Saturday, December 23, 2006

Byronic Badboy Bach

Young J.S. Bach, 1717
“Bach was able to combine the grace and refinement of French dance music with concerto elements borrowed from the Italians, yet subjecting it all to the German predilection for polyphonic writing at which he was the supreme master. Nowhere is this more beautifully demonstrated that in his six English Suites.”
   — Angela Hewitt

DSM: ‘Frau Musika,’ the phrase that Basso uses in the title of his Bach biography, derives from a poem by Martin Luther that, according to Basso, conveys the intricacies of the church to which Bach was beholden in his early career. But Bach surely didn’t act or write like he very beholden to the church at the time the Suites were written in Weimar (1708-15), before Bach’s first years in Leipzig (1723-4) when he wrote the Cantatas, the Passions, the Oratorios, and the B-minor Mass.

CMT: And Basso is, in the end, mostly genuflective in his treatment of Bach. By contrast, I think one can admire—even revere—the man without going so far as to turn him into a deity. For example, the fact that Bach recycled his earlier Leipzig Cantatas in his later years is a noteworthy and humanizing observation, but it’s buried in a chart on pp. 222-3 in Vol. 2 of Basso’s treatise. And, despite recording this fact, Basso never remarks on the significance of Bach’s re-using thematic material. Instead, Basso’s handling is as though every Bach invention were ab initio, de novo, from nothing, entirely without precedent and, implicitly, without sequelae.

DSM: Robert Marshall’s paper in 2000 is consistent with the avenue you’re pursuing here—that Bach biographies are entirely under-critical. Marshall observes that most of the many Bach biographies ultimately fail to humanize the man. Most of them obsess about his superhuman abilities and endow him with an unblemished character. The decision to prepare a new complete critical edition of Bach's works, the Neue Bach-Ausgabe (NBA), was a significant event. Work on the NBA, led in turn to the development of new empirical methods—methods such as infrared analysis of the paper Bach used, analysis of the ink chemistry, and forensic analysis of Bach’s handwriting—in order to assemble the chronology of the materials. These techniques have in the past several years become indispensable for musicological research.

CMT: An unexpected and, as it turned out, epochal consequence of this sorting activity was logged before the end of the 1950s when Alfred Diirr and Georg von Dadelsen independently constructed a chronology of Bach’s vocal music, dating the majority of each of Bach’s vocal compositions with a precision of plus-or-minus one week. They showed that the vast majority of Bach’s Leipzig church music, 150-odd compositions, were written between 1723 and 1727. Diirr and Dadelsen demolished the traditional view of how that part of Bach’s career had unfolded. On their evidence, it now seems as if Bach had been in a hurry to get the job of composing church music over with.

DSM: Friedrich Blume also once argued that the conventional view of Bach as primarily a religious composer is wrong.

CMT: I prefer Dreyfus’ interpretation of Bach—a striking picture of Bach as an iconoclast and rebel. Or Martin Geck’s new book. Irrascible temper, impulsive. Passionate, emotional. By reading Bach’s music “against the grain” of contemporaries like Vivaldi and Telemann, Dreyfus explains how Bach’s approach to composition butted heads with the prevailing Baroque aesthetics. It also helps to reconcile Bach’s well-ordered counterpoint and ecclesiastical subjects with the reality of Bach’s life, which had its share of messiness.

DSM: In 1713, Bach had the opportunity of succeeding Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, former teacher of Handel, at the Liebfrauenkirche in Halle. Bach gave an organ concert here and perhaps a performance of the cantata Ich habe viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21. Then his local sponsor in Halle demanded that he write a cantata on the spot, a setting of a text by pastor Johann Michael Heineccius, and Bach repaired to a room in the best hotel in Halle, Zum goldenen Ring, where, according to the hotel bill (preserved down through the years; still exists!), food, tobacco and liquor were lavished on Bach while he stayed there and wrote the cantata. He was offered the job in Halle, but decided to stay at Weimar because duke Wilhelm Ernst made a counter-offer, doubling Bach’s salary. Far from being a god, Bach was pretty earthly in his motives and decisions.

CMT: And Bach's job in Weimar ended in a rather dramatic, impulsive way. Since he was close to the co-regent Ernst August, the other duke, Wilhelm Ernst, forbade Johann Sebastian any musical service to his rival. Stubbornly, Bach refused to comply and was passed by for the function of Kapellmeister when the old one, Johann Samuel Drese, died in 1716. Drese was succeded by his insignificant son Johann Wilhelm and the great Bach was not even short-listed. Bach was offended and abruptly stopped his production of cantatas that year (1716), which casts doubt on the idea that Bach wrote church music only to honor God. Fortunately, Bach hit it off with Leopold von Anhalt-Köthen by writing the music for Leopold’s sister’s wedding, for her marriage to Ernst August. Bach got a job offer from Leopold, but Wilhelm Ernst refused to let Bach go to the brother-in-law of his rival, Ernst August.

DSM: Bach was even arrested and imprisoned for a month (November 6 - December 2) before he was dismissed. That debacle propelled the Bachs to move to Köthen. So Bach was already trafficking in secular music and in fashionable society beyond Weimar in 1716 and earlier—he was trafficking specifically with the playboy, Prince Leopold—when he was writing his English Suites.

CMT: And ‘invention’—the word Bach used for the musical idea that is behind or that generates a composition—is crucial to Dreyfus’ analysis. ‘Invention’ didn’t connote profound ‘novelty’ in the intellectual-property patent sense. ‘Invention’ didn’t carry the sense of infringement if you re-use the idea again in some subsequent, derived work. Looking at important pieces in a range of genres, including concertos, sonatas, fugues, and vocal works, he focuses on the fascinating construction of the invention, the core musical subject, and then shows how Bach disposes, elaborates, and decorates it in structuring his composition. Bach and the Patterns of Invention brings us fresh understanding of Bach’s working methods, and how they differed from those of the other leading composers of his day. We also learn here about Bach’s unusual appropriations of French and Italian styles—and about the elevation of various genres far above their conventional status. Challenging the restrictions commonly encountered in both historical musicology and theoretical analysis, Dreyfus understands Bach as an eighteenth-century mortal—flesh and blood.

DSM: Each collection of Bach’s suites contains six suites built on the standard model [Allemande–Courante–Sarabande–(optional movement)–Gigue]. The English Suites closely follow the traditional model, adding a prelude before the allemande and including a single movement between the sarabande and the gigue. The French Suites omit the preludes but have multiple movements between the sarabande and the gigue. The partitas expand the model with introductory movements and additional movements between the other elements of the four-movement framework. But these are very peculiar, very ‘social,’ very discursive pieces for a pious writer of church music!

CMT: So, when were the English Suites composed? What was going on in Bach’s life when he was creating these? Remember, the Bach Werke Verzeichnis, compiled by Wolfgang Schmieder in 1950, is organized thematically, not chronologically—so we can’t infer anything from that as regards the dating of these Suites. Did the modern paper and ink chemists have their way with these and figure it out? It looks like the preponderance of contemporary scholarship places them in his Weimar years, between 1708 and 1715…

DSM: Bach’s position in Weimar marked the start of a sustained period of composing, in which he had the technical proficiency and confidence to extend the influences from abroad. From the music of Italians like Vivaldi and Corelli he learned how to write dramatic openings and adopted their sunny dispositions and harmonic schemes. Bach as you know transcribed for harpsichord and organ the ensemble concertos of Vivaldi. He may have picked up the idea of transcribing the Italian music that was in vogue from Prince Johann Ernst, one of his employers, who was a musician of professional caliber. In 1713, the Duke returned from a tour of the Low Countries with a large collection of scores, some of them transcriptions of the latest fashionable Italian music by the blind organist, Jan Jacob de Graaf. Bach was undoubtedly influenced by these; he was attracted to the Italian solo-tutti structure, in which one or more solo instruments alternate section-by-section with the full orchestra throughout a movement. The solo–tutti alternation is achieved when the player changes between the lower keyboard (giving a louder tone) and the upper keyboard (giving a more delicate tone).

CMT: I think it’s easy to regard Bach as hardly an ‘ideal’ employee. The impulsive, non-submissive Bach continually put “feelers” out for employments more congenial to his musical interests. Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, for example, fairly precipitously hired Bach to serve as his Kapellmeister. Bach had been casting around for this opportunity for some time. Prince Leopold appreciated Bach’s talents, paid him well, and gave him considerable latitude in composing and performing. The prince was Calvinist and didn’t use elaborate music in his worship. So most of Bach’s work from this period was secular.

DSM: And Bach periodically got into conflicts. Hard as it is to believe, in the summer of 1705 he even had a fistfight with the bassoon player, Geyersbach. [Bach had taunted him, calling Geyersbach a Zippelfaggotist (basically, ‘a bassoonist-prick’; ‘zippel’, in the Thuringian german idiom, meant ‘penis’).]

CMT: Later in October, 1705, Bach took a four week leave-of-absence from Arnstadt to go to Lübeck to study with Dietrich Buxtehude—walking the entire 200 miles to Lübeck. Instead of taking just four weeks, Bach only returned to Arnstadt in the middle of January 1706 (Was his tarrying due to Buxtehude’s ‘Abendmusiken,’ or was it a lover?). The Arnstadt church authorities weren’t amused. Worse, Bach immediately applied his newly-acquired organ technique during the church services and confused the congregation. He was also accused of going downstairs during sermons and trysting with a “stranger maid” in the church basement. Most biographers presume that this was his second cousin and wife-to-be, Maria Barbara. On what evidence? Maria Barbara, who lived for awhile in the same house (of her relative, mayor Feldthauss) as Sebastian, was hardly a “stranger” for the very small town of Arnstadt!

DSM: Johann Sebastian started his new job as Kapellmeister in Köthen in December 1717. He had a lot of freedom there—already on 16 December he was gallivanting over in Leipzig testing a new organ (leaving his family, one has to assume, with the mess of the move from Weimar to the new house). Bach was 32. His new patron, Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Köthen, was just 23 years old at the time and a great fan of music. The prince played the violin, the viola da gamba and the clavier. Aparently, Leopold’s mom, Gisela, didn’t want to have the band making a ruckus in the palace, so they had to practice at the Bachs’ house. Neither Calvinism nor Leopold’s mom prevented Leopold from spending more than 20% of the total annual revenue of the princedom on his band. A Great Fan of Music! In addition to recruiting Bach, the prince had hand-picked his virtuoso band personnel from the best available in Berlin.

CMT: Apart from writing secular pieces for Leopold’s chamber ensemble, Bach wrote lots of other chamber music in Köthen. In 1719, he went to Berlin to get a Mietke harpsichord for Leopold’s court—an excellent instrument that pleased Bach very much and stimulated his keyboard output. And Bach didn’t have to write church music at this Calvinistic court in Köthen. Interestingly, he didn’t seem to miss this at all—from historical documents available, it appears that he had the time of his life, producing chamber music in relative freedom and making occasional field trips now and then to try out organs. The playboy Leopold even took his musicians to Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), where they “took the waters” during the summers of 1718 and 1720.

Leipzig-Karlovy, as the crow flies
DSM: This was quite a trip (even today there is no easy route from Köthen in Germany to Karlsbad in the Czech Republic).

GoogleEarth view of trysting country
GoogleEarth KML coordinates for map

CMT: Everybody knows that “taking the waters” at a spa is a ruse for high-society diversions and socializing. We wonder how Bach moved around in the elegant spa society. Were the singers taken along, including Bach’s paramour, Anna Magdalena (who was employed by Leopold since 1720)? Must’ve been a great time!

Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), City of Spas
DSM: Upon his return from the festivalism in Karlovy Vary back to Köthen, he learned that his wife Maria Barbara had died unexpectedly while he was away and that she already had been buried on 07-JUL-1720. So Bach was left with the four children: Catherina Dorothea (12 years old), Wilhelm Friedemann (10 years), Carl Philipp Emanuel (6 years old), and Johann Gottfried Bernhard (5 years old). The usual biography at this point says that poor Bach “needed” a new wife to take care of the children. This under-rating of Bach as a human being, however, is a distortion based on the mistaken view that Bach was a saint. Women, in this view, only play a role as child bearers and caretakers, who, at best, copy the master’s music or sing and play some easy pieces on the home virginal.

CMT: The available evidence, however, points in a different direction. Remember that Maria Barbara’s sister, Friedelena Magdalena, was part of the Bach household till her death in 1729. She was in no way unable to take care of the kids!

DSM: So when did Bach meet Anna Magdalena? There’s no record, nothing to show precisely when or how they met.

CMT: Anna Magdalena Wilcken (or Wülken; daughter of the principal trumpet of the Weissenfels court ensemble), was a gifted soprano, earning half the salary of her 16 years-older Kapellmeister and lover, Johann Sebastian. Anna Magdalena was probably 19 years old when she and the 35 year-old Bach became involved. They’d been working together for more than 18 months when they finally got married on 03-DEC-1721. They had been godparents together of the child of the Köthen winecellar master in September, and their agreement to do this had preceded that birth by some weeks to months, which could only have been possible in the church if Anna Magdalena and Johann Sebastian were engaged to be married prior to their committing to serve as godparents. Their engagement then must have been at the latest sometime in mid-1720, and their friendship-courtship must have been progressing for some months before that. How and when had their relationship begun? She’d been formally employed at the court as a soprano for about 2 years, since soon after she turned 18.

DSM: After Bach’s death in 1750, the Bach sons came into conflict and went their separate ways. Anna Magdalena held forth with her two youngest daughters and stepdaughter (Catherina Dorothea, then 42 years old). Some commentators try to infer that relatives’ coolness toward Anna Magdalena may have had something to do with Bach’s having carried on with Anna Magdalena prior to Maria Barbara’s death. But there is scant evidence to support this. Yes, the older sons of Maria Barbara pillaged the estate after Bach’s death, to the extent that Anna Magdalena had to move into the alms house with the daughters and Catherina. But the sons’ insensitivity or avarice are not necessarily indices of resentment regarding the circumstances of relations prior to Maria Barbara’s death.

CMT: Some biographers associate Bach’s alleged renewed interest in writing sacred music in 1720 and beyond —and his interest in employment in Hamburg and Leipzig—with the impact that the death of Maria Barbara had on Bach. There’s almost no evidence, though, that Bach saw church music as his true vocation. The peripatetic Bach was almost always motivated by a down-to-earth desire to improve his position financially.

DSM: For effective and musical performances of the English Suites, a pianist should be most concerned with the projection of stylistic elements appropriate to each specific dance, don’t you think? Of course, these elements include beat emphasis, tempi, character inflection, accents, rhythms, articulations, stresses, gestures, lilts, focused and vibrant rhythm, and sweeps associated with each dance. The disparity of stylistic elements in the six pieces has led experts to think that the composition of them took place over a substantial period. And the evolving maturation of the young Bach during this time… Surely these pieces must’ve experienced a range of maturing and changing interpretations in his own hands. Do you suppose he played them for Anna Magdalena privately, in 1720 or earlier? And, if so, with what intent?



(Go ahead and use your mouse to left- and right-drag this prototype timeline, built with MIT SIMILE and JSON javascript. You can click on the bars and dot-icons to see how you can use this opensource TimeLine widget to make an interactive timeline for your blog, course materials, etc. Besides our genuine interest in what Bach was doing when, this whole post is an excuse to figure out how to get this widget to work within Blogger, served up to IE by HTTP. The loadXML method throws objectErrors, but the loadJSON method seems to work fine.)

CMT: Some listeners respond to Schiff’s recording of them saying they “have to turn up the volume control”—complaining that Schiff’s interpretation suffers from excessive delicateness or muffled sound. Maybe the acoustics for the recording weren’t ideal. But there’s been a recurring observation in the years since that CD was released, that Schiff could have had more puissance on these Suites.

DSM: Well, might not the listener/critic consider altering his/her mood a bit? Why should any mismatched expectations always immediately translate to blame by the listener and presumed fault of the performer, for disappointing? Consider the chapter in life when the performer delivered the interpretation! Consider the meaning that the reading suggests! At least entertain it open-mindedly as plausibly valid and earnestly offered, as it surely must have been to make it all the way to this recorded and distributed format.

CMT: Yes, I think the clarity of sound and texture of Schiff’s playing—emphasizing the balance between the voices in both hands and, in other passages, the prominence of some melodic ideas and the subordination of less important, accompanying material—is as commendable on this recording of his as on other of his recordings. It may be subdued, yes, but this, to me, asks the listener to enter more deeply into what’s being said in these Suites. They are, after all, in predominantly minor keys; they unarguably are more complex and darker than the French Suites and Partitas.

Old J.S. Bach, 1748
Bach’s musical cross signature, consisting of crossed-staves with a single note and 4 clefs (representing 4 different pitches for the letters of his surname):
• B: Left staff (treble clef)
• A: Upper staff (tenor clef)
• C: Right staff (alto clef)
• H: Lower staff (treble clef)

Bach’s symbolic signature
Johann Sebastian’s and Anna Magdalena’s ribaldry:

Marshall, 2000, p. 502



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