March 15
By
Linda de Vries
On
this date in 1700 Sebastian and his young friend Georg Erdmann left Ohrdruf to
enroll in St. Michael’s school in Lüneburg.
Our Bach Bagatelle for today is: Bach in the North.
There are, however, two other
important events that occurred on this date that we should mention.
A
Mighty Fortress
The Diet of Speyer (Spires)
opened on March 15, 1529, with one
of its purposes being to address the division caused by Martin Luther. The protestant
delegates issued a “Letter of Protestation” on April 20th. On April
24th the Diet concluded with a reaffirmation of the Edict of Worms,
prohibiting further reformation. On April 25th the reformers issued
another complaint against this decision. This protestation is considered the
birth of Protestantism.
Although there are several theories
regarding its date of composition, one theory is that at the opening of the
Diet on March 15, Luther and his
fellow reformers entered singing his hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”
Ein feste Burg
An alternative date is possible, but
many say that on March 15, 1716 Sebastian’s
BWV 80a was first performed. This is an early version of Ein feste Burg, his harmonization of Luther’s hymn.
For
more on this cantata, please see Conductor’s
Notes, by Stephen Gothold, posted March 15, 2014 on this blog.
Bach in the North
After the death of both his mother and father at age nine,
Sebastian went to live, as was the custom, with his eldest brother, Johann
Christoph, organist at St. Michael’s Church in Ohrdruf and a former student of
Pachelbel.
Pachelbel represented the South German organ school, whereas
Lüneburg was the center of North German music. Even though Johann Christoph was
a student of Pachelbel, scholars believe he encouraged his brother to go north
to school. Sebastian was the first Bach to move out of their ancestral
territory. While in Lüneburg Sebastian encountered several people who strongly
influenced his development.
We should note that this was his sole formal education. Many
musicians of his era were university graduates, but Sebastian’s poverty
prevented this. He was a scholarship student in Lüneburg, having secured his
place owing to his fine soprano voice. The story told is that Sebastian and
Georg walked the 180 miles north, hitching rides on carts and river barges
along the way. He was 15 years old.
While in Lüneburg he studied organ with Georg Böhm, who
introduced him to the great organ traditions of Hamburg.
Böhm was born in 1661 in Hohenkirchen, Thuringia, and
studied with Johann Heinrich Hildebrand, Cantor at Ohrdruf, who had studied
with two distant Bach relatives of Sebastian. He attended the Gymnasium at
Gotha, where he was also taught by Cantors who studied with the same two Bachs.
In 1684 Böhm entered the University of Jena. There is little information about
him until he appears again in Hamburg.
Secular music in Hamburg introduced him to French and
Italian opera, while in the realm of sacred music he listened to Johann Adam
Reincken, organist at St. Katharine’s Church and one of the leading keyboard
players of his time. He could also have visited Lübeck to hear Dieterich
Buxtehude.
In 1698 Böhm became the organist at the Church of St. John
in Lüneburg. There is no strong evidence that Sebastian actually studied with
Böhm, and it seems unlikely given that the two schools, St. Michael’s and St.
John’,s were in constant conflict. On the other hand, C.P.E. Bach reported to
Sebastian’s first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, that his father loved and
studied Böhm’s music.
Böhm was noted for a style of playing based on
improvisation, called stylus
phantasticus. His most important contribution to North German music was the
chorale partita, a composition consisting of variations on a single melody,
with sophisticated use of several voices over the harmonic structure. Sebastian
followed his model in writing partitas.
Johann Adam Reincken (1643-1722), born in the Netherlands
but transplanted to Germany, was one of the most important German composers of
the 17th century, and a major influence on both Böhm and Sebastian.
(It appears to have been the custom at the time to marry the
cantor’s daughter when you succeeded to his position. Sebastian faced the same
choice with Buxtehude’s daughter.)
Reincken was lauded as one of the greatest organists in
Germany, and was a close friend of Buxtehude. Bach biographer Christoph Wolff
writes of the meeting between Reincken and Sebastian: after Sebastian
improvised at length on the Lutheran chorale An Wasserflüssen Babylon, an homage to Reincken’s fantasia on the
same chorale, Reincken said, “I thought that this art was dead, but I see that
it lives in you.”
Wolff also reports that on the same 1722 visit to Hamburg,
Sebastian performed his organ fugue BWV 542, based on a popular Dutch song, in
honor of Reincken, and went on to arrange three more works of Reincken: BWV
954, 965, and 966. Sadly, few of Reincken’s works survive.
On August 31, 2006, the earliest known manuscript in
Sebastian’s handwriting was discovered in Weimar. It is the same fantasia,
signed “Il Fine â Dom. Georg Böhme
descriptum ao. 1700 Lunaburgi.” “Dom”
may refer to domus (house) or dominus (master), but it proves that
Sebastian knew Böhm well and had deep respect for Reincken. In 1727 Sebastian
also appointed Böhm his northern agent for the sale of two of his partitas.
In Lüneberg Sebastian also met Franz Joachim Burmeister.
Burmeister was born, lived, and died in Lüneberg, surviving only 39 years, but
his influence was profound. His early 17th century treatise was the
first to explore the connection between rhetoric and music, a central theme in
Baroque musical style. Burmeister wrote the chorale text for Es ist genug, which Sebastian set to
music as his BWV 60. In the 20th century, Alban Berg used
Sebastian’s setting in his oft-played Violin
Concerto.
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