Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach on the 21st March, 1685.[4]
The Thuringian town had been a home of the Bachs ever since the two
sons of Johann Bach had found their wives there. Two of the family, and
no less men than Johann Christoph and Johann Bernhard, had successively
filled the post of organist in the town church. The death of his
parents, however, before he had completed his tenth year removed
Sebastian from the surroundings that seemed so fitted for the training
of his genius. Already he was his father’s apt pupil on the violin,
and the music which was the daily occupation of the house was not lost
upon the eager ears of the child. He passed from Eisenach into the
care of his brother Johann Christoph, his elder by fourteen years, who
was organist in the little town of Ohrdruf; and it was here, in one
of the most beautiful of the valleys of Thuringia, that the rest of
his boyhood was passed. The impression of this country of soft hills
and warm wooded valleys became a part of Sebastian’s nature and still
lives in his music. The least attentive listener cannot mistake the
inclination to a pastoral treatment which is continually appearing not
in the professed _Pastorales_, as in the _Christmas Oratorio_, merely,
but throughout the compass of Bach’s works; still more striking is his
vein of idyllic melody, peculiarly obvious in the fine gold into which
he transmuted the baser metal of the Italian _aria_, to illuminate his
church cantatas.
At Ohrdruf Bach lived until he was fifteen, learning the clavichord
from his brother, who was a pupil of Pachelbel, and apparently exciting
his jealousy by the facility of his progress. A story of him tells us
that he once coveted a book containing compositions by several of the
great German masters, Froberger, Bruhns, Pachelbel, and Buxtehude; but
the obtuseness of the elder brother forbade his venturing into studies
too high for him. So the boy went every moonlit night to the cupboard
in which it was shut away, and, thrusting his hand into the lattice,
rolled up the volume and stealthily made his copy of it. However, when
the deed was discovered, this labour of half a year was taken from him
and not restored until after his brother’s death.
If Bach’s musical discipline at home left much for him to find out by
himself, his education at the Ohrdruf Lyceum proceeded fairly enough
and in music excellently. He learned Latin and the Greek Testament,
with a little arithmetic and rhetoric. Of these subjects indeed Latin
only had any pretence to thoroughness, and, although its range of
reading did not extend beyond Cicero and Cornelius Nepos, it included
a good deal of composition both in prose and verse. Very different was
the musical instruction of the Ohrdruf school, which qualified the boys
to furnish all the choral music of the church, besides singing motets
and _concerts_ at weddings and funerals.
Five years of this routine, and Bach left Ohrdruf. There was little
more to be learned from his brother, who, with a family of his own,
was no doubt glad to be rid of his charge. Accordingly he travelled,
with a comrade of the school, to Lueneburg, and the lads together
joined the choir of the Michaëlisschule. It seems that Thuringian boys
were in special request for their musical training, as well as for
the remarkable quality of their voices; and Bach’s proficiency on the
violin and clavichord, added to his fine treble, placed him at once in
the select _Matin_ choir.
Lueneburg at this time enjoyed a wide repute throughout North and
Middle Germany for the goodness of its musical training. There were
two schools belonging to the churches of S. Michael and S. John, and
the rivalry was so keen between the scholars that, when in winter time
they perambulated the town—like the rude manner of our waits—it was
necessary to mark out the road which each should take to avoid an
unseemly wrangle. This custom of itinerant choirs, however bad for the
singers’ voices, was of service in quickening the popular sympathy with
music; and the rivalry itself was useful in stimulating the ardour
of the colleges. The principal work of the school of S. Michael’s was
to prepare the music for the choral services of its church, two on
Sundays, with motets and anthems, and, above all, high services with
orchestra on the eighteen feast-days of the Lutheran kalendar. These
formed the business of Bach’s life for three years. Some employment in
playing or in the training of the choir must have occupied him after
his voice changed, for he continued to take his commons at the free
board until 1703.
All this time his general education was carried on much after the
Ohrdruf pattern, with a rather wider circle of Latin authors, the Greek
Testament, divinity, and logic. Higher than this the course did not
go; and Bach had not the means, if he had the wish, to engage private
teaching there, or to proceed to one of the universities. We shall see
hereafter that he obtained an exemption from the classical work of
the Thomasschule at Leipzig. At Lueneburg poverty conspired with his
natural impulse to keep him closely to the profession as well as to the
study of music. It was the period of his apprenticeship in the three
branches in which he was afterwards to achieve a supreme excellence. At
the Michaëlisschule he gained an intimate knowledge of the capacities
of choral singing; he worked at the organ; and he became acquainted
with the lighter instrumental music lately brought to Germany from
France.
The organ claimed his chief and unremitting labour, and more than once
did he journey to Hamburg to attend the performances of Reincke, the
father of North German organists. Old Reincke, as he is affectionately
known—he lived well into his hundredth year and died in 1722—was a
pupil of Sweelinck and one of the channels by which the learning and
method of the great Amsterdam organist was diffused through the entire
length of Northern Germany. From the dexterous and graceful toccatas
which still attest Reincke’s powers Bach probably derived little; the
principal reward of his Hamburg visits was the insight he acquired
into the scope of organ composition, a lesson which he so worked
out as to receive (according to a well-known story) the honourable
testimony of the master himself. _I thought_, said Reincke, when, just
before the old man’s death, Bach elaborated before him the chorale _An
Wasserflüssen Babylons_ in the true organ style, _I thought that this
art was dead, but now I see that it lives in you_.
Bach stood in a closer connexion with a pupil of Reincke, Georg Boehm,
organist at S. John’s Church, Lueneburg, and also a distinguished
composer. In chamber-music as well as in the organ Bach learned much
from him, but more in the manner of instrumental treatment and in the
theory of composition, than by any direct influence on his writings. At
this time also he made acquaintance with French music at Celle, where
it had been naturalised forty years since and was now in its prime
at the court of Duke Georg Wilhelm and his Huguenot consort Eléonore
d’Esmiers.
A further training in instrumental music was afforded by the post which
Bach held for some months after leaving Lueneburg, in 1703, in the band
of Prince Johann Ernst at Weimar. But he could not long be content with
the limited scope of a court violinist; and a chance visit to Arnstadt,
where his grand-uncle Heinrich had founded a tradition of organ
playing, but, dying eleven years before, had left no worthy successor,
offered to Bach the opportunity of following out his special bent. An
organ had recently been built in the new church of the town, but the
burghers had not yet succeeded in finding a musician who satisfied
their notion of the importance of the post. The man they had engaged
they watched so jealously that he was not even trusted with the keys
of his loft: one of them was deputed to receive them back from him as
soon as playing was over. It is significant of the skill which Bach had
already won, that he no sooner tried the organ—it does not appear, as
a candidate—than the consistory welcomed in this lad of eighteen the
musical heir of their honoured town organist, dismissed the incapable
Boerner, and forcibly installed Bach at a triple salary augmented out
of the municipal chest. On the 14th August, 1703, he took the solemn
pledge of diligence and faithfulness and all _that appertaineth to
an honourable servant and organist before God and the worshipful
Corporation_.
The brilliancy of Bach’s reception at Arnstadt was transient. The
New Church was a sort of chapel-of-ease to the principal church of
the town; and Bach was only entrusted with the training of a small,
partly voluntary, choir. His duties accordingly engrossed but a couple
of hours on three days of the week, and the townspeople were well
satisfied if he did not fall short in them. In this languid atmosphere
he found no incitement to convince the town, by his performances, how
far his hopes and ambitions exceeded those of the ordinary organist.
He seems in time to have been content with a bare fulfilment of his
duties, or hardly that, and to have concentrated himself in his private
studies. After two years the respite of a month’s leave enabled him
to visit Luebeck, the home of the illustrious organist Buxtehude; and
hither a long walk of fifty leagues brought him in November, 1705.
As Reincke was a Dutchman, so Dietrich Buxtehude, who did as much, on
his own lines, to establish the North German school of organists, was
a Dane. He had settled in Luebeck in 1660, and the enthusiasm with
which his art was attended was such that his influence remained in the
town until the present century. One of the causes of his popularity
was the custom which he innovated of having concerts, with a full
orchestra of uncommon strength, in his church. A deeper reason was his
consummate command over the organ and the important advances he made in
composition.
Buxtehude stands apart from the organ composers of the rest of Germany,
in the greater technical elaboration of his works. In spirit he has
a single point of alliance with the organists of Southern Germany,
in his want of sympathy with, his estrangement from, the chorale, in
which the music of Middle Germany had its life. The melodic richness
which this training in popular music developed in Pachelbel and Johann
Christoph Bach was lacking in Buxtehude. His strength lay in pure
instrumental music and was displayed specially in fugue-writing, to
the development of which he contributed much, both in the combination
of several themes in a fugue and in the extended function he assigned
to the pedal. The form is conceived with breadth and freedom, the
voices are melodiously worked together, and the harmonies are unusual
in their originality, often so unusual as to seem merely discordant,
harsh, restless. For if the works of Buxtehude strike one first by the
massiveness, they strike no less by their inequality, their strange,
erratic transitions from a sombre, often tempestuous, mood to one of
tenderness and pathos.
It was at the feet of this rugged genius that Bach sat for three
months; and the impress left upon his mind was distinct and durable.
His fastidious censorship in later years allowed very little of his
Arnstadt work to survive. A single church cantata comes down to us
in the shape to which a careful revision at Leipzig reduced it[5];
but several instrumental works let us see how far he had advanced in
composition, and two organ fugues,[6] at least, how much he needed the
education of these months at Luebeck to complete the studies hitherto
influenced by the school of Pachelbel. The subjects in them are
ingeniously constructed, but the entire compositions are deficient in
relief and coherence. They shew the earnest spirit in which he worked,
but also that this earnestness acted as a weight upon the freedom and
brightness of the result. Outwardly he retires under the established
musical forms of his time, but even now his individuality forces itself
into view. An instance of his technical immaturity is afforded by his
treatment of the pedal, which, according to the universal custom except
in Northern Germany, Bach used merely occasionally, limiting it to the
production of sustained notes or at the most of slow progressions.[7]
Buxtehude, on the other hand, changed it from a capricious accessory
into a real support to the manuals and often entrusted it with a
brilliant _solo_ part. In this important element of organ composition,
his Luebeck visit opened a new road to Bach and a road which he was not
slow to follow.[8]
The clavichord works that occupied his leisure at Arnstadt seem, to
judge from the few specimens that have come down to us,[9] to have
been chiefly of that sort of free fugue, sometimes with a humorous
design, to which it was the custom to give the name of _capriccio_. In
one of them, a sonata (No. 216, p. 12), a fugue of the most melodious
conception is followed by a _capriccio_ founded on the cackle of a hen;
_Thema all’ Imitatio Gallina Cucca_ is the macaronic title. Another
(No. 208, p. 30) portrays the feelings and the circumstances attending
the departure of his brother—_sopra la lontananza del suo fratello
dilettissimo_—Johann Jakob, who went as hautboy-player in the Swedish
guard of Charles XII. We have the sad gathering of the family, and
their recitals of the perils that may befall the traveller in a strange
land. They seek in vain to stay him, and, finding him resolute, join
in a general _lamento_—a fine composition, by the way, written upon
two ground-basses, and tenderly pathetic—ere they take leave. When
the slow farewell is ended, the postilion makes his appearance, and
the sorrow of the departure is exchanged for the lively bustle of the
road, the picture ending gaily with the post-horn deftly worked into a
fugue.[10] This curiously elementary form of what it is the fashion to
call programme-music may appear to have been suggested by the fantastic
compositions of Couperin and others, which Bach heard at Celle. But, in
this regard at least, the old German Froberger was another Couperin. He
is recorded to have written a suite depicting the _Journey of the Count
of Thurn and the Peril that came to him on the Rhine, plainly delivered
before eye and ear_. Probably, however, Bach’s immediate reference
is to a work that had recently been published by a musician whom in
after-life he was to succeed as cantor at Leipzig. Johann Kuhnau’s
_Biblische Historien_ are scenes from the history of the children of
Israel presented in a series of sonatas for the clavichord. To judge by
their contents it is likely that Bach took the idea of this _capriccio_
from them, but it is significant of his insight into the unsatisfying
nature of the peculiar style, that he never returned to it, unless
indeed we admit a kindred basis in the rare examples of the imitation
of outward emotion, which appear in his Passion music.
When Bach returned home from Luebeck, in February, 1706, his month’s
holiday having expanded into three, he not unnaturally encountered the
displeasure of the authorities. Summoned before the consistory, he
excused himself on the ground that _he had been to Luebeck with the
intent to perfect himself in certain matters touching his art_, and,
having provided a substitute for the time, he was under no misgivings
as to the discharge of his duties at Arnstadt. But heavier charges
lay behind. He was to be rebuked (to quote the pedantry of the
official record) _for that he hath heretofore made sundry perplexing
variations and imported divers strange harmonies, in such wise that
the congregation was thereby confounded. In the future_, continues
the Minute, _when he will introduce a_ tonus peregrinus, _he is to
sustain the same and not to fall incontinent upon another, or even, as
he hath been wont, to play a_ tonus contrarius. A witness added that
_the organist Bach hath at the first played too tediously; howbeit, on
notice received from the superintendent, he hath straightway fallen
into the other extreme and made the music too short_. Evidently he had
brought things into a bad way, for the next charge is, that he refused
to train the choir. Bach retorted by demanding a conductor. He was
allowed time to consider whether he would comply with the order of the
Board or leave them to appoint some one to fill his place. Under the
circumstances it shows a surprisingly gentle temper in the consistory,
possibly a just appreciation of their organist’s great, however
capricious, excellence, that they waited near nine months before they
repeated, with some severity, the demand for an explanation. Bach
agreed to furnish one; but the document has unfortunately not been
preserved. It is evident, however, from the indifference with which he
treated the consistory, as well as from his unwillingness to fulfil the
conditions of his post, that he had already decided to resign it on the
first opportunity.
The opportunity was not long coming: before the end of the year the
organist’s place at S. Blasius’ Church, Muehlhausen, fell vacant.
A succession of distinguished musicians and the various eminence
of the last holder of the post, Johann Georg Ahle—perhaps also the
fame of the _poet’s crown_ with which the Emperor had decorated
him—made the office an exceptionally coveted one. Among the various
candidates, however, it was adjudged apparently without debate to
Bach, who was even requested to make his own terms as to the salary
he should receive. He modestly stipulated the same sum as he had been
allowed at Arnstadt—it was indeed considerably in excess of Ahle’s
salary—together with the accustomed dues of corn, wood, and fish, to
be delivered without charge at his door. He asked also for a cart to
bring his goods to his new house.[11] These trifling details are oddly
characteristic of the man, and remind us of a letter he wrote long
after to a relative, thanking him for a cask of wine, but quoting the
expense of carriage, and begging that the costly present might not be
repeated. Just at present he had a special reason for thrift. He left
Arnstadt by the end of June, 1707; in the following October, the 17th,
he was married at a village near Arnstadt, to his cousin Maria Barbara,
daughter of the great Gehren organist, Johann Michael Bach. A single
year after his appointment he accepted the more ambitious post of
organist in the Ducal Chapel at Weimar.
His short stay at Muehlhausen had been pleasant and useful to him.
He entered upon his work, which was purely that of organist, with
ardour, and—in contrast with his lax performance of his duties at
Arnstadt—even took a share in the training of the choir, although
there was a cantor as well. The only drawback was that the pastor of
his church was a strenuous pietist, one of those puritans who found,
not a spiritual gain, but a worldly intrusion upon the sacredness of
divine worship, in those church cantatas which it was Bach’s work to
create anew. The organist held to a close friendship with his pastor’s
hot antagonist at the Church of S. Mary, and seems to have gone
into the neighbouring villages whenever he wished to produce music
upon which he could not venture in his own church. This can hardly
have been, however, the principal reason of his leaving Muehlhausen
so quickly as he did. The charges of married life made his stipend
barely a maintenance, even without a family. He had had enough of
the subordination of a town organist. But most of all he must have
been stimulated by the renown of the music at Weimar, with which he
had become acquainted in an inferior capacity four years before, and
the wide field it promised for the cultivation of his art in all its
departments. On the 25th June, 1708, he respectfully submitted his
resignation to the consistory. Their answer, requesting that his
departure should not hinder his continuing to supervise the repair of
the church organ with which they had entrusted him, is evidence of the
good terms on which they separated.
For the next fifteen years Bach stands in a circle of greater honour,
removed from the small troubles of a town official. His return to a
burgher’s life in 1723—and at Leipzig he was never free from the
harass of the wiseacres of his consistory—may surprise us, unless we
conclude that the experience of his intervening years had taught him
that if the delights of life came more liberally in the atmosphere of
a court, a great town was after all the place for him who would live
laborious days.