JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Perhaps the source of his genius is unexplainable, or how to make music as great as his is unexplainable, or why his music seems so wonderful to so many may for ever be a mystery.
While an unquestioned genius of the first rank, Bach was not a miracle without context. He copied, studied, and reworked the compositions of others extensively, constantly revised his own material, and taught many others what he knew as best as he could. He is on record as stating (albeit mistakenly!) that anyone who studied and practiced with sufficient diligence could attain similar results. Bach was a teacher: to study his legacy is to honor him.

Bach is considered by many to have been the greatest composer in the history of western music. Bach's main achievement lies in his synthesis and advanced development of the primary contrapuntal idiom of the late Baroque, and in the basic tunefullness of his thematic material. He was able to successfully integrate and expand upon the harmonic and formal frameworks of the national schools of the time: German, French, Italian & English, while retaining a personal identity and spirit in his large output. Bach is also known for the numerical symbolism and mathematical exactitude which many people have found in his music -- for this, he is often regarded as one of the pinnacle geniuses of western civilization, even by those who are not normally involved with music.


Bach and cantata

Bach's creative life stretches from the early 1700s till his death in 1750. In contradistinction to his somewhat undeserved hyper-religious image, Bach only devoted relatively short periods of this half century to the composition of church music. In Arnstadt (1703-1708), Bach avoided church music as much as possible. In Mühlhausen (1708-1709), he wrote a few beautiful church cantatas in a then already somewhat outdated style, with bible words, chorales, and chains of short fragments in motet style, with ariosos at best. Some texts were probably written by one of the local ministers and patron of Bach, Georg Christian Eilmar. One of the early career triumphs of Bach was the appearance in print of the cantata for the city council change, Gott ist mein König, BWV 71.

The word "career" presumably deserves some emphasis in connection with Bach's cantata production. On the whole, one gets the impression that Bach, whenever free to do as he wanted, put most of his energy in keyboard and other instrumental music. Much of his cantata production is connected to the duties of office or to the preparation of career steps. Bach's cantata activity in Weimar forms an interesting example. Around 1713 Bach adopts the new Neumeister type of cantata composition, which, with its recitatives and da capo arias, was inspired by the Italian opera. Most texts were written by Salomon Franck, but Bach also used texts by Neumeister and particularly by Georg Christian Lehms (see picture on the right). After his appointment as Konzertmeister in 1714, his office seems to require a regular cantata production of one per month. When Bach hopes to succeed Capellmeister Johann Samuel Drese (who died on 1 December 1716) he intensifies his canatata production but he simply stops writing cantatas altogether when it becomes clear that he will passed by for the function! So much for writing cantatas to the honor of God.

It is very important to realize that, even in his Leipzig years, Bach the alleged arch-cantor, only gave priority to cantata writing during the short period between 1723 and 1729. Maybe Bach was strongly motivated to prove his mastership because he was considered only third choice for his job. It is even more likely, given Bach's later priorities, that he worked so hard in order to obtain artistic freedom, to have a sufficient supply of church pieces, so that he could devote the rest of his creative energy to projects of his own choice (with few exceptions, these were instrumental projects). Apart from the oratorios, the B Minor Mass and some revisions and completions, most cantatas after 1730 were homage and congratulatory pieces, produced on a commercial basis for high-ranking citizens of the city of Leipzig or to please influential members of the nobility that could help him with his career.

The first time I saw the term "careerist" applied to Bach was in a text by the great Bach scholar Christoph Wolff (in the booklet coming with John Eliot Gardiner's CD version of the B Minor Mass). This term seemed to summarize rather well my growing and somewhat uneasy feeling about Bach's career behavior when I was writing the biographical notes. Since Hildesheimer's biography of Mozart, we are used to the idea that heavenly music can be written by a human being with rather earthly concerns. From Mozart's correspondence, the undeniable fact emerges that he was often occupied with a somewhat infantile anal eroticism. Like Mozart, Bach was not a saint at all. In a very earthly way, he was much concerned with money and social status, both as a composer and as a citizen. I agree with Wolff that there is nothing illegitimate about this, although Bach went very far indeed when, in the 1740s, he sought the favors of Frederick the Great in Potsdam. The crucial point is that Bach was not an ordinary citizen, but the court composer of the Elector of Saxony, who had just been defeated by Prussia in the second Silesian war. Unless I am overlooking something, it must be said that Bach's behavior was rather opportunistic in this context, the more so because earlier on he had sought the favors of the Elector with much humble flattering and many congratulatory compositions for practically the whole royal family.

All in all, then, I think the key to understanding Bach's motivation is, apart from his very obvious professional concerns with music, the upward social mobility and ambition of somebody emancipating himself from the almost medieval milieu of Thuringian town pipers to the ranks of the emerging bourgeoisie in early-capitalist Leipzig. Like in many similar cases, his spectacular upward mobility generated true explosions of energy. The same can be observed in the gigantic output of his contemporaries like Telemann. That Bach also created immortal masterpieces in the proces, is a matter of happy accident and the result of Bach's genius, not of his motivation, which is not different from that of his contemporaries who produced second-rate music or worse. Like in the case of Mozart, it seems an error to confuse the superior output of genius with some special kind of inspiration, religious or otherwise.

In a way, then, the somewhat disconcerting question must be asked whether Bach really liked to write cantatas. Much more so than his instrumental output, the cantatas are part and parcel of Bach's career planning. What a glorious career it has been!

His life

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21st l685, the son of Johann Ambrosius, court trumpeter for the Duke of Eisenach and director of the musicians of the town of Eisenach in Thuringia. For many years, members of the Bach family throughout Thuringia had held positions such as organists, town instrumentalists, or Cantors, and the family name enjoyed a wide reputation for musical talent.

The family at Eisenach lived in a reasonably spacious home just above the town center, with rooms for apprentice musicians, and a large grain store. (The pleasant and informative "Bach Haus" Museum in Eisenach does not claim to be the original family home). Here young Johann Sebastian was taught by his father to play the violin and the harpsichord. He was also initiated into the art of organ playing by his famous uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, who was then organist at the Georgenkirche in Eisenach. Johann Sebastian was a very willing pupil and soon became extraordinarily proficient with these instruments.

When he was eight years old he went to the old Latin Grammar School, where Martin Luther had once been a pupil; he was taught reading and writing, Latin grammar, and a great deal of scripture, both in Latin and German. The boys of the school formed the choir of the St. Georgenkirche, which gave Johann Sebastian an opportunity to sing in the regular services, as well as in the nearby villages. He was described as having 'an uncommonly fine treble voice'. The Lutheran spirit would have been strong in Eisenach, for it was in the Wartburg Castle standing high above the town, that Martin Luther, in hiding from his persecutors, translated the New Testament into German.

Roads were still unpaved in the smaller towns, sewage and refuse disposal poorly organized, and the existence of germs not yet scientifically discovered. Mortality rates were high as a result. At an early age Johann Sebastian lost a sister and later a brother. When he was only nine years old his mother died. Barely nine months later his father also died.
Johann Sebastian and one of his brothers, Johann Jakob, were taken into the home of their eldest brother, Johann Christoph (born l671) who had recently married and settled down at Ohrdruf, a small town thirty miles south-east of Eisenach. Johann Christoph, a former pupil of Pachelbel, was now well established as organist of the St. Michaeliskirche, Ohrdruf.