Johann Sebastian Bach: Context and Reception

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Table of Contents

Bach’s Weimar Period and Changed Compositional Style
References
Footnotes

There are some obvious reasons why Bach’s music has had such appeal to reception historians. Its “rediscovery” in the early nineteenth century, after all, “marked the first time that a great composer, after a period of neglect, was accorded his rightful place by a later generation” and, as an early example of new historicism, “eventually opened all periods of Western music to discovery and performance.” ¹

The vigor and intensity of the Bach revival were so decisive that most of the research conducted on Bach reception history has tended to focus on the nineteenth century. But this is not to imply that scholars have been uninterested in how Bach’s music was received during his lifetime and the fifty years after his death. They have long studied the aesthetic responses to it recorded in eighteenth-century sources and, considering the many items that still await detailed examination, will probably continue this line of investigation for some time to come.

These aesthetic responses do tell us something about how Bach’s contemporaries and immediate successors viewed his music. Yet they are frequently of a general nature, providing no clues whatever as to the particular works that prompted them in the first place. Johann Mattheson’s report of 1717, the first reference to Bach in print, is typical: “I have seen things by the famous organist of Weimar, Mr. Joh. Sebastian Bach, both for the church and for the fist, that is certainly such as must make esteem the man highly.” ²

Besides his obvious admiration for Bach as a composer of keyboard music and sacred vocal works, little can be deduced from Mattheson’s words. Judging from what has survived of Bach’s sacred vocal output up to 1717 the “things…for the church” are sacred cantatas, for there is little else extant. But one wonders which cantatas could have made such a positive impression on Mattheson since the only Bach cantata he is known to have been acquainted with is one he ridiculed for its repetitive text declamation.³ And by “things…for the fist” does he mean organ or harpsichord music, and what genres of organ or harpsichord music does he have in mind?

The lack of documentation precludes any real answers. Could it be demonstrated, though, that if Mattheson at the time of his report owned a manuscript containing this or that Bach cantata or keyboard work, one would clearly be in a better position to entertain questions like these? It is not entirely out of the question that one day such evidence will surface, given the strong interest today in the eighteenth-century manuscript copies of Bach’s music.

Manuscript copies of Bach’s music are manuscripts in the hand of someone other than Bach or, to put it another way, manuscripts in the hand of a copyist instead of the composer. Mattheson’s hypothetical Bach source would most likely have been a manuscript rather than a printed copy, simply because printed music of any type was a rarity in eighteenth-century Germany. The printing process was costly by today’s standards — which in itself were an impediment to publication — and even when composers were lucky enough to have their music published, relatively few copies were ever issued. If a musician wanted to add a composition to his library he usually had little choice but to copy it out by hand.

Not surprisingly, manuscript copies are frequently the by-products of student-teacher relationships. We know, for instance, that Bach taught his own keyboard works to his keyboard pupils and that the pupils prepared manuscript copies of these compositions during the period of instruction. ⁴Whether Bach required his students to make their own copies because he was reluctant to let them practice from his or whether the students took it upon themselves to prepare copies (for whatever reasons) are moot questions. The important realization is that these pupils prepared manuscript copies from which their pupils (Bach’s grand-pupils), in turn, prepared manuscript copies from which their pupils (Bach’s great grand-pupils), in turn, prepared manuscript copies and so forth, ad infinitum.

Of course, not all of the eighteenth-century manuscript copies of Bach’s music stem from the “pupils-of-pupils” line of transmission. Bach’s colleagues diligently copied his music as well and they allowed their manuscripts to be copied by their colleagues and pupils. The result was a scribal network that, by virtue of its many channels, covered a good deal of Germany. It can scarcely be questioned, therefore, that the “copyists-of-copyists” legacy was the chief means by which Bach’s music was disseminated throughout Europe during the eighteenth century.

It is arguable that these manuscript copies are just as important for reception historians as are the aesthetic responses discussed above.⁵ Rarely do they tell us anything about the scribe’s attitude toward the music.⁶ But they do make it possible to establish incontrovertibly a number of important facts about the music that the aesthetic responses often do not yield: they tell us precisely what Bach works were known when they were known, who knew them, and where they were known. Armed with this factual data, it is easier to discuss the various roles that the works might have played in eighteenth-century musical life.

For example, if we know an eighteenth-century copyist of a large number of Bach organ works to have been a church organist, organ recitalist, organ pedagogue, and composer of organ music, it seems likely enough that he played them during worship services, included them on his recitals, taught them to his students, and emulated them in his own organ compositions. The likelihood becomes greater still when we know from other sources just how greatly the copyist admired Bach’s music.

One such copyist was the Gräfenroda cantor, Johann Peter Kellner, unquestionably one of the most important copyists in the sources for Bach’s instrumental works, particularly the keyboard music. Besides being personally acquainted with Bach, he was a prolific copyist of Bach’s music. His Bach copies have survived a total of forty-six manuscripts and it appears that several others have disappeared. Due to the dearth of autograph material, in many instances, a Kellner copy is the earliest extant source for a Bach work and in a few cases the only source. Similar statements could be made about the Bach copies made by Kellner’s students and copyists.

The importance of the Kellner circle in the dissemination of Bach’s music has been acknowledged for years and it may therefore come as a surprise that these manuscripts have never been singled out for a large or even small-scale study. Why no such study has been undertaken is hard to say but most likely two fundamental obstacles are to blame: Kellner’s students and copyists mimicked his handwriting, making it difficult to distinguish their copies from his; and very few of the sources are dated, which means, of course, that proposing a chronology is problematic. At any rate, these two stumbling blocks are clearly the reason why the little information that has been published on these sources is largely contradictory and incomplete. This study aims to rectify the misinformation, to fill in the lacunae. It purports not only to make a contribution to Bach’s reception history but also to shed light on the chronology, compositional history, and authenticity of the music itself.

Clavierübung III was Bach’s first publication for organ, respectfully received by younger contemporaries such as Lorenz Mizler. The author has given here new proof that in this kind of composition he excels many others in experience and skill… This work is a powerful refutation of those who took it upon themselves to criticize the Court Composer’s music.

The last remark must refer to the attack made on Bach by J. A. Scheibe in 1737, although Scheibe had not specified organ music and it is hard to see how such complex music could be ‘Bach’s rebuttal to Scheibe’s barb’– rather the contrary. Perhaps Mattheson’s remarks in 1739 on the limits of modern organ music prompted a monumental survey, though this may over-estimate Mattheson’s influence as well. More likely is that really fine music such as Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali wielded lifelong influence on Bach and would inspire him to produce his own Kyrie settings.

Much of Bach’s wording, as on his other Clavierübung title pages, is close to Kuhnau’s, the first of which appeared in Leipzig exactly fifty years earlier, to the day perhaps. Moreover, Kuhnau’s second volume distinguishes between beginners and those knowledgeable enough to find in its fugues material for further contemplation. The term Clavierübung was probably coined by him as a quasi-translation of musica prattica in earlier seventeenth-century Italian publications.

While Clavierübung III is clearly not merely a miscellaneous album, its nature has been in some dispute, whether it is a ‘closely-knit group of pieces’ or actually in one way or another a ‘cycle’. That the volume was being expanded in the course of being engraved would not necessarily explain why the Prelude and Fugue are separated, why the Duets were included, or why the title page mentions neither. Since the engraver Krügner also worked on Kauffmann’s Harmonische Seelenlust, it is likely that Bach was responding to such local chorale settings, using their styles to new ends. And since the Fugue shares minor details with a fugue by Hurlebusch, perhaps it was composed in response to it, not originally for Clavierübung III.

A few differences between Neumeister’s copy and the autograph version of two Ob chorales suggest that as his style matured, Bach thought out the note-patterns and the accented passing-note harmony more carefully. The original structures and gestures in earlier settings give way in the Ob to a reliance on harmony so subtle as to convey alone, without structural experimentation, an original and unique Affekt, even with more-or-less standard cadences.

Generally, the chorales attributed to J. S. Bach have counterpoint more carefully conceived and sustained, and chorale-melodies more integrated (same note-values), than those by Johann Michael Bach, whose treatment of harmony and motifs is closer to that of BWV 1100. In such a setting, decorations embellish the harmony but do not move it on in new directions. Details typical of Böhm, including his phraseology, have been recognized in BWV 1120, which, like some others, gives a vocal impression as if imitating choral music, including the work of Bach-family members. But the priority is not always certain– are Böhm settings, or the relevant choral works, always earlier than ‘Neumeister’?

Some of the chorales attributed to J. S. Bach seem to anticipate moments in the Chorale ‘Partitas’, as if the latter were a stepping-stone on the way to the Ob, as perhaps they were. But comparisons with first-class music might not always be appropriate: the idea that some ‘Neumeister’ chorales borrow elements from characteristic North German chorales– changes of meter, migration of c.f.– misses the likelihood that broken-up settings of a simple kind were known throughout Lutheran provinces, easily improvised or composed by minor organists, polished somewhat by a J. M. Bach but given their grandest form only in the work of the northern masters, who are therefore not quite representative. Just as the modest if the voluminous collection of chorales by Daniel Vetter of Leipzig (1709, 1713) is likely to have prompted the Ob project as much if not more than finer music by Buxtehude, so local hymn-collecting in Thuringia would have been the context for Neumeister’s source, as for other collections like the Plauener Orgelbuch.

Baroque music originated in the Baroque period (1600-1750). This style of music was crafted from the idea that music could move the listener in emotional and physical ways. Some key points behind baroque music are the textures, which consist mainly of the melody and accompaniment, freely mixed arrangements of instruments and voices, and rhythms from dance music. The melody often makes dramatic and unexpected leaps. Harmonies are based on minor and major tones, and disagreement between notes is more common than in most music. Bach, using all of these techniques in his music, gave baroque music a new name and introduced a whole new world of music to its listeners.

Unquestionably, Bach had a style unique to itself. Every piece of his has an individual style to it that made it easily recognizable as “Bach”. He, without a doubt, had a natural gift for writing beautiful and expressive melodies. It is sometimes said that Bach’s music makes too many demands upon the listener; therefore it is enjoyable only to major musicians. It may be true that early Bach students require an initiation to his style, but an appreciative listener certainly does not require a college degree. What amateur has not been moved by masterpieces such as “Air on the G String,” and “Sheep May Safely Graze”? Regardless of one’s musical taste, there is an experience that will reach out and grab anyone who hears a good Bach tune.

The technicalities of Bach’s music were simply amazing in the places and ways he used them. He was labeled “a master of tricks”. ⁷In his music, Bach introduced interesting playing techniques such as counterpoint, fugue, and cannon. Counterpoint, roughly translating to “note against note,” is the art of combining two or more melodies with each other to blend and make a whole tone. Different instruments can also, instead of playing different melodies, exchange variations of the same melody.

This is known as a fugue. Last is cannon, in which the same exact melody is played by different instruments, but they all start in different places. Also in his music, a technique known as “Fortspinnung” was often used toward the beginning of his movements. Fortspinnung is the consistent repetition of a small melody, especially in baroque music. “Bach’s music represents the crowning achievement of architectonic principles and processes practiced by the western world for half a millennium”.⁸

Of the massive amount of pieces Bach wrote, a large quantity was vocal works, almost all of which was accompanied by an orchestra. Of these, about 200 of 300 cantatas are known. He wrote many pieces for violin and orchestra and for harpsichord and orchestra, the art of which has mostly been lost. Six suites each were written for solo violin and solo cello. Bach had a particular talent for playing the harpsichord. He expressed his great love for harpsichord music by writing for it 48 preludes and 48 fugues, six French and English suites, and plenty of smaller pieces. These songs are still known and played today and have been a large influence on composers such as Scriabin and Chopin who wish to explore musically the moods and expressions of the human mind. Finally, Bach wrote two songs for no particular instrument, “The Art of the Fugue” and “Musical Offering.” These were both created to display compositional techniques in action and create an overall beautiful sound.

It is generally acknowledged that in his time, Bach had no musical peer. Even though Bach did not achieve serious acclaim until after his death, he is acknowledged as one of the great composers who ever lived and certainly the greatest composer of baroque music. ⁹In terms of modern composers, one might compare the genius of Bach to that of Paul McCartney. Both musicians possess the huge musical talent and have written many wonderful pieces. Each contributed to changing the face of the music of his time. Where Bach and McCartney differ most is in their level of popularity during their lifetime. During his life, Bach was looked upon as a being of little importance and his music was not respected. Paul McCartney, of course, enjoys the love and respect of millions of fans.

During his life, Bach was not given the fame he deserved. He was known primarily as an organist and harpsichord player rather than as a composer. For years following his death (1750), his music remained unrecognized until the 19th century, when he was finally acknowledged as the musical genius he was. Perhaps the person most influenced and appreciative of his music was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart first heard Bach’s music in the year 1782, and he instantly loved it. He enjoyed its energy and testing of boundaries.

Bach’s Weimar Period and Changed Compositional Style

One way of understanding his diversity is through the preexisting forms taken by Bach as compositional models.

In the first decade of the eighteenth century, Hamburg was the musical capital of Germany, and we should err in supposing its musical apparatus to have been completely available elsewhere. Its adoption of the Waldhorn, consequently, cannot certainly indicate contemporary use of the instrument by the smaller communities to which Bach devoted his earliest service. Despite religious controversies in Weimar, he thrived, particularly as a composer of some exciting cantatas, and on 17 October 1707, he married his second cousin Maria Barbara.

The logical rigor of much of Bach’s music (including some of his finest works) and its total lack of easy concessions to popular taste might suggest an aloof and unbending figure. But while he was uncompromising on artistic matters Bach was not without a lighter side to his temperament. His love of wine, beer, and tobacco, and the fact that he fathered 20 children is enough to show that he did not scorn life’s more sensual pleasures.

Lutheran Protestantism was the uncontested religion of Saxony and the Saxon duchies, a region beyond which Bach rarely traveled. When he joined the staff of the Leipzig Thomasschule in 1723, he was interviewed to test his religious motivation and stance and asked to sign statements confirming his opposition to Calvinism. However, this official conformity, supposedly upheld by a system of school inspections, could not guarantee dedicated devotion, and it was completely possible for an experienced composer–Telemann is perhaps a good example–to conform to the requirements of the age without actually being more than superficially religious. Indeed it has several times been suggested that Bach’s music proceeds only from a studious and professional thoroughness.

The French were not equipped with the orchestral horn until the decade following Bach’s death, and that the change of tone was associated with the adoption of an embouchure different from that used by horn players in the time of Bach and Handel, who placed the mouthpiece on the lower lip; while, in the horn embouchure, two-thirds of the mouthpiece lies on the upper lip, and the rim, narrower than that of a trumpet mouthpiece, is sunk in the red part of the under lip.

The nature of Bach’s horn parts forbids one to suppose that he ever used the obsolete Jagdhorn of Praetorius’ time. In the second place, Mattheson’s eulogy of the ‘lieblich’ Waldhorn certainly indicates an agreeably mellow tone that distinguished it from the hunting horn it immediately superseded. In the third place, the view that ‘Como’ and ‘Cornoda caccia’ indicate the same instrument is contradicted by Bach’s practice. If there is one thing clearly revealed in his scores, it is his meticulous indication of instrumental tone.

Hence we have a sound reason for supposing that the terms ‘Como’ and ‘Cornoda caccia’ distinguish the mellow tone Mattheson associated with the Waldhorn, and the more strident tone of the traditional Jagdhorn, which the newer instrument had not yet supplanted at those princely Courts, e.g. Weimar and Cöthen, where the horn was still an instrument of the palace. It is certainly significant that Bach’s use of the ‘Como’ exactly coincides with the cessation of his courtly service, and with the beginning of his career in a community in which the ceremonial hunting horn had not a similar vogue.

Bach’s usage shows no originality in early works. He treats the instrument as custom prescribed, denying it the individuality with which Handel endowed it in Saul (1738) some eighteen years later. There is evidence, however, of experimental development in the instrumental movements of the church cantatas in which the bassoon is scored. The Cöthen standard is apparent in those of the Weimar period — Nos. 12, 18, 21, 31, and 150. The Sinfonia or Sonata which opens all of them generally exhibits the bassoon in strict unison with the continuo or tied to the oboes when they are present.

Without question, Johann Sebastian Bach is the greatest baroque composer who ever lived. Whether it’s his variety or quantity of music, his music techniques, and theory, or his enormous musical influence, he is the acknowledged father of baroque music. His talent for playing, arranging, and composing eventually earned him a reputation as a phenomenal composer and musician. Bach brought a whole new world of music into this world, and his music works will always be recognized as being one of the greatest things that happened to the music itself.

Despite no evidence that such a group of chorales was conceived in Weimar, their difference from Ob settings makes them complementary to it. Sources for BWV 667a and 667b have been interpreted as showing chorales undergoing expansion already in Weimar, and if Bach was responding to chorales published by Pachelbel in 1693, he was aiming at a yet greater scale. Some of Pachelbel’s, such as ‘Wir glauben’, is quite extensive and can ‘be used for preluding during the service’. The long, meditative organ-chorale-if not often as long as BWV 652a– was a stranger in Thuringia.

Even if copies of various chorales by Walther and Krebs belong to Weimar 1710–14, when most were originally composed is less clear– mostly before the Ob, to judge by the music itself, its less consistent part-writing, less extensive use of canon, and less tense harmony. ‘O Lamm Gottes’ BWV 656 is surely earlier than BWV 618, just as the three-verse BWV 656, an updated version of Pachelbel’s models, is earlier than BWV 627.

Bach’s overall compositional style changed dramatically due to his encounter with contemporary Italian music, particularly that of Vivaldi. Indeed, Bach’s assimilation of this repertory during the latter half of his Weimar period represents the single most critical development toward the formation of his own personal style, a style whose basis is the blending of Italianisms with complex polyphony. ¹⁰

References

Cammarota, Robert Michael The Repertoire of Magnificats in Leipzig at the Time of J. S. Bach: A Study of the Manuscript Sources (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1986), 250-52.

Christoph Wolff et al., The New Grove Bach Family (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 122, 167-68.

Christoph Wolff: (2000). Johann Sebastian Bach, the learned musician, 241-243. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company.

George Stauffer, “Fugue Types in Bach’s Free Organ Works,” in J. S. Bach as Organist: His Instruments, Music, and Performance Practices, eds. George Stauffer and Ernest May ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 133-56.

Humphreys, David “Did J. S. Bach Compose the F minor Prelude and Fugue BWV 534?” in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 173-84.

John Butt (Editor): The Cambridge Companion to Bach (Cambridge Companions to Music) Cambridge University Press (1997): 33-34.

Schweitzer, A. (1966). J. S. Bach, 111-112. (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Dover.

Stinson, Russell The Bach Manuscripts of Johann Peter Kellner and his Circle (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1985), 17-21.

Wapnewski, Peter ( Berlin: Siedler-Verlag, 1986), 259-76, now available in English translation as “Bach in the Eighteenth Century,” in Bach Studies, ed. Don O. Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 281-96.

Footnotes

Christoph Wolff et al., The New Grove Bach Family ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 167-68.
George Stauffer, “Fugue Types in Bach’s Free Organ Works,” in J. S. Bach as Organist: His Instruments, Music, and Performance Practices, eds. George Stauffer and Ernest May ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 133-56.
Humphreys, David “Did J. S. Bach Compose the F minor Prelude and Fugue BWV 534?” in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 173-84.
Cammarota, Robert Michael The Repertoire of Magnificats in Leipzig at the Time of J. S. Bach: A Study of the Manuscript Sources (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1986), 250-52.
Wapnewski, Peter ( Berlin: Siedler-Verlag, 1986), 259-76, now available in English translation as “Bach in the Eighteenth Century,” in Bach Studies, ed. Don O. Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 281-96.
Stinson, Russell The Bach Manuscripts of Johann Peter Kellner and his Circle (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1985), 17-21.
Christoph Wolff: (2000). Johann Sebastian Bach, the learned musician, 241-243. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company.
Schweitzer, A. (1966). J. S. Bach, 111-112. (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Dover.
John Butt (Editor): The Cambridge Companion to Bach (Cambridge Companions to Music) Cambridge University Press (1997): 33-34.
Christoph Wolff et al., The New Grove Bach Family ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 122.

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Johann Sebastian Bach: Context and Reception

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