) may also have been composed during the Mühlhausen period,
as well as the organ Passacaglia in C Minor (BWV 582), an early example
of Bach's instinct for large-scale organization. Cantata No. 71, Gott
ist mein König (God Is My King), of Feb. 4, 1708, was printed at the
expense of the city council and was the first of Bach's compositions to
be published. While at Mühlhausen, Bach copied music to enlarge the choir
library, tried to encourage music in the surrounding villages, and was in
sufficient favour to be able to interest his employers in a scheme for
rebuilding the organ (February 1708). His real reason for resigning on June 25,
1708, is not known. He himself said that his plans for a "well-regulated
[concerted] church
music" had been hindered by conditions in Mühlhausen and that his
salary was inadequate. It is generally supposed that he had become involved in
a theological controversy between his own pastor Frohne and Archdeacon Eilmar
of the Marien Church. Certainly, he was friendly with Eilmar, who provided him
with librettos and became godfather to Bach's first child; and it is
likely enough that he was not in sympathy with Frohne, who, as a Pietist, would
have frowned on elaborate church music. It is just as possible, however, that
it was the dismal state of musical life in Mühlhausen that prompted Bach to
seek employment elsewhere. At all events, his resignation was accepted, and
shortly afterward he moved to Weimar, some miles west of Jena on the Ilm River.
He continued nevertheless to be on good terms with Mühlhausen personalities,
for he supervised the rebuilding of the organ, is supposed to have inaugurated
it on Oct. 31, 1709, and composed a cantata for Feb. 4, 1709, which was printed
but has disappeared.
Bach was,
from the outset, court organist at Weimar and a member of the orchestra.
Encouraged by Wilhelm Ernst, he concentrated on the organ during the first few
years of his tenure. From Weimar, Bach occasionally visited Weissenfels;
in February 1713 he took part in a court celebration there that included a
performance of his first secular cantata, Was mir behagt, or the Hunt
Cantata (BWV 208).
Late in 1713 Bach had the opportunity of succeeding Friedrich Wilhelm
Zachow at the Liebfrauen Church, Halle; but the duke raised his salary, and he
stayed on at Weimar. On March 2, 1714, he became concertmaster, with the duty
of composing a cantata every month. He became friendly with a relative, Johann
Gottfried Walther, a music lexicographer and composer who was organist
of the town church, and, like Walther, Bach took part in the musical
activities at the Gelbes Schloss (Yellow Castle), then occupied by Duke
Wilhelm's two nephews, Ernst August and Johann Ernst, both of whom he taught.
The latter was a talented composer who wrote concertos in the Italian manner,
some of which Bach arranged for keyboard instruments; the boy died in
1715, in his 19th year.
Unfortunately, Bach's development cannot be traced in detail during
the vital years 1708-14, when his style underwent a profound change. There are
too few datable works. From the series of cantatas written in 1714-16, however,
it is obvious that he had been decisively influenced by the new styles and
forms of the contemporary Italian opera and by the innovations of such Italian
concerto composers as Antonio Vivaldi. The results of this encounter can be
seen in such cantatas as No. 182, 199, and 61 in 1714; 31 and 161 in 1715; and
70 and 147 in 1716. His favourite forms appropriated from the Italians were
those based on refrain ( ritornello)
or da capo schemes in which wholesale repetition--literal or with
modifications--of entire sections of a piece permitted him to create coherent
musical forms with much larger dimensions than had hitherto been possible.
These newly acquired techniques henceforth governed a host of Bach's
arias and concerto movements, as well as many of his larger fugues (especially
the mature ones for organ), and profoundly affected his treatment of chorales.
(see also Index: opera
seria, da
capo aria)
Among other works almost certainly composed at Weimar are most of the Orgelbüchlein
(Little Organ Book), all but the last of the so-called 18
"Great" chorale preludes, the earliest organ trios, and most of the
organ preludes and fugues.
The "Great" Prelude and Fugue in G Major for organ (BWV 541)
was finally revised about 1715, and the Toccata and Fugue in F Major (BWV
540) may have been played at Weissenfels.
On Dec. 1, 1716, Johann Samuel Drese, musical director at Weimar, died. He
was then succeeded by his son, who was rather a nonentity. Bach presumably
resented being thus passed over; and in due course he accepted an appointment
as musical director to Prince Leopold of Köthen, which was confirmed in August
1717. Duke Wilhelm, however, refused to accept his resignation--partly, perhaps,
because of Bach's friendship with the duke's nephews, with whom the duke
was on the worst of terms. About September a contest between Bach and
the famous French organist Louis
Marchand was arranged at Dresden. The exact circumstances are not
known; but Marchand avoided the contest by leaving Dresden a few hours before
it should have taken place. By implication, Bach won. Perhaps this
emboldened him to renew his request for permission to leave Weimar; at all
events he did so but in such terms that the duke imprisoned him for a month
(November 6-December 2). A few days after his release, Bach moved to
Köthen, some 30 miles north of Halle.
There, as musical director, he was
concerned chiefly with chamber and orchestral music. Even though some of the
works may have been composed earlier and revised later, it was at Köthen that
the sonatas for violin and clavier and for viola da gamba and clavier and the
works for unaccompanied violin and cello were put into something like their
present form. The Brandenburg
Concertos were finished by March 24, 1721; in the sixth
concerto--so it has been suggested--Bach bore in mind the technical
limitations of the prince, who played the gamba. Bach played the viola
by choice; he liked to be "in the middle of the harmony." He also
wrote a few cantatas for the prince's birthday and other such occasions; most
of these seem to have survived only in later versions, adapted to more
generally useful words. And he found time to compile pedagogical keyboard
works: the Clavierbüchlein for W.F. Bach (begun Jan. 22, 1720),
some of the French Suites, the Inventions (1720), and the first
book (1722) of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The
Well-Tempered Clavier, eventually consisting of two books, each of
24 preludes and fugues in all keys and known as the Forty-eight). This
remarkable collection systematically explores both the potentials of a newly
established tuning procedure--which, for the first time in the history of
keyboard music, made all the keys equally usable--and the possibilities for
musical organization afforded by the system of "functional tonality,"
a kind of musical syntax consolidated in the music of the Italian concerto
composers of the preceding generation and a system that was to prevail for the
next 200 years. At the same time, The Well-Tempered Clavier is a
compendium of the most popular forms and styles of the era: dance types, arias,
motets, concertos, etc., presented within the unified aspect of a single
compositional technique: the rigorously logical and venerable fugue.
Maria Barbara Bach died unexpectedly and was buried on July 7, 1720.
About November, Bach visited Hamburg; his wife's death may have
unsettled him and led him to inquire after a vacant post at the Jacobi Church.
Nothing came of this, but he played at the Katharinen Church in the presence of
Reinken. After hearing Bach improvise variations on a chorale tune, the
old man said, "I thought this art was dead; but I see it still lives in
you."
On Dec. 3, 1721, Bach married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, daughter of a
trumpeter at Weissenfels. Apart from his first wife's death, these first four
years at Köthen were probably the happiest of Bach's life. He was on the
best terms with the prince, who was genuinely musical; and in 1730 Bach said
that he had expected to end his days there. But the prince married on Dec. 11,
1721, and conditions deteriorated. The princess--described by Bach as
"an amusa" (that is to say, opposed to the
muses)--required so much of her husband's attention that Bach began to
feel neglected. He also had to think of the education of his elder sons, born
in 1710 and 1714, and he probably began to think of moving to Leipzig as soon
as the cantorate fell vacant with the death of Johann Kuhnau on June 5, 1722. Bach
applied in December, but the post--already turned down by Bach's
friend, Georg Philipp Telemann--was offered to another prominent composer of
the day, Christoph
Graupner, the musical director at Darmstadt. As the latter was not sure
that he would be able to accept, Bach gave a trial performance (Cantata
No. 22, Jesu nahm zu sich die Zwölfe [Jesus Called unto Him the
Twelve]) on Feb. 7, 1723; and, when Graupner withdrew (April 9), Bach was
so deeply committed to Leipzig that, although the princess had died on April 4,
he applied for permission to leave Köthen. This he obtained on April 13, and on
May 13 he was sworn in at Leipzig.
He was appointed honorary musical director at Köthen, and both he and Anna
were employed there from time to time until the prince died, on Nov. 19, 1728.
As director of church music for the city of
Leipzig, Bach had to supply performers for four churches. At the Peters
Church the choir merely led the hymns. At the New Church, Nikolai Church, and
Thomas Church part singing was required; but Bach himself conducted, and
his own church music was performed, only at the last two. His first official
performance was on May 30, 1723, the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday, with
Cantata No. 75, Die Elenden sollen essen. New works produced during this
year include many cantatas and the Magnificat in its first version. The
first half of 1724 saw the production of the St. John Passion, which was
subsequently revised. The total number of cantatas produced during this
ecclesiastical year was about 62, of which about 39 were new works.
On June 11, 1724, the first Sunday after Trinity, Bach began a fresh
annual cycle of cantatas, and within the year he wrote 52 of the so-called
chorale cantatas, formerly supposed to have been composed over the nine-year
period 1735-44. The "Sanctus" of the Mass in B Minor was
produced at Christmas.
During his first two or three years at Leipzig, Bach had produced a
large number of new cantatas, sometimes, as research has revealed, at the rate
of one a week. This phenomenal pace raises the question of Bach's
approach to composition. Bach and his contemporaries, subject to the
hectic pace of production, had to invent or discover their ideas quickly and
could not rely on the unpredictable arrival of "inspiration." Nor did
the musical conventions and techniques or the generally rationalistic outlook
of the time necessitate this reliance, as long as the composer was willing to
accept them. The Baroque composer who submitted to the regimen inevitably had
to be a traditionalist who willingly embraced the conventions.
A repertoire of melody types existed, for
example, that was generated by an explicit "doctrine of figures" that
created musical equivalents for the figures of speech in the art of rhetoric.
Closely related to these "figures" are such examples of pictorial symbolism
in which the composer writes, say, a rising scale to match words that speak of
rising from the dead or a descending chromatic scale (depicting a howl of pain)
to sorrowful words. Pictorial symbolism of this kind occurs only in connection
with words--in vocal music and in chorale preludes, where the words of the
chorale are in the listener's mind. There is no point in looking for
resurrection motifs in The Well-Tempered Clavier. Pictorialism, even
when not codified into a doctrine, seems to be a fundamental musical instinct
and essentially an expressive device. It can, however, become more abstract, as
in the case of number symbolism, a phenomenon observed too often in the works
of Bach to be dismissed out of hand. Number symbolism is sometimes
pictorial; in the St.
Matthew Passion it is reasonable that the question "Lord, is
it I?" should be asked 11 times, once by each of the faithful disciples.
But the deliberate search for such symbolism in Bach's music can be
taken too far. Almost any number may be called "symbolic" (3, 6, 7,
10, 11, 12, 14, and 41 are only a few examples); any multiple of such a number
is itself symbolic; and the number of sharps in a key signature, notes in a
melody, measures in a piece, and so on may all be considered significant. As a
result, it is easy to find symbolic numbers anywhere, but ridiculous to suppose
that such discoveries invariably have a meaning.
Besides the melody types, the Baroque composer also had at his disposal
similar stereotypes regarding the further elaboration of these themes into
complete compositions, so that the arias and choruses of a cantata almost seem
to have been spun out "automatically." One is reminded of Bach's
delightfully innocent remark "I have had to work hard; anyone who works
just as hard will get just as far," with its implication that everything
in the "craft" of music is teachable and learnable. The fact that no
other composer of the period, with the arguable exception of Handel, even
remotely approached Bach's achievement indicates clearly enough that the
application of the "mechanical" procedures was not literally
"automatic" but was controlled throughout by something else--artistic
discrimination, or taste.
"Taste," a most respected attribute in the culture of the 18th
century, is an utterly individual compound of raw talent, imagination,
psychological disposition, judgment, skill, and experience. It is unteachable
and unlearnable.
As a result of his intense activity in cantata production during his first
three years in Leipzig, Bach had created a supply of church music to
meet his future needs for the regular Sunday and feast-day services. After
1726, therefore, he turned his attention to other projects. He did, however,
produce the St. Matthew Passion in 1729, a work that inaugurated a
renewed interest in the mid-1730s for vocal works on a larger scale than the
cantata: the now-lost St. Mark Passion (1731), the Christmas
Oratorio, BWV 248 (1734), and the Ascension Oratorio (Cantata No.
11, Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen; 1735).
In addition to his responsibilities as
director of church music, Bach also had various nonmusical duties in his
capacity as the cantor of the school at the Thomas Church. Since he resented
these latter obligations, Bach frequently absented himself without
leave, playing or examining organs, taking his son Friedemann to hear the
"pretty tunes," as he called them, at the Dresden opera, and
fulfilling the duties of the honorary court posts that he contrived to hold all
his life. To some extent, no doubt, he accepted engagements because he needed
money; he complained in 1730 that his income was less than he had been led to
expect (he remarked that there were not enough funerals); but, obviously, his
routine work must have suffered. Friction between Bach and his employers
thus developed almost at once. On the one hand, Bach's initial
understanding of the fees and prerogatives accruing to his
position--particularly regarding his responsibility for musical activities in
the University of Leipzig's Pauliner Church--differed from that of the town
council and the university organist, Johann Gottlieb Görner. On the other hand,
Bach remained, in the eyes of his employers, their third (and
unenthusiastic) choice for the post, behind Telemann and Graupner. Furthermore,
the authorities insisted on admitting unmusical boys to the school, thus making
it difficult for Bach to keep his churches supplied with competent
singers; they also refused to spend enough money to keep a decent orchestra
together. The resulting ill feeling had become serious by 1730. It was
temporarily dispelled by the tact of the new rector, Johann Matthias Gesner,
who admired Bach and had known him at Weimar; but Gesner stayed only
until 1734 and was succeeded by Johann August Ernesti, a young man with
up-to-date ideas on education, one of which was that music was not one of the
humanities but a time-wasting sideline. Trouble flared up again in July 1736;
it then took the form of a dispute over Bach's right to appoint prefects
and became a public scandal. Fortunately for Bach, he became court
composer to the elector of Saxony in November 1736. As such, after some delay,
he was able to induce his friends at court to hold an official inquiry, and his
dispute with Ernesti was settled in 1738. The exact terms of the settlement are
not known; but, thereafter, Bach did as he liked.
In 1726, after he had completed the bulk of
his cantata production, Bach began to publish the clavier Partitas singly,
with a collected edition in 1731, perhaps with the intention of attracting
recognition beyond Leipzig and thus securing a more amenable appointment
elsewhere. The second part of the Clavierübung, containing the Concerto
in the Italian Style and the French Overture (Partita) in
B Minor, appeared in 1735. The third part, consisting of the Organ Mass with
the Prelude and Fugue ["St. Anne"] in E-flat Major (BWV
552), appeared in 1739. From about 1729 to 1736 Bach was honorary
musical director to Weissenfels; and, from 1729 to 1737 and again from 1739 for
a year or two, he directed the Leipzig Collegium Musicum. For these concerts,
he adapted some of his earlier concertos as harpsichord
concertos, thus becoming one of the first composers--if not the very first--of
concertos for keyboard instrument and orchestra, just as he was one of the
first to use the harpsichordist's right hand as a true melodic part in chamber
music. These are just two of several respects in which the basically
conservative and traditional Bach, as is becoming increasingly
recognized, was a significant innovator as well.
About 1733 Bach began to produce cantatas in honour of the elector of
Saxony and his family, evidently with a view to the court appointment he
secured in 1736; many of these secular movements were adapted to sacred words
and reused in the Christmas Oratorio. The "Kyrie" and
"Gloria" of the Mass
in B Minor, written in 1733, were also dedicated to the elector,
but the rest of the Mass was not put together until Bach's last
years. On his visits to Dresden, Bach had won the regard of Count
Hermann Karl von Keyserlingk, the Russian envoy, who commissioned the so-called
Goldberg Variations; these were published as part four of the Clavierübung
about 1742, and Book Two of the "Forty-eight" seems to have been
compiled about the same time. In addition, he wrote a few cantatas, revised
some of his Weimar organ works, and published the so-called Schübler Chorale
Preludes in or after 1746.
In May 1747 he visited his son Emanuel at
Potsdam and played before Frederick II the Great of Prussia; in July his
improvisations, on a theme proposed by the king, took shape as The Musical
Offering. In June 1747 he joined a Society of the Musical Sciences that had
been founded by his former pupil Lorenz Christoph Mizler; he presented the
canonic variations on the chorale Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her (From
Heaven Above to Earth I Come) to the society, in manuscript, and
afterward published them.
Of Bach's last illness little is known except that it lasted several
months and prevented him from finishing The
Art of the Fugue. His constitution was undermined by two
unsuccessful eye operations performed by John Taylor, the itinerant English
quack who numbered Handel among his other failures; and he died on July 28,
1750, at Leipzig. His employers proceeded with relief to appoint a successor;
Burgomaster Stieglitz remarked, "The school needs a cantor, not a musical
director--though certainly he ought to understand music." Anna Magdalena
was left badly off. For some reason, her stepsons did nothing to help her, and
her own sons were too young to do so. She died on Feb. 27, 1760, and was given
a pauper's funeral.
Unfinished as it was, The Art of the Fugue was published in 1751. It
attracted little attention and was reissued in 1752 with a laudatory preface by
Friedrich
Wilhelm Marpurg, a well-known Berlin musician who later became director
of the royal lottery. In spite of Marpurg and of some appreciative remarks by Johann
Mattheson, the influential Hamburg critic and composer, only about 30 copies
had been sold by 1756, when Emanuel Bach offered the plates for sale. As
far as is known, they were sold for scrap.
Emanuel Bach and the organist-composer Johann Friedrich Agricola (a
pupil of Sebastian's) wrote an obituary; Mizler added a few closing words and
published the result in the journal of his society (1754). There is an English
translation of it in The Bach Reader. Though incomplete and
inaccurate, the obituary is of very great importance as a firsthand source of
information.
Bach appears to have been a good husband and father. Indeed, he was
the father of 20 children, only 10 of whom survived to maturity. There is
amusing evidence of a certain thriftiness--a necessary virtue, for he was never
more than moderately well off and he delighted in hospitality. Living as he did
at a time when music was beginning to be regarded as no occupation for a
gentleman, he occasionally had to stand up for his rights both as a man and as
a musician; he was then obstinate in the extreme. But no sympathetic employer
had any trouble with Bach, and with his professional brethren he was
modest and friendly. He was also a good teacher and from his Mühlhausen days
onward was never without pupils.
Johann Sebastian
Bach (1685-1750)