It may be taken for granted that Bach planned an eventual journey
to Lübeck to hear the mighty Buxtehude. In any case this trip was
deferred. Hard as he had studied at Lüneburg and greatly as his musical
powers had grown, it was becoming clear that he must put his talents to
practical use. He had been earning a living of a sort with his singing
and likewise as a violin and viola player. But his voice had changed
and was no longer of great use as a source of revenue. His powers as
an organist, on the other hand, were expanding prodigiously, a fact
which had become known not only in Lüneburg but far away in his native
Thuringia. He began to long for an organ post of his own and the steady
income it would assure.
Late in 1702 the news spread that a new organ was being completed at
the Church of St. Boniface in Arnstadt, one of the ancestral seats of
the Bach family and rich in its traditions. Doubtless Arnstadt had its
eyes on the promising disciple of Böhm and Reinken, young as he was.
Bach, too, felt it wise to watch the situation at close range. So he
returned to Thuringia. The new instrument of St. Boniface was not ready
nor was it completed till the summer of 1703. Sangerhausen offered a
possibility, but that was thwarted by the machinations of high-placed
people with influence.
Yet by Easter Bach found himself enrolled in the service of Duke
Johann Ernst, brother of the reigning Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar.
His stay in Weimar on this occasion was brief though it seems to have
earned him some honors, including the useful if misleading title of
“Princely Saxon Court Organist.” But scarcely three months later he
was back in Arnstadt, where the St. Boniface organ was ready for
its test. That Bach should have been entrusted with so responsible
a task indicates how high must have been his reputation already. He
examined the instrument, reported favorably on it and, to demonstrate
his satisfaction, played an inaugural recital which impressed the
Consistory to such a degree that on August 9 he was officially
appointed organist.
It was not long before he was at odds with the authorities. He had,
in addition to his organ playing, the disagreeable job of training
the choristers, a shiftless, good-for-nothing rabble from the local
school who, as the city council complained, “behave in a scandalous
manner, resort to places of ill repute and do other things we shrink
from naming.” Bach, for his part, had already developed that obstinate,
uncompromising nature that grew more violent the older he became and
brought him into no end of difficulties throughout his life. When his
mind was fixed on achieving a certain end nothing would swerve him from
it. He could be as hardheaded and intransigent a fighter for what he
considered his rights and as ruthless in combating opposition as were
Beethoven and Wagner in later generations.
His extraordinary talents did not prevent him from attracting a number
of enemies which progressively increased. One of the most bitter of
these was a bassoonist named Geyersbach whom Bach on more than one
occasion had to reproach for his musical incompetence. Matters came to
a head when the organist, escorting a lady home one night, was set upon
by the ruffian accompanied by a brawling rout of students who attempted
to cane him. As tough a fighter as the best of them, Bach took to his
sword when Geyersbach shouted, “Hundsfott” (“Cowardly rascal”), and
with a roar of “Zippelfagottist” laid about him so furiously that the
“nanny-goat bassoonist” escaped manhandling only by the prompt help
of his cronies. The incident caused considerable agitation among the
townsfolk.
Scarcely had it subsided than Bach upset the Consistory by requesting
a month’s leave to make that pilgrimage to Buxtehude in Lübeck
which he had been unable to carry out at Lüneburg not long before.
He secured as a substitute in his absence a cousin, Johann Ernst,
whose efficiency he guaranteed. Grudgingly the authorities complied,
unwilling to risk an issue with so valuable, if testy, a servant. While
Bach did not make the whole journey of three hundred miles on foot he
undoubtedly walked a fair part of the way. He timed his trip to arrive
in Lübeck for Buxtehude’s famous _Abendmusicen_, at the Marienkirche,
which had been celebrated for a generation and which were continued
under the veteran’s successors until the nineteenth century. These
evening musicales, in which instrumentalists as well as choristers
participated, were carried out on a scale larger than anything to which
the young organist had been accustomed. One thing this Lübeck visit did
was to give Bach a heightened idea of music in its relation to public
worship, an idea he strove to carry out for the rest of his life, but
realized only fully when he was at the height of his tremendous powers
in Leipzig.