March 11, The Bach Revival

On this date in 1829, Felix Mendelssohn directed the first performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion since the composer’s death. This performance was intended as the centenary of the premiere performance given at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig on Good Friday, March 11, 1727.

Felix Mendelssohn

This event provides our Bach Bagatelle for today: The Bach Revival.

After Sebastian’s death, tastes in music changed drastically, and his sons C.P.E. and Johann Christian Bach were more famous than their father. The story of Sebastian’s return to favor in the music world is the story of two intertwining families—Bach and Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn Family

It begins with Moses Mendelssohn, the great German-Jewish philosopher who created his name from “Mendel’s son,” believing that this, rather than “Moses Ben Mendel” would allow him to go further in the educated German society of the 18^th century.

The prevailing views of the time were strongly anti-Semitic, even though a great number of Jews were deeply assimilated into German society and many had converted to Christianity. European culture was, however, changing.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his play The Jews offered the possibility that a Jew could possess nobility of character. He found the realization of his ideal when he met Moses Mendelssohn. The two became friends for life.

Mendelssohn, though an orthodox Jew, became a leading light of the Jewish Enlightenment, and is referred to as the “father of Reform Judaism.” Perhaps his most important work is Jerusalem, an examination of the position of Judaism in a Gentile world and a plea for freedom of conscience. This idea is reflected in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, whose hero was modeled on Mendelssohn.

Moses had six children. His son Abraham married Lea Salomon, the daughter of Bella Itzig and Levin Jacob Salomon. Bella’s sister Sarah married Solomon Levy. Abraham and Lea were the parents of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Sarah Itzig Levy was their great aunt.

“Felix” he was given at birth, but his parents refused to have him circumcised and gave their children no religious education until they were baptized into the Reformed Church in 1816, at which time the future composer became Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartoldy, the last name added at the instigation of his uncle Jacob Salomon, who had taken it as his own after inheriting property with that name. Felix used Bartoldy to please his father, but remained mute about his specific religious beliefs throughout his life.

Bach Connection

Toward the end of the 18^th century one of the ways wealthy Jewish families in Berlin attempted to enter German cultured society was by giving their children music lessons. Such a one was Sarah Levy, who studied the harpsichord with Sebastian’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and she conducted a musical salon in her Berlin home that cultivated a love of Sebastian’s music. She also commissioned works by other of Sebastian’s sons, particularly C.P.E. It may be that Felix’s compositions from the 1820s were influenced by the latter composer.

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach

Her love of Bach led Sarah to join the Berlin Singakademie, founded in 1791 by C.F.C. Fasch to promote German sacred choral music. Fasch, a lover of Sebastian’s motets, was succeeded in 1800 by Carl Friedrich Zelter, who, on Sarah’s recommendation, became tutor to young Felix and his sister Fanny. Felix studied music with Zelter for seven years. In the Singakademie, Sebastian’s works were unearthed and studied, particularly his B Minor Mass. When of an age, both Felix and Fanny joined this group.

The Mendelssohns were collectors, Abraham having purchased a number of Sebastian’s manuscripts at auction in Hamburg in 1805, and Sarah having amassed an important collection of Bach family manuscripts. These they placed with the Singakademie for safe-keeping.

In 1823 or 1824 Felix’s grandmother Bella presented him with a gift she had somehow inveigled Zelter to release—Sebastian’s St. Matthew Passion, a work hardly known at the time but one that Zelter had long hoped to conduct.

Mendelssohn was 15. Five years later, with the backing of Zelter and the actor Eduard Devrient, Felix was able to conduct the a significant portion of the Passion at the Berlin Singakademie. Up to then Sebastian had been considered merely a “musical mathematician.” This performance began a full-scale revival of his work throughout Germany and beyond. It also brought Mendelssohn widespread acclaim. He said, “To think that it took an actor and a Jew’s son to revive the greatest Christian music for the world.”

A Bach Break! & Back to Bach!

A Bach Break!

Time out for the Chorale Bel Canto Annual Gala Fundraiser

On March 5, 2016, we held our annual fundraiser at Hacienda Golf Club—a dinner with wine pairings and a show—“Hello Again! The Songs of Allan Sherman,” starring Linden Waddell and accompanied by Marjorie Poe.

Many thanks to all who sponsored, donated, contributed time and energy, and attended.

The evening was a great success, including the “wine grab,” with great bargains on fine wines!

Back to Bach!

On March 5, 2016, had you not been at the Hacienda Golf Club, you could have heard the Phoenix Chamber Music Society play Peter Schickele’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet. Although a serious composer as well, Mr. Schickele is perhaps most famous as PDQ Bach, his name parodying the three names of the Bach family often reduced to initials, such as CPE Bach. You can read more about him in Bach Bagatelles.

PDQ Bach

Peter Schickele

On this same day, you might also have heard the opening concert of the Complete Bach Organ Series at St. Thomas Church in New York, or Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the First Lutheran Church in Ellicott City, Maryland. You can also read more about Bach’s Passions in Bach Bagetelles.

On March 6, 2016, you could have attended a performance of George Frideric Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare as part of the Handel Week Festival in Oak Park, Illinois, the same production by Julius Rudel that propelled a young Beverly Sills to international stardom.

George Frideric Handel

Why Handel in a Bach series? They were contemporaries born in the same area of Germany, towering figures of their period. There is the Handel Hendrix House in London where G.F. Handel and guitarist Jimi Hendrix once lived. Jimi Hendrix ties, in a weird way, into the theme of the 79^th Annual Bach Festival Theme, Bach and the Guitar. More on this later.

On March 7, 1706, Johann Pachelbel died. Pachelbel is one of “Bach and the Band,” a Thuringian musician. You undoubtedly know him through his famous “Canon in D,” often simply called “Pachelbel’s Canon,” a piece that is still popular three centuries later! You can read more about this relationship in Bach Bagatelles.

Johann Pachelbel

March 8

On this date in 1714, Sebastian’s fifth child, Carl Philipp Emanuel, was born in Weimar. His godfather was the composer Georg Philipp Telemann, about whom you can read more in Bach Bagatelles.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, 302 years old today

C.P.E. was the second surviving son of Sebastian and first wife Maria Barbara. Besides being the primary conservator of his father’s legacy, he was an important composer in his own right, providing a bridge between the Baroque and Classical periods in music.

Typical of so many musicians of the period, CPE studied law, first at the University of Leipzig, then at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder. Upon graduation, however, he almost immediately turned his full attention to music and accepted a position with Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia in Berlin. When the prince became king (Frederick “the Great”) in 1740, CPE, one of the leading harpsichord players in Europe, became a member of the royal orchestra. He was 26 years old.

In this capital city, he mixed with the cultural elite of German society, becoming a lifelong friend of the literary giant Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He also continued composing, which he had begun in 1731. His primary influences were his father Sebastian Bach, his godfather Telemann, and their friend George Frideric Handel. C.P.E. composed mainly for the keyboard in Berlin, where he published his widely influential book, An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, still used today. C.G. Neefe used CPE’s book when teaching Beethoven.

While in Berlin, he married Johanna Maria Dannemann. Three of their children lived to adulthood but none was a musician.

In 1768 CPE succeeded his godfather, Telemann, as director of music at Hamburg, where he began to turn his energies more toward the composition of choral music. Ultimately, he composed in every genre except opera. He died in Hamburg on December 14, 1788 and was buried in St. Michael’s Church.

Classical Music

In the middle of the 18^th century taste began to move toward a new style, a style that came to be called Classicism, as artists sought to copy the ideals of Classical Greece.

This new taste reflected changes in society such as the rejection of absolute monarchies in favor of the independent individual, an emphasis on reason and skepticism that led to the rise of science and the rise of the middle class with its new-found wealth.

Consequently, the new style in music favored simplicity over complexity. It shifted from polyphony (two or more lines of simultaneous independent melody) to homophony (one dominant melody accompanied by subordinate chords).

Variety of key, melody, rhythm, and dynamics became more pronounced, as did changes in mood and timbre. The harpsichord was replaced by the piano (called the fortepiano initially, because it could play both loudly and softly, which a harpsichord could not). Melodies were marked by clear-cut phrases and cadences (pauses at the end of a section of music).

The most important composers in the transition from Baroque to Classical were the Italian Domenico Scarlatti, the Viennese master Christoph Willibald Gluck, and C.P.E. Bach. Sebastian’s son was held in high esteem both for his ability to master the older forms and to present them in a new guise.

Many stylistic sub-groups arose within Classical style, so you also find the period also referred to as rococo (from rocaille, a form of home and landscape decoration using shells), meaning highly decorative and fanciful.

Another term was stil gallant, or Empfindsamer Stil. C.P.E. practiced this “sensitive style,” which emphasized simplicity, immediacy of appeal, and elegance. In contrast to the Baroque Doctrine of Affections in which a piece maintained the same emotion throughout its length, sensitive style aimed to express “true and natural” feelings with melodies and rhythms patterned after speech, and featured abrupt contrasts in mood. To achieve his highly dramatic style, C.P.E. recommended free improvisation and the elimination of the bar line in a score!

The giants of the fully-evolved Classical style are Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Joseph Haydn of the Vienna School, both of whom were highly influenced by C.P.E. Bach. Mozart said of him, “He is the father; we are the children.” Currently, there is a project underway to record his complete works.

Gala Tomorrow & Back to Bach

Tomorrow, March 5, 2016

Annual CBC Gala at Hacienda Golf Club

"Hello Again! The Songs of Allan Sherman

Not able to attend?

We welcome all your donations with our deepest gratitude.

As we approach our April 2 concert, part of the 79th annual Whittier College Bach Festival, we continue our periodic posts on events in the life of J.S. Bach-- BACK TO BACH!

March 4

On this date in 1723 Sebastian’s eighth child and third daughter was born, Christiana Sophia Henrietta Bach. This event provides our Bach Bagetelle for this date: The Family of Johann Sebastian Bach

In brief, Sebastian Bach married twice and had seven children with his first wife and thirteen with his second. Ten of his children lived to adulthood and nine were still alive when he died. The number of deaths may seem shocking, but these statistics are actually quite good for the period. In the eighteenth century in London, for example, 75% of children died before the age of five.

Sebastian’s first wife was his second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, whom he had “entertained” in the organ loft in Arnstadt, earning a reprimand by the church. They were married in Mühlhausen on October 17, 1707.

They moved to Wiemar in 1708, where and when their first daughter was born. Catharina Dorothea lived to adulthood, never married, and died in 1774 at age 66—one year older than her father at his death.

The Bachs’ first son, Wilhelm Friedemann, was also born at Weimar, on November 22, 1710. He was one of five of Sebastian’s sons who became musicians. Although he was noted both as a composer and for his ability to improvise on the organ, his was not a happy life. He eventually died in poverty in Berlin in 1784.

Sebastian and Maria Barbara had four more children in Weimar. A twin boy and girl were born on February 23, 1713, but one died immediately and the other on March 13^th.

On March 8, 1714, Carl Philipp Emmanuel was born, the fifth child and second son to become a musician, perhaps the best known musician of Sebastian’s sons. Certainly he was the one closest to his father. We’ll meet him again later in this series.

On May 11, 1715 Johann Gottfried Bernhard was born. He, too, became a musician, but soon gave it up to study law in Jena. He died unexpectedly of mysterious causes at the age of 24.

In 1717 Sebastian and Maria Barbara moved to Cöthen, where their seventh child, Leopold Augustus, was born in 1718. Sadly, he lived only ten months. Equally sadly, Maria Barbara died suddenly while Sebastian was traveling with his employer Prince Leopold and was buried on July 7, 1720. She was only 35 years old.

Sebastian had, however, had met Anna Magdalena Wilcke while traveling, and they were married on December 3, 1721. A noted soprano, she continued to sing professionally after her marriage, but her salary in Cöthen was half that of her husband. She also transcribed many of her husband’s manuscripts. Some recent scholars have suggested that she may have been the actual composer of works attributed to her husband. He dedicated a number of compositions to her, most notably The Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, which includes compositions by other composers as well.

She bore Sebastian 13 children, only six of whom lived to adulthood. Her first child, Christiana Sophia Henrietta, whose birthday is noted above, was born in Cöthen, but only survived to age three.

In 1723 the family moved to Leipzig, where they remained until Sebastian’s death in 1750.

Child number nine, Gottfried Heinrich, was born in 1724. He lived until 1763, but was mentally handicapped. Christian Gottlieb (1725) was another who only lived until age three. But Elisabeth Juliana Friederika, born in 1726, lived to marry Christoph Altnikol, a pupil of her father who became a significant figure in the world of music.

Anna Magdalena bore four more children between 1727 and 1731, all of whom died before the age of four. On a happier note, Johann Christoph Friedrich arrived in 1732 and survived until 1795, another successful musician in the family.

Johann August Abraham, born in 1733, lived only one day, but Johann Christian, born in 1735, lived a long and successful life. He moved to England, where he became known as the “London Bach.” We will meet him again later in this series.

Anna Magdalena’s two youngest daughters, both of whom remained unmarried, were Johanna Carolina (1737) and Regina Susanna, born in 1742, when Sebastian was 57 years old.

When Sebastian died in 1750, he left no will, and his modest estate was evenly divided between his wife and his nine surviving children. Anna Magdalena and her two unmarried daughters and step-daughter living with her were evicted from the Cantor’s house by church officials in 1751.

For unknown reasons (some speculate that conflict among the sons had divided the family) none of the children offered monetary aid, and Anna Magdalena spent the last ten years of her life existing on charity. She died in an almshouse on February 27, 1760, and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave at St. John’s Church in Leipzig, where her husband had also been buried. Both graves were forgotten.

On October 22, 1894, however, when the church was being renovated, Sebastian’s remains were discovered. They were taken up and studied extensively. On March 8, 1895 a committee reported to the City Council of Leipzig that the remains were truly those of J.S. Bach. They based their conclusion on the location of the coffin, the fact that it was made of oak, and features of the skull. The results were later published by Wilhelm His in 1895 in a separate paper. The church was bombed during WW II, but before the demolition of the ruins by the Communist City Council in 1950, Bach’s remains were reburied in the crypt beneath the choir of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where they remain. Anna Magdalena’s grave has never been found.

Lastly, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach (1759-1845) was the eldest son of Johann Christoph Bach, the only grandson of Sebastian to gain fame as a composer. He was taught by his uncles, C.P.E. Bach and Johann Christian, the “London Bach,” and became music director to King Frederick William II of Prussia. He married twice, but all his children died in infancy, thus ending the Bach line of musicians.

Back to Bach

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.

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.”

Bach Blitz Begins

March -- J.S. Bach’s birth month.

Today I begin periodic posts on events in March related to Bach’s life and music, events with unusual connections to our time as well. I will edit posts from Bach Bagatelles from 2014 and add new tidbits. The climax of this series is the Chorale Bel Canto concert on April 2^nd at First Friends Church in Whittier. Enjoy! 

      Linda de Vries

A bagatelle is “a thing of little importance, a very easy task.”

In music, a bagatelle is “a short unpretentious instrumental composition,” usually of a light, mellow character and usually written for the piano. The earliest use of the term was by François Couperin in his tenth harpsichord ordre (1717) in which he titles a rondeau “Les bagatelles.” The best-known bagatelle is probably Beethoven’s Für Elise.

 Before we Begin, a Brief Biography

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German musician and composer. He was born in Eisenach in 1685 and died in Leipzig in 1750.

Five generations of the Bach family (the name means “Brook” in German) lived from the early 16^th century in the Thuringian duchies of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Saxe-Meiningen and the principality of Schwarzburg-Arnstadt. The family profession was music. Records indicate that 53 Bachs held posts as organists, cantors, or town musicians for over 300 years.

J.S. Bach (hereafter referred to as “Sebastian” to distinguish him from his many relatives) is the most famous of this illustrious family, was church organist at Arnstadt (1703-07), Mülhlhausen (1707-08), court organist at Weimar (1708-14), concert master at Weimar (1714-17), court music director at Köthen (1717-23), music director of St. Thomas School in Leipzig (1723-50), where he also provided Sunday service and Christian holiday music for the four churches in the city—St. Thomas Church, St. Nicholas Church, St. Peter Church, and the New Church. From 1729 until his death he was also director of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum. He composed over 1,100 known pieces of music and was renowned as an organist.

Beyond these bare facts, however, lies an entire universe. The English organist Augustus Frederick Christopher Kollmann published a copper engraving of the sun with Bach at its center surrounded by other German composers as its rays. The composer Haydn said of this engraving that “Bach was indeed the center of the sun and hence the man from whom all true musical wisdom proceeded.”

March 1

On this date in 2013 John Eliot Gardiner was interviewed in the BBC Music Magazine. The dialogue focused on Gardiner’s new book, Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Gardiner, who celebrated his 70^th birthday in 2013, changed the way we listen to Baroque music through his use of period instruments in scholarly yet passionate performances of Bach’s cantatas, only one of his many accomplishments as a preeminent conductor in contemporary England.

It is Gardiner’s title, though, that provides our Bach Bagatelle for this date: Portraits of Bach.

Gardiner begins his book by recalling that on his way to bed he would glance up at a portrait of Bach that hung on the first floor landing of his family’s home in an old mill house in Dorset, England. The portrait, by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, had been delivered to the Gardiner home in a knapsack by a Silesian refugee who handed it over for safekeeping during World War II.

Although there are over 50 reputed portraits of Bach, the Gardiner picture is one of only two fully-authenticated portraits of Bach, one painted in 1746 and one in 1748. Here is that picture:

                                

                                     John Eliot Gardiner                                 Johann Sebastian Bach

                     
Wait! There is yet another surprising connection to this date and this portrait. In October of 2012 a Bach portrait thought to be a Haussmann original or reproduction was sold at auction by Freeman’s of Philadelphia for $122,500. The painting had been discovered in a bank vault in Mountain Brook, Alabama!

John C. Jones, the art appraiser often seen on the PBS Antiques Roadshow and the History Channel’s American Pickers, wrote me on March 1, 2014: “On March 1^st of 2012 I was in the midst of deep contract negotiations, being the appointed broker, with the then owner of the Bach and the auction houses interested in wanting to represent the portrait.”

Wait again! As of March 1, 2014, the Voyager Spacecraft, launched in 1977, became the farthest human-made object from earth. The Golden Record with music from around the world launched with it included three pieces by J.S. Bach.

The eminent biologist Lewis Thomas, when asked what music he would want sent from Earth into outer space, answered, “I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.” After a pause, he added, “But that would be boasting.”