The time was ripe, at all events, for Johann Sebastian to leave
Ohrdruf. His brother’s family was increasing apace and the organist’s
quarters had been growing uncomfortably cramped. Furthermore, Bach was
now fifteen, an age at which boys were expected to start earning their
living. So the chance to remove to Lüneburg proved a stroke of luck.
But there were more fascinating advantages to it than even the
possibilities of bed and board. Easily accessible were several sources
of musical and cultural inspiration. In Lüneburg itself the Church of
St. John had as its organist none less than Georg Böhm, one of the
outstanding personalities in German music of the era preceding the full
unfoldment of Bach’s grandeur. Thirty miles off lay Hamburg, which
harbored the venerable master of the organ, Adam Reinken; and the
operatic life of that city had burst into bloom under the leadership of
Reinhard Keiser. Up in the direction of the Danish frontier the town of
Lübeck sheltered still another giant, the organist Dietrich Buxtehude.
Sixty miles in an easterly direction lay Celle, whose Duke, Georg
Wilhelm, had married a beautiful and spirited French Huguenot, Eleanore
Desmier d’Olbreuse, and turned his court into a miniature Versailles,
where French musicians in particular were royally welcomed. Naturally,
a little opera house formed part of this island of Gallic charm,
elegance and culture, enlivened by a continual succession of ballets,
operas, and other musical diversions. Whether Bach obtained admission
to the auditorium or whether he was smuggled into the orchestra
pit by some friendly player we do not know. But of one thing we are
certain: his love for the music of the French masters and his intimate
acquaintance with it was in large degree the result of what he heard
and learned at the gracious ducal court of Celle.
Bach spent almost three years in Lüneburg, where St. Michael’s Church
and its conventual buildings were his home. He continued his studies
at the _Partikular Schule_ of the church, sang with the _Mettenchor_
and was a member of the _Chorus Symphoniacus_, of which the choir
formed the nucleus. He developed, gradually, into a capable organist
and came under the healthy influence of Georg Böhm at the Church of
St. John, whose impress can be detected in some of Bach’s early organ
works. Böhm was a pupil of Adam Reinken and undoubtedly urged the young
man to hear the aged master, though one can readily imagine that Bach
would sooner or later have sought out Reinken of his own volition.
The summer vacation of 1701 found him traveling afoot to Hamburg. The
patriarch had been organist of St. Katherine’s Church half his life
and though now nearly eighty continued to be famous for his virtuosity
and his extraordinary skill in improvisation. Nor was it his executive
powers alone which captured his young listener. Reinken’s compositions
fascinated him and their influence is perceptible in certain of Bach’s
clavier pieces twenty years later.
[Illustration: Johann Sebastian Bach in 1735.
_From a painting by Elias Gottlob Hausmann_]
[Illustration: Bach performing at the newly invented pianoforte for
Frederick the Great during his visit to the court in 1747—an event
which Bach regarded as one of most notable episodes in his career.]
This first trip to Hamburg was by no means Bach’s last. And thereby
hangs a tale—a fish story, if you will, but nevertheless true and
related a number of times by Bach himself. Tired and hungry on his long
jaunt back to Lüneburg, the boy sat down for a moment’s rest outside
the kitchen of an inn whose open windows exhaled tempting savors.
Suddenly there fell at his feet the heads of two herrings, a fish
prized as a great delicacy in his native Thuringia. Eagerly picking
them up he found inside of each a Danish ducat obviously put there by
some kindly soul who had caught sight of the famished young wanderer.
Whether or not Bach ate the heads, he suddenly found himself with money
enough for an ample dinner and sufficient also to defray the expenses
of another visit to Hamburg.