By Linda de Vries
March 2
On March 2, 1714 Bach was appointed
concert master of the Court of Weimar This position placed him second only to
the Kapellmeister, the highest rank given to a musician in the baroque age.
This event provides our Bach
Bagetelle for this date: Working
Conditions of the Professional Musician.
Sebastian Bach was a professional
musician, laboring throughout his life to secure employment and improve his
working conditions.
John Eliot Gardiner notes in his
March 1, 2013 BBC interview that the little we have of Sebastian’s writing
presents “a cameo of an artist driven to distraction by the narrow-mindedness
and stupidity of his employers and forced to live, in his own words, ‘amid
almost continual vexation, envy and persecution’.”
Weimar
One
In 1702, after finishing school at
age 18 in the North German town of Lüneburg, he returned south to his native
area to serve as organist in Arnstadt. While the organ there was being built he
spent seven months at the Weimar Court playing violin in the orchestra.
Arnstadt
In July of 1703 he took up his
well-paid position as organist in St. Boniface Church in Arnstadt. His duties
were to accompany the church services and to maintain its new organ. All his compositions
were outside of his contract and produced on his own time. One of these, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, is
extant today as the oldest manuscript in Bach’s own hand.
He was very well paid for a poor
church and a young organist, perhaps because the church had had a Bach (his great
uncle Heinrich) as an organist for 50 years and was eager to hire another.
Soon, however, he faced conflicts,
some petty, some substantive. He lost his temper with a bassoonist who made a
mess of a passage Sebastian had written for him. The player and his gang then
attacked him in the town square. Sebastian defended himself with his sword and
later lodged a complaint, but the authorities failed to back him and sided with
the bassoonist.
While in the north Sebastian had
spent time with two of the most important organists of the day, Böhm in Lüneburg
and Reincken in Hamburg, studying the most advanced Italian and French music. Unfortunately,
the congregation in Arnstadt resisted his “surprising variations and irrelevant
ornaments which obliterate the melody and confuse the congregation.”
Next, he was granted a four-week
leave of absence in 1705 to visit the brilliant organist Dietrich Buxtehude in
Lübeck, walking the 250 miles in about ten days. He remained away for three
months without consulting his employers, perhaps having intended all along to
stay to hear Buxtehude’s music at Advent. He might even have become Buxtehude’s
assistant, had the position not included marrying his daughter!
The Church Council in Arnstadt sought
to reprimand him, but eventually retreated to a more lenient approach,
appreciating his significant talent. Nevertheless, conflict continued.
Sebastian, citing a clause in his contract, refused to work with the
undisciplined boys of the choir, requesting that the church emphasize musical
quality over budget economy. The church also reprimanded him for “entertaining
a strange damsel” in the organ loft—probably Maria Barbara Bach, his cousin.
Mühlhausen
He auditioned at St. Blasius Church in
Mühlhausen on Easter Sunday 1707 and got the job of town organist. He left
Arnstadt immediately and quietly and married Maria Barbara in Mühlhausen on
October 17, 1707.
Sebastian’s immediate boss at St.
Blasius was the Pietist Johann Adolf Frohne, a strict puritan who distrusted
art and music, while Lutheran orthodoxy with a musical liturgy was the norm at
St. Mary’s Church under the leadership of Georg Christian Eilmar.
Each church had a school and cantor
but, different from other towns in which Sebastian later worked, the leading
musical figure was one of the church organists, not a cantor, so Sebastian also
had duties at St. Mary’s Church. He was responsible for the cantata performed
at the annual “change of council,” for which, in 1708 Gott ist mein König, (BWV 71) was performed and printed, the only
piece that was published during his lifetime.
Soon, however, he was enmeshed in
the frequent quarrels between the two pastors. In his letter of resignation he
wrote that he had not been able to establish a “regulated church music.” He
also noted that his small salary made it difficult to keep a wife.
He left amicably, though, continuing
to supervise the reconstruction of the organ originally built by Friedrich
Wender, and returning in 1709 to inaugurate its first performance with ein’ feste Burg, (BWV 720), now believed
to have been written by his father-in-law, Johann Michael Bach. His successor
as organist was his cousin, Johann Friedrich Bach.
Weimar
Two
Sebastian began in Weimar in 1708 as
a member of Duke Wilhelm Ernst’s chamber orchestra, playing violin and
harpsichord, and as organist to the Court. His job also required him to arrange
music and perform some household chores.
By 1714, as noted above, he rose to
concert master and his salary was doubled. This promotion may have been a
counter offer to retain his services in the face of overtures from the city of
Halle.
In 1713 Sebastian had applied to succeed Georg Frederic Handel's
teacher in Halle, where a huge new organ was being built, and the city
immediately offered him the position. He informed the Duke of the negotiations.
When the Halle city authorities submitted their final offer, though, it
included a reduced salary, increased responsibilities, stipulations against
moonlighting, and instructions as to how the chorales were to be accompanied.
Insulted, Sebastian immediately refused their offer,
wherewith they wrote a letter to Duke Ernst accusing Sebastian of using Halle
to extort a higher salary from him. Sebastian responded with an angry letter,
and the Duke doubled his salary!
Even though Weimar was a small town of only 5,000, the Duke was
one of the most distinguished and cultured nobles of his time. At nearby Rote Schloss,
the home of the former Duke’s widow and hers sons, Sebastian was also introduced
to the music of Vivaldi and the very popular Italian style in music.
Unfortunately, this idyll was interrupted when a feud broke
out between the Duke and his nephew at Rote Schloss and musicians were
forbidden to fraternize with that household. In addition, the Kapellmeister
died and Sebastian was passed over for the position, even though he had been
doing most of the aging man’s work.
Severely disappointed, Sebastian resigned his post at Weimar
to take up a job at Cöthen. Duke Ernst, however, imprisoned him for a month
before allowing him to act on his resignation.
Cöthen
In 1717 he was appointed Kapellmeister
at Cöthen. He had risen to the top rank in his profession. He was 32 years old.
Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen was a
Calvinist. As the Calvinists were antagonistic to the Lutheran liturgy, there
was no church music in Cöthen, so Sebastian played and composed secular music
featuring the latest styles and fashions, including dance music.
Although head of a small court, the
prince was determined to raise the quality of German secular music and spent lavishly
to achieve this goal. Sebastian and his orchestra often traveled with the
prince to Carlsbad, for example, meeting the cream of European aristocracy.
On one of these trips Sebastian
returned to find that his wife had died unexpectedly. Here, too, however, he
met the woman who was to become his second wife, Anna Magdalena Wilcke, a noted
soprano and daughter of the Court and Field Trumpeter at Wiessenfels.
Prince Leopold married one week
after the wedding of Sebastian and Anna Magdalena. Sadly, however, the prince’s
new wife was not a fan of music. Sebastian wrote to his old school friend Georg
Erdmann that the Princess strove “to make the musical inclination of the said
Prince somewhat lukewarm.”
Leipzig
In 1723 Sebastian found a new job in
Leipzig, Cantor of the school at St. Thomas Church, which also required him to
provide music for the four churches of the town.
The position was very desirable: the
city was one of the foremost centers of German cultural life, it was the home
of a famous university, Sebastian knew the area well and had many friends
there, and its thrice-yearly Trade Fair drew people from all over Europe.
The school, however, was in poor
shape, its orphaned students often having to sing in the streets for alms.
Sebastian noted musical poverty as well, writing that out of 54 in the choir
“17 are competent, 20 not yet fully, and 17 incapable.” Sebastian had to fight
once again to improve the quality of the musicians.
The job was extremely demanding,
including:
·
Oversight of the boys’ prayers
·
Discipline of the boys in their dormitory
·
Singing classes from 9-12 a.m. Mondays,
Tuesdays, and Wednesdays
·
Friday morning Latin classes
·
Saturday afternoon cantata rehearsals
·
Performance at the main Sunday service from 7-12
a.m., followed a communion service
·
Composition of a cantata each week that might
last as long as 35 minutes
·
Oversight of the copying of parts and scores
·
Private tutorials
·
Supervision of weekday services at four churches,
one hospital, and a house of correction
·
Composition of music for weddings, funerals, and
special occasions
On Thursdays the Cantor was free, but
Sebastian also traveled to various cities in Saxony to evaluate and supervise
the reconstruction of organs.
Conflict arose again, and he found himself in battles with the
town council, the clergy, and the headmaster of the school. In 1725, for
example, he was forced to engage in a long dispute over who was in charge of
music at the University Church, settled only after he appealed to the Elector
of Saxony at Dresden and a compromise was reached.
The educational philosophy of the day was “learning by
doing,” so Sebastian delegated instruction in Latin and some parts of his
compositions to his more gifted and senior students, only to have the city
reprimand him in 1730 for leaving his teaching duties in the hands of his
junior colleague. They also chastised him for not properly disciplining his
choirs and for his frequent journeys away from Leipzig. They attempted to
decrease his salary. Sebastian wrote again to Erdmann in Danzig, asking him to
find him “a convenient post” where he could escape the “trouble, envy, and
persecution” which he had to face in Leipzig.
His friend Gessner, who had taken over position of
Headmaster at St. Thomas School in 1729, intervened on his behalf and secured
him better working conditions and improved his living accommodations, but
Gessner left in 1733 and Johann August Ernst took over and demanded less
emphasis on music and the classics and more emphasis on practical education for
secular life.
Despite all of these difficulties,
he persevered, his fame grew, as did his body of work, and from 1729-1740 he
added to his load the job of director of the Collegium Musicum, a secular
organization founded by Georg Philipp Telemann, run by students from the
university, and populated by some of the finest musicians of the day. He
remained in Leipzig until his death, but he left no will, and his wife was
evicted from the Cantor’s house the next year and lived out her life in
poverty.
Sebastian Bach has the final word:
“I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed .
. . equally well.”
