One may be sure that the immense inspiration he received from Buxtehude
was as potent and influenced the current of his genius as fully as had
Böhm and Reinken a little earlier. That he exhibited his own powers
on the Lübeck organ and profited by the example and suggestions of
Buxtehude is clear. Forgetting the flight of time and his obligations
in Arnstadt, Bach let the winter months slip by. It is even possible
that he weighed the question of stepping into the shoes of the
seventy-year-old master. But there was a condition attached to that
which made him hesitate as it had Handel and Mattheson before him.
Whoever wanted Buxtehude’s job had to take Buxtehude’s daughter in the
bargain. The lady, it appears, was not especially well favored and she
was all of twenty-eight—scarcely the most alluring prospect to a young
man only twenty, and one which involved the further possibility of
having to house the father-in-law for as long as the Lord might choose
to spare him!
[Illustration: Bach at the organ.
_From a contemporary engraving by Rudolf Schäfer_]
The year of 1706 had dawned before Bach turned reluctantly toward
Arnstadt once more. He took occasion to make a few side trips on the
way, stopping over at Hamburg and Lüneburg to greet old associates and
friends. By the end of January he was back in the organ loft of St.
Boniface. His return was not exactly a love feast. The congregation
and Consistory were looking for a capable, mild-mannered organist,
not a disquieting virtuoso. But in a relatively short period Bach
had become just that. He was plainly above the musical heads of the
townsfolk. There were murmurings of discontent which were duly brought
to his attention. He paid not the slightest heed, till finally the
Consistory proceeded to lay down the law. The authorities had quite
a number of bones to pick with their refractory young genius. They
had given him a leave of one month, not of four. He answered that he
imagined his substitute was competent to fill his shoes for the extra
time. Far from being placated the worthy elders then reproached him for
accompanying the church hymns with all sorts of brilliant and audacious
improvisations, full of unexpected harmonies and variations which left
the congregation groping blindly for the melody. When people had
remonstrated that his preludes, interludes and postludes were too long,
he had gone to the other extreme and made them too short. And there was
worse to come: when he was practicing at St. Boniface, people had been
scandalized to overhear the voice of a “strange maiden,” singing to
his accompaniment! Such things could not be tolerated any more than an
organist whose relations with his choir were so bad that he refused to
rehearse it. So he could take his choice—either do what the Consistory
required or else....
Bach did neither one thing nor the other but lived for a while in an
uneasy state of compromise. He was not in the least minded to renounce
the company of the “strange maiden”—probably the same one he was
seeing home the night Geyersbach and his rowdies attacked him. She
was none other than his cousin, Maria Barbara, and daughter of Bach’s
uncle Michael from nearby Gehren. It was not long before he proposed
to the musically talented girl and was accepted—the first case of
intermarriage between two of the Bach stock. In the fullness of time
she became the mother of two of Bach’s most gifted sons.
We have not alluded so far to the compositions which had their origin
during Bach’s Arnstadt sojourn nor are they, obviously, among his most
memorable. One, however, occupies a place of its own among his clavier
works. It is the famous _Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved
Brother_, a piece of program music clearly based on the example of
the _Bible Sonatas_ of Johann Kuhnau. The occasion of the _Capriccio_
was the forthcoming journey of Bach’s brother, Johann Jakob, to take
service with Charles XII of Sweden, then campaigning in Poland. The
work, in four movements, is of a pricelessly humorous character.
The first part represents the traveler’s friends, a nervous company
apparently, who try to dissuade him from an adventure which they regard
as full of hazards. In the second movement one person after another
points out the assorted dangers he anticipates and does so in a fugue
of delightfully comic effect. This is followed by a slow movement,
_Adagissimo_, built over a pathetic ground bass, in which sobbing
chromatic phrases lament the inability of the friends to change the
wanderer’s mind. As they groan and wail Bach drowns out their noisy
sorrows in a lively fugue on the postillion’s horn; and the “beloved
brother” is off on what promises to be a wholly pleasant and profitable
journey.
Bach’s Arnstadt days were drawing to a close. This is not to intimate
that when he left it or any other town in which he had filled positions
he never returned to them. Throughout his life he traveled repeatedly
over familiar ground, either to participate in family meetings, to
inspect organs, give recitals or engage in other social or professional
activities. To be sure these wanderings were limited to a few hundred
miles in Central and Northern Germany. But such as they were he took
them often and gladly, either alone or with members of his family.