Blume JS Bach's Youth

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J. S. Bach's YouthAuthor(s): Friedrich Blume and Wilburn W. NewcombSource: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 1-30Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/741080 .

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Vol. LIV, No. 1~ORL

CIia

JANUARY, 1968

T H E MUSICALQUARJ. S. BACH'S YOUTH

By FRIEDRICH BLUME

R ECENT research pertaining to Bach has concentrated primarily onhow his works have been handed down to us, i.e., on the originand interdependence of the sources, on the original and variant versionsof the works, on questions of chronology, authenticity, etc. It is onlynatural that in this respect scholars have stuck to the three creativeperiods of Bach's life: the Weimar (1708-1716) and C,6then (1712-1723) periods and the twenty-seven years in Leipzig (1723-1750) wherehe was "Cantor at St. Thomas' and Director Chori Musici Lipsiensiss."In contrast to these, Bach's earlier period-from the beginning of hismusical education to maturity and mastery-has for some time now re-ceived little attention. Bach's childhood and youth comprise the yearsfrom 1685 to 1703, years which he spent in Eisenach, Ohrdruf, and Liine-burg. He was eighteen when his apprenticeship and journeyman's travelsin a literal sense began. They led him to Weimar for a few months(1703), then to Arnstadt for several years (1703-1707), and then foranother year to Miihlhausen (1707-08). All of these places were small,modest Thuringian towns and courtly residences without any particularmusical distinction, with the exception of Liineburg, which at that timewas a small center of music in northern Germany. When Bach, at the

Copyrighto 1968 by G. Schirmer, Inc.1


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2 The Musical Quarterlyage of twenty-three, was called to the court of the Duke of Weimar, theyears of mastery began almost at once.It is not the purpose of this study to describe Bach's early childhood,although many aspects of the traditionally accepted picture need cor-recting. Instead, the main attention will be focused on those years duringwhich Bach made a musician of himself and paved the way to masteryof his art. As a starting point one can take a very simple question: When,where, with whom, and how did Bach actually acquire his musical edu-cation? Where did his skill on the violin come from, or for that matter,on the viola? Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach tells us that his father lovedto sit down in the middle of an ensemble and play the viola. How didhe acquire his "gute Singart," i.e., his technique of singing, which hisson also mentions? Where and when did he develop that stupendousvirtuosity on the keyboard which gained him the highest fame through-out his life? Where did he learn the theory of music, not to mention hisknowledge of musical rhetoric, for which Master Birnbaum later praisedhim so highly? How and with whom did he study composition? Wheredid he get his profound knowledge of organ building which was laterto make him a feared inspector of newly built organs?Basically we have no correct answers to all these questions. What wedo know is that at the age of ten, when he lost his father, Sebastian wassent to Ohrdruf to live with his older brother Johann Christoph, whohad been the organist in this little country town since 1690. We mayassume that he was already well versed in the rudiments of singing andplaying on instruments. It is possible that he received his first lessons invoice and violin from his father, Ambrosius, who was employed by thecity of Eisenach and by the court as a professional musician; the cityfathers deemed him an excellent musician "vocaliter" as well as "instru-mentaliter." Since Ambrosius had accepted two apprentices and twojourneymen into his home, no doubt little Sebastian occasionally sat inon their lessons. But we have no proof of it and not one detail is known.It is just as possible that he learned the elements of keyboard playing (ex-cluding the organ, which hardly comes into question for a boy of ten)from his uncle Johann Christoph, who was the organist of the mainchurch in Eisenach, St. George's. Almost all biographers assume as much,although absolutely nothing has been proved. Ambrosius and his cousinJohann Christoph were apparently not on particularly intimate terms;one hears of no connection between the two. Our knowledge of thisstage in Bach's youth therefore remains indefinite. One would, in the


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J. S. Bach's Youth 3final analysis, do well to relegate all of those garnishments of Bach's child-hood in Eisenach-so beloved v bliogoraphers-to the realm of fantasy.Life was very modest in the home of Ambrosius Bach and it wascertainly not always a bed of roses. His social status was somewhatcomparable to that of a craftsman. The old Latin school which MartinLuther had attended could offer Selbastian no more than any othrc ofthe numerous Lutheran Latin schools in Thuringia.

We are therefore limited to mere speculation about Bach's childhood.What he was able to sing or play when he came to Ohrdruf at the ageof ten we do not know; and even if upon leaving approximately fiveyears later he is supposed to have composed the capriccio (BWV 993)in honor of Johann Christoph Bach, one must nevertheless say that hewas not yet, at the age of fifteen, a finished composer by any means. Itis after all a rather modest piece.On the other hand what we do know is that as early as hisyear at Miihlhausen (1707/08) Bach became an outstanding, even avirtuoso organist, an expert in organ building, and a full-fledged com-poser, even if he still wrote in an older style. His knowledge of organbuilding and of church music has been documented; to testify to hisability as a composer there are works dating from this period whichwill be discussed below. From all of this the following can be concluded:The thirteen years between 1695, i.e., Bach's arrival at Ohrdruf fromEisenach, and 1708, his departure from Miihlhausen for Weimar, arehis years as an apprentice and journeyman. Bach was twenty-three whenhe attained to complete mastery. Where did all that come from? Hisfellow countryman and exact contemporary, Handel, had had a first-rateteacher in Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow before he settled down in Ham-burg at the age of eighteen; and he was still much younger than Bachwhen a year later he stepped into the limelight with an opera ofrecognized merit (1704, Hamburg). Christoph Graupner, two yearsolder than Bach, had studied with such important figures as JohannSchelle, Johann David Heinichen and Johann Kuhnau. Georg PhilippTelemann, four years older than Bach, never had a teacher of any noteand had already composed voluminously as a student; in fact he wrotea Latin treatise on music in 1702. So various were the paths of develop-ment. At any rate, a teacher has never clearly emerged from the his-torical data surrounding Bach's early years. He was by nature, origin,and the profession of his forefathers, predestined to music; he lived ex-clusively in musical family environments. We must therefore proceed


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4 The Musical Quarterlyon the assumption that in the main Bach developed on his own thetalents he had inherited and the influences he had received from hisenvironment.

During the five years Sebastian spent in Ohrdruf, his brother, JohannChristoph, apparently gave him lessons on the keyboard or organ. Atleast this is what Johann Nikolaus Forkel states. Carl Philipp Emanuel,in a letter to Forkel (1775), accepts this as a possibility but goes nofurther into the matter. In his father's obituary notice, which he wrotein collaboration with Johann Friedrich Agricola, Philipp Emanuel tellsthe touching anecdote of how Bach as a boy copied works of great com-posers out of a forbidden music book by moonlight until he was caughtand his treasure taken away. Whether true or not, this much can be said:We cannot speak of any methodical or rapid progress in Bach's educationwhile he was living with his brother. He sang in the school choir andin the poor boys' choir where he earned some money singing in thestreets, but he cannot have learned much there. He obviously was notinitiated in the art of composition. Johann Christoph himself had beena pupil of Johann Pachelbel, and if he composed organ or keyboard musicit is reasonable to assume that it would have been close to Pachelbel'sstyle. Nothing has been preserved, however, even if it ever existed, and,besides, Pachelbel's style was widespread at that time among Thurin-gian organists. If Sebastian felt the urge to compose, he must havehelped himself by copying music and imitating (which we know he didlater in life), and therein may lie the true kernel of that anecdote.At any rate the five years in Ohrdruf passed without leaving us theslightest evidence of Bach's musical progress. In school he stood amongthe best in his class, and his basic knowledge of theology presumably goesback to this time. That is, however, all that we know. When on the 15thof March 1700, the fifteen-year-old youth transferred from Ohrdruf toLiineburg along with his eighteen-year-old schoolmate Georg Erdmann,it was not to receive further musical education but ob defectum hospi-torium, i.e., because he could no longer live in his brother's house or findlodgings any place else in Ohrdruf, and also because the cantor inOhrdruf, Elias Herda, who originally came from Liineburg, was ableto obtain accommodations and scholarships there at St. Michael's Schoolfor both boys.

Unfortunately, we also lack any source of information from Liineburgabout Bach's musical education. He attended the Michaelisschule,served in the choir and in small chamber groups, but we have no details


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J. S. Bach's Youth 5concerning his duties. Gustav Fock in his study of Bach in Liineburg(1950), still a basic work, was also unable to give any specific details.Sebastian certainly did not play any leading role there, say, as prefect.Every biographer still tacitly accepts the conjecture that Bach took uporgan playing in this city, which was rich in the organ tradition; pre-sumably this was in St. Michael's or St. Nicolas' or in the magnificentlate Gothic Johanneskirche with its especially famous organ. But there isno documentary proof. Ever since Philipp Spitta's great biography it hasbeen assumed, almost as a matter of course, that Bach received instruc-tion from the organist of St. John's, Georg BOihm.Boihm was a Thurin-gian and had connections in Ohrdruf and also with the Bach family.That Bach was his pupil is, however, sheer conjecture, and the lone factthat there exist a few chorale partitas by Bach written in the style ofB6hm (the authenticity of which is still controversial) provides veryweak support. To be sure, Philipp Emanuel testified in a letter to Forkel(1775) that his father had "loved and studied" B6hm's works; howeverin the same sentence the very same thing is said of a whole series ofolder masters. It would be remarkable indeed if Philipp Emanuel, who

mentions Georg Bihm in this letter and who in the necrology (1754)describes briefly his father's stay in Liineburg, would have omitted anypersonal connection his father might have had with this composer. It iscertainly tempting to suppose that Sebastian knew and had heard GeorgBbhm, but there is no mention anywhere of studies with him, and onecan justifiably doubt whether the great organ of St. John's was at theneophyte's disposal. Gustav Fock adopted the view that B6hm's worksfor keyboard or organ were preserved only in the copies made by Sebas-tian Bach. This is, however, unproven and actually very unlikely becausea number of these works presumably were composed in a period afterBach's stay in Liineburg.

It is even more improbable that while in Liineburg Bach had anyconnection with the seventy-two-year-old organist of St. Nicolas', JohannJakob Loewe ("from Eisenach"; he did not, however, come from Eisen-ach). There was an organ composer of some importance named PeterMorhardt who was organist at St. Michael's and therefore belonged of-ficially to Bach's school; but he had already died the year Bach was born.Bach is said to have traveled to Hamburg "occasionally" (as it reads inthe necrology) and to have heard the organist at St. Katharina's, JanAdams Reinken, who belonged to the old Sweelinck school and was atthat time almost seventy years old. In 1720 Bach was to pay his respects


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6 The Musical Quarterlyto him and to the great tradition which he embodied. We do not knowanything more definite than this, however, about the Hamburg jour-neys. That Bach knew the organist at St. Nicolas' in Hamburg, -VincentLiibeck (which is occasionally asserted as early as Spitta), is unlikely,for Liibeck was not called to Hamburg until 1702, and we are not evensure whether Bach was still in Liineburg then.

Here, however, is a remarkable gap in our knowledge which has beenall but ignored by most Bach biographers. The necrology lists specificallyseveral trips to Hamburg but mentions only the visits to Reinken. NowHamburg was in those years one of the German metropolises of musicin a great number of areas: opera, church music, chamber and orchestralmusic, song, etc. Are we to believe that Bach, when he took such painsto travel repeatedly all the way to Hamburg (ca. 31 miles away), would ac-tually have limited his interest to the representative-no matter how highlyrespected-of an organ tradition which was two generations older than his?Would he have overlooked the overwhelming musical life of a greatcity, which must surely have been a revelation for a fifteen or seventeen-year-old student used to provincial Thuringian conditions? It is true, ofcourse, that the first great epoch of the opera and municipal music, withsuch personalities as Johann Theile, Nikolaus Adam Strunck, JohannWolfgang Franck, Johann Philipp F6rtsch and Johann Sigismund Kus-ser, had already passed. Franck had composed at-least sixteen operas forHamburg and was in charge of the cathedral music. The sources ofF6rtsch's opera libretti ranged from Bostel, Postel, and Elmenhorst toMinato, Marlowe, and Cervantes. This first heyday was now gone. Activein Hamburg, however, from 1696 or '97 on was Reinhard Keiser, who wasknown all over Germany as one of the leading opera composers of hisage. Mattheson maintained that by 1713 he had no less than fortyor fifty complete operas produced. In 1701 Bach could have heardboth parts of Keiser's St6rtebecker und Jodge Michaels, a rather blood-curdling work in the popular taste of the time, in 1702 his Circe, Pene-lope, and Orpheus (also in two sections). Johann Mattheson producedhis Porsenna in 1702 and was active in all areas of music, animating andinspiring everyone. The magnetism of the Hamburg Opera was strongenough to attract the eighteen-year-old Handel from Halle in 1703; hemade his debut in 1705 with Almira. The Johannespassion (1704) al-legedly by Handel with aria texts by Postel is almost certainly spurious.However, in Hamburg around 1700 there came about, largely throughChristian Hunold, that reform in Passion poetry which brought with it


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J.S. Bach'sYouth 7a fundamental revival of the genre similar to the reforms of Neumeisterin the field of the Protestant cantata. Hunold's and Keiser's Bleedingand dying Jesus set the model in 1704 for numerous later Passion com-positions. This is the same Hunold, a great number of whose cantatalibrettos Bach set to music for ducal festivities later in his Cithen period.Also in Hamburg were such writers, literary figures, and poets as Lucasvon Bostel, Christian Postel, Heinrich Elmenhorst, and Barthold Feindt,who were working actively with musicians. The important song collec-tion on Elmenhorst's poems originated here; the 1700 edition was printedin Liineburg and contains around 100 melodies by Johann W. Franck,Georg B6hm, and Laurentius Wockenfuss (from Kiel). It is one of themost beautiful sacred songbooks of the age. B6hm himself had come toLiineburg after having worked in Hamburg at the Opera. Elmenhorstexercised a great influence as a poet and musical preacher and was oneof the co-founders and librettists of the Opera. Is one to suppose thatthis whole glittering world was unknown to the youthful Bach, if hereally was in Hamburg on several occasions? Numerous stylistic similar-ities have often been pointed out between his later works and those ofFranck and Keiser especially (Hellmuth Christian Wolff, Die Barock-oper in Hamburg, I, 1957, passim). Bach wrote out in his own hand theparts of a St. Mark Passion by Keiser. Whether or not these connectionsare to be attributed to such an early period, whether Bach observed themusical life of Hamburg at first hand, whether he received there any-thing more than stimuli for his organ composing, all of this still remainscompletely undecided. There are no relevant reports from any source.As a hypothesis, however, there remains the possibility that the youthfulBach may have absorbed influences here that did not bear fruit untillater in his life, an assumption that is all the more likely since from 1714on Bach reveals himself in his cantatas as a dramatist of high rank, andalso since he could scarcely have had any other opportunity between1702 and 1714 to become familiar with the operatic world. In his can-tatas it can be seen on many a page that this world was not foreign tohim. Where else could he have gotten to know it if not from his Liine-burg period and from his trips to Hamburg?

All of this is at best conjecture, a more or less well-founded hypo-thesis. Most biographers have mistaken wishful thinking for reality andhave confounded what little is actually verifiable with nebulous fantasies.The simple truth is that we know very little for certain about Bach'smusical activities and education during the Liineburg years and least of


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8 The Musical Quarterlyall about the area of keyboard music.

The widely held opinion that the organ was Bach's point of depar-ture is based on the assumption that he played the organ in Liineburgor that he received useful instruction on that instrument. Even this view,however, is completely unproven. When he came to Arnstadt in 1703 hemust have been already well-versed in organ playing; but when andwhere he learned the art and whether it occurred in the Liineburg yearshas remained up to the present without the slightest trace of concreteevidence. One is tempted to assume that while in Liineburg he studiedthe unique collection of organ tablatures, one of the greatest monumentsof the cultivation of that instrument in northern Germany in the 17thcentury. Most of these works stem from the period around 1650-60 andthe collection contains a great number of the usual "intabulations" (i.e.,transcriptions or arrangements for the organ in tablature notation) ofdances, songs, motets, madrigals, vocal concertos, Magnificats, etc., manyof whose models go back as far as Orlando di Lasso. Most of them,however, were by celebrated masters of the early 17th century such asMonteverdi, Alessandro Grandi, Hans Leo Hassler, among many others.These tablatures, moreover, constitute a mine of information concerningthe work of lesser known German and Italian composers. Of primaryimportance in the Liineburg tablatures, however, are the numerous orig-inal compositions for organ such as preambles, fantasias, ricercars, andorgan chorales, by Sweelinck and by other important north Germanorgan composers of the two generations before Bach: Heinrich Scheide-mann, Christian Flor, Jakob Praetorius, Samuel Scheidt, MelchiorSchildt, Delphin Strunck, Franz Tunder, Matthias Weckmann, and soon; in other words, precisely that music we must assume Bach studiedsometime and somewhere. It would illuminate our ignorance of Bach'sbackground like a bolt of lightning if we knew that he actually used thisunique source of German organ tablatures to play from or for his studies.Regrettably, however, even here there is a large gap in our knowledge.We do not know, for instance, whether the manuscripts were already inLiineburg when Bach was there or when they might have arrived there.It is not until 1845 that we have our first report: they were deposited inthe city council's library in that year. Where were they before that? Inthe possession of some church or private person? In Hamburg? A Ham-burg provenience is highly likely, since the names of organists activethere (such as Scheidemann, Weckmann, Kortkamp, among others) oc-cur with particular frequency in these tablatures. That does not exclude


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J.S. Bach's Youth 9the possibility that the collection, or parts of it, had already reachedLiineburg in the 17th century. It would be too risky, however, to supportone pillar of Bach's artistic development on such a hypothetical base. Forthe time being things still stand at the "We-simply-don't-know" stage,and we are also left with the lingering doubt that young Bach ever hadanything to do with the organ in Liineburg.It is much more reasonable to seek the clues to Bach's musical edu-cation in two other areas during the Liineburg years: in the field ofvocal music and French instrumental music.

St. Michael's School had in its archive a large quantity of printedmusic which was described in a report from the year 1870. This reportstill exists but unfortunately the prints have disappeared. In addition, theschool also possessed one of the largest manuscript collections of con-temporary vocal music. This has also been lost, but Max Seiffert pub-lished an inventory of it in 1907-08. There were no less than 1102individual pieces in manuscripts, which the cantor at St. Michael's,Friedrich Emanuel Praetorius, and his predecessors had collected. Prae-torius left them to the school when he died in 1695, that is, only fiveyears before Bach's arrival. The Liineburg archive therefore constitutes acounterpart to the other great manuscript collections of the time, like themusic archive of the Marienkirche in Liibeck during Dietrich Buxte-hude's time (which has also been lost), or the Diiben collection in Stock-holm (which has been preserved in its entirety in the University Libraryof Uppsala).The breadth of the Liineburg-St. Michael's repertory is amazing. Itextends from pieces in three and four parts with basso continuo to piecesin twenty-two and twenty-four parts with full orchestra, from purechoral music to vocal concertos with solo voices, choruses and instru-mental ensembles. It lists compositions by St. Michael's cantor, AugustBraun, and its organist Peter Morhard, as well as by some of the mostfamous contemporaries, such as Heinrich Schiitz, Andreas Hammer-schmidt, Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Rosenmiiller, Sebastian Kniipfer,the brothers Johann and Johann Philipp Krieger, Johann Schelle,Thomas Selle, Johann Theile, including many native north German mas-ters or those who were active in north Germany such as Dietrich Becker,Christoph Bernhard, Werner Fabricius, Christian Flor, Kaspar Fibrster,Georg Osterreich, Augustin Pfleger, David Pohle, Johann Martin Ru-bert, Melchior Schildt, Nathanael Schnittelbach, Nikolaus Adam Strunck,Johann Vierdanck, Matthias Weckmann, Andreas Werkmeister,Christoph


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10 The Musical QuarterlyWerner; middle and south German composers are also well represented.These, as well as the names of many Italians such as Albrici, Bontempi,Carissimi, Casati, Cazzati, Finetti, Grandi, Gratiani, Merula, Monte-verdi, Peranda, Francesco della Porta, Rovetta, Scacchi, Torri, Uccellini,Valentini, and others, give ample proof that one was not limited to thenarrow confines of the north German school and that the attitude wasanything but provincial. Another striking aspect of this repertory is theconcentration on the period from approximately 1630 to around 1690,i.e., on the immediately contemporary music. In contrast to the organtablatures, the St. Michael's collection contains no earlier composers.Obviously, almost everything in the collection is church music, Germanand Latin. The inventory is of the greatest importance for our knowledgeof the practical pursuit of music at a school of that time. The loss of thecollection-even if most of the pieces can be found in other sources-is an incalculable setback to musical research, if only because of themany unica it contained. One can hardly doubt that a young musicianlike Sebastian Bach, at most seventeen years of age, who was so eager tolearn, would have educated himself with the aid of these vocal works.We know that Bach esteemed many of the "old masters" whose workshe knew, and they were primarily of the 17th century, not older. Thiscuriosity and appreciation he retained into his Leipzig period. For thisreason the objection Gustav Fock made against presupposing the use ofthis archive by Bach does not seem to be very sound. Where the collec-tion was kept at that time is not so important; one is entitled to assumein any case that this voluminous mass of contemporary church musicwas then used for practical purposes and not stored away somewhere.It would be applying a modern museum standard to suppose that thecollection was brought together out of some sort of scientific interestor out of sheer passion for collecting. Schiitz in Dresden, Buxtehude inLiibeck, Diiben in Stockholm, Erlebach in Rudolstadt (see further be-low) started their collections at that time, as did Pisendel somewhatlater in Dresden, not for the purpose of preservation but for the practicalpurpose of making music. Cantor Friedrich Emanuel Praetorius and hispredecessors would not have done it otherwise. The assumption (byG. Fock) that Bach was not yet interested in vocal music in Liineburglacks any sort of foundation in fact. The St. Michael's collection offersprecisely the foundation for assuming that Bach studied it before hehimself proceeded to write cantatas and other vocal music. Until evidenceis brought forth to the contrary, one has to conjecture that Bach made


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J. S. Bach's Youth 11use of the extraordinary advantage afforded by his years in Liineburgto study this collection for his own education.The other area in which Bach became well-versed from the Liineburgperiod on was French instrumental music and performance practices. Tobe sure we are only very meagerly informed about this also. The necrol-ogy tells us laconically that Sebastian, ever since his stay in Liineburg,had the opportunity "to learn the French taste [style], which at thattime was something altogether new to those regions, by frequently hear-ing a famous orchestra which the Duke of Celle kept and which con-sisted for the most part of Frenchmen." Here we must note that theFrench "taste" was at that time not "altogether new" in Germany; eversince 1670 it had spread throughout Germany by the most variousroutes. It is correct, however, to say that Duke Georg Wilhelm of Celleand Liineburg maintained a primarily French orchestra, which in itsheyday comprised sixteen members, including seven oboists (not count-ing trumpeters). The court Kapellmeister was Philippe La Vigne. ToGustav Fock goes the credit for discovering the man who provided theconnection between Bach and Celle: Thomas de la Selle, a member ofthe orchestra and at the same time a dance instructor at the Ritter-akademie (Knights' Academy) in Liineburg, which was related to St.Michael's School. Even if the French orchestral and keyboard practiceswere not "totally new" for the time, they were new to Bach. How deepan impression they made on him can be seen in large portions of hislater works.

It is reasonable to assume that Bach also made the acquaintance oflocal German church musicians on his visits to Celle. The town cantorat that time was one Johann Georg Kiihnhausen, a composer of somesignificance. The town organist (and later court organist) was Wolf-gang Wessnitzer, the editor of Das Grosse Zellische Gesangbuch (1696),an important Lutheran song collection; and court organist during Bach'stime was Melchior Brunckhorst, well known both as a performer andcomposer. We have no actual report, however, of any such contacts, nomatter how likely they appear.The Duke also kept an Italian opera troupe for a while; but thatwas dissolved one year before Bach arrived in Liineburg. Any contactwith Italian opera in Celle is therefore out of the question. We are thusleft with the conclusion based on the necrology that while in Celle, Bachheard only the French orchestra and French music.The bare fact is, however, the only thing we know; what French


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12 The Musical Quarterlymusic this was can only be surmised; concrete evidence is lacking. Therepertory of the Celle court orchestra is not known, nor is any music col-lection mentioned anywhere. That French operas were performed in thecastle theater is of course to be assumed but is not definitely known.French orchestral music, dances, overture-suites for concert performances,were widely known at that time in north Germany. Sigismund Kusser(active in Hamburg up to 1695 or 1696), who had been a pupil ofLully's in Paris between 1674 and 1682 and later appeared as a com-poser of operas, serenades, and overtures, was highly praised by Matthe-son as an excellent trainer of orchestras. Another notable composer,Johann Fischer, who for five years in Paris adapted himself to the"sweet Lullian manner," showed up temporarily in Liineburg in 1701and dedicated a few works to St. Michael's School, among which wasthe French suite "To the world famous Liineburg salts," in the per-formance of which Bach as a pupil might have taken part. Numerousmusicians from north Germany were under French influence, not theleast of whom was Georg B6hm. It is not likely that French sacredmusic would have been performed in these circles; most probably it wasexclusively secular compositions, music for social occasions, operas,dances, arias and such. B6hm and Kusser, incidentally, both came di-rectly from the opera, which to a great extent went along French linesin Stuttgart as well as in Hamburg. And ever since Agostino Steffani'stime the musical taste at the court of Hanover had been strongly Frenchoriented. It was therefore not Celle alone that guided young Bach in thisdirection. Proof of a French repertory in Celle or Liineburg is, however,not at hand.

It would be of the greatest interest to know just how much contactBach had with French keyboard music during his years at Liineburg,regardless of whether it was at the court of Celle or through other chan-nels. All of the Bach literature from Spitta to Karl Geiringer acceptssuch a contact without question. Guy Ferchaut (in the Bach-Gedenk-schrift, 1950) suggested that the court organist of Celle, Charles Gaudon,could have been the one who introduced Bach to this domain. As possiblecomposers he lists: Louis Marchand, Jacques Boyvin, Guillaume-Ga-briel Nivers, Andre' Raison, Jean Henri d'Anglebert, Pierre d'Andrieu,Michel Corrette, Nicolas Le Begue, Gaspard Le Roux, Charles Dieupartand Fran?ois Couperin le Grand. Bach could not have known a numberof these until later simply for chronological reasons. Marchand was prob-ably not known in Germany until he journeyed there sometime after


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J. S. Bach's Youth 131706; his printed keyboard books date from 1702 on. Of the two Cor-rettes, even the father, Gaspard, comes too late for Bach's Liineburgperiod. The book of keyboard music by LeRoux did not appear in printuntil 1705. Dieupart's suites, two of which Bach copied in his own hand,can have become known to him only considerably later. The designation"English" suites supposedly goes back to these because Dieupart residedin London. Couperin's "Pieces d'orgue" date of course from 1690, buthis books of harpsichord music do not begin to appear until 1713 andL'Art de toucher le clavecin in 1716. The copies of Couperin's music inBach's hand date from the same period as the notebooks for Friedemannand Anna Magdalena, i.e., not until after 1720; and the model forBach's Aria in F major for organ (BWV 587), a trio of Couperin's,appears for the first time in 1726 in Les Nations. The only French mu-sicians remaining on Ferchaut's list from Bach's early period are: Boyvin(pririted organ and harpsichord works from 1689 onward), Nivers (from1665), Raison (from 1688), d'Anglebert (1689), d'Andrieu (the 1690s)and Le Begue (after 1676). The only printed work by Nicolas de Grigny(Livre d'orgue, 1699) is said to have been copied by Bach in its entirety;and one can well imagine that he felt just as attracted to de Grigny'sintricate fugal texture and to his contrapuntal settings of hymns, amongother things, as he did to Le Begue's versets "pour les savants."Nevertheless that entire area of Bach's handwritten copies of Grigny,Dieupart, Couperin and others (Spitta already mentions some, but hehad not seen them) is in the first place quite nebulous, and one woulddo well to be skeptical of all reports leaning in that direction. Even ifsuch autograph copies were actually traceable, it would still be mostdoubtful if any of those fell into this early phase of Bach's education. Thequestion still remains unanswered, however, as to what role this entireFrench invasion into his middle German tradition played in the youthfulBach's development. Clearly, French substance penetrated deeply into hislater works, and not only the instrumental. Moreover, the widely dif-fused copies of French compositions by Bach's pupils are very suggestive.Nevertheless this aspect of Bach's youth also allows us nothing morethan supposition.

With that the subject of Bach's musical development up to this timehas been exhausted. We do not even know precisely when he left Liine-burg. He must have applied in 1702 for the organist's post at St. James'in Sangerhausen (in 1736 he recalls this in a letter upon recommendinghis son Bernhard for the same position); he had no luck however. On


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14 The Musical Quarterlythe 4th of March 1703 (according to Jauernig) he entered the serviceof Prince Johann Ernst of Weimar. Fock has nevertheless cogently statedthe possibility that Bach had already left the school in 1702. His where-abouts during this year are still obscure.Whatever brought Bach to Weimar was no longer known to PhilippEmanuel, and what he did there during his four-month stay is unknown.It is obvious that the eighteen-year-old boy considered himself an accom-plished musician-and he was, to a certain extent. At first he was prob-ably employed as a violinist, then he became the deputy of courtorganist Johann Effler, even used his title, and at eighteen (which isalmost incredible) received the commission to test and examine the greatorgan that Friedrich Wender had just installed in St. Boniface's churchat Arnstadt. This is proof that by that time, Bach had not only acquireda profound knowledge of organ building but had also already becomeknown for it. It remains a riddle just how he arrived at such a stature.It is nevertheless entirely possible that the few months Bach spent inWeimar were very instructive for him. At the court of Weimar there stilllived the violinist Paul Westhoff who, though retired, was neverthelessimportant as one of the standard-bearers of the German tradition in vir-tuoso solo violin playing, notably in the art of double-stopping. Oneshould not reject the possibility that Bach heard him and was stimulatedby techniques that were later reflected in his sonatas and partitas forsolo violin. He is not supposed to have come in contact with equallyimportant violinists until later when, for example in 1709, he becameacquainted with J. Georg Pisendel (who was two years younger thanBach) and during his Leipzig period the concertmaster of the Dresdenorchestra, Jean-Baptiste Volumier. Without being able to produce anyproof, one would like to assume that at least the German tradition ofviolin playing embodied in Westhoff had just as formative an influenceon Bach as the Torelli-Vivaldi school had later through Pisendel, sinceWesthoff was one of the last masters of that tradition, and Bach couldhardly have acquired it from anyone else.Still another circumstance points in a similar direction. It is possiblethat as early as that time Italian music and concerted music wasperformed at the court of Prince Johann Ernst. It is known that theprince's younger son, also called Johann Ernst, distinguished himself lateron as a composer of violin concertos in the Italian style. He died at theage of nineteen in 1715 and was only seven when Bach was in Weimar.Telemann published six of the concertos posthumously in 1718, and


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J. S. Bach's Youth 15Bach arranged three as keyboard concertos (BWV 982, 984, 987), pro-vided that the arrangements really stem from him. Naturally that canhave happened only after 1708, during Bach's later sojurn there. Weshould, however, not exclude the possibility that he took part in chambermusic and violin concertos of the Italian sort already in 1703 during hisfirst stay at the princely court. Vivaldi's L'Estro armonico, printed in1712, had been known in Germany since at least 1710 (according toKarl Heller, Die deutsche Vivaldi-Uberlieferung, 1965). In Leipzig in1709 Pisendel played a concerto by Giuseppe Torelli in public. A fewVivaldi concertos spread around in manuscript could have been knownin Weimar even before this; that is all the more to be assumed in thecase of Torelli. The violin sonatas (op. 5) of Arcangelo Corelli appearedin print in 1700, the Concerti di Sonate (Op. 4) by Tommaso AntonioVitali in 1701. It is therefore entirely plausible that as a young violinistBach occupied himself with Italian chamber music in Weimar in 1703.If this assumption is correct then we would have to place Bach's intro-duction to Italian instrumental music (which was just emerging in Ger-many) in Weimar immediately after his confrontation with French musicin Celle. This too is a hypothesis, albeit an illuminating one. A mostrecent discovery in the field of vocal music constitutes a striking parallelto this; more about this below.

While the brief stay in Weimar in 1703 worked out very favorablyfor Bach in the area of chamber music, any sort of activity or study inthe vocal sphere during these few months is manifestly out of the ques-tion. Reinhold Jauernig's supposition that Bach had written his first can-tata for Weimar (Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Halle lassen,BWV 15) as early as Easter, 1703 has been invalidated by recent re-search; the piece, which has been shoved around quite a bit in thechronology of Bach's works, stems not from J. S. but from Ludwig Bach,as William H. Scheide has convincingly shown.

The new organ at Arnstadt that Bach examined must have stronglyattracted him; it was, in point of fact, the most beautiful instrument he,in an official position, ever had under his fingers. On the 9th of August1703 he was officially installed, and remained as organist of the rela-tively small Arnstadt church until the 29th of June 1707, when he tookhis leave in due form. Here he had no other obligations than playing theorgan. Even conducting a choir did not count among his immediateduties; nevertheless, he was expected to perform "pieces," i.e., concertedchurch music. He conducted at most only two years until he had a


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16 The Musical Quarterlythorough falling out with the students. Added to these quarrels were thecomplaints from the consistory about his inordinately long interludes inthe chorale and his accompaniment of congregational singing in the"tonus peregrinus" and "tonus contrarius." (In our terminology thatmeans something like too bold a harmony and an unsettling use of chro-maticism.) Then there was also the irritation of the same church officialsover Bach's arbitrary extension of his leave when he journeyed in thewinter of 1705-06 to Liibeck to hear Dietrich Buxtehude; and, finally,the reproach that Bach had allowed his cousin (and future wife) to singin the church. The measure of patience that Bach could muster wasnever very great throughout his entire life: he resigned his post.It is precisely these four years in Arnstadt, however, that seem tohave been particularly important for Bach's further development. In1754, the necrology says:

Here [in Arnstadt]he actually revealed the first fruits of his industriousness n the artof organplaying and composing which he had learned for the most part only throughthe examination of works by thorough composers famous at that time and throughthe application of his own powers of reflection. For the organ he took as his modelsthe works of Bruhns, Reinken, Buxtehude, and a few good French organists.We finally have some tangible evidence. It confirms that Bach studiedthe masters of the preceding generation (or generations), German andFrench (although among the Germans only north Germans are named),the "famous" and "thorough," i.e., the "strong fugue-writers" or strictcontrapuntalists-as Philipp Emanuel called them in a letter to Forkelin 1775. It further confirms that he acquired his art through "examina-tion"-we would say by analysis of his models-and through the "appli-cation of his own powers of reflection;" this expression should beinterpreted to mean that he imitated his models and by his own effortssought to transcend them. Philipp Emanuel, answering a question put tohim by Forkel in 1775, said his father formed his tastes by adding hisown efforts to the models; analysis and using his own powers of reflectionshould have made a "strong fugue-composer" out of him already in hisyouth. Both statements agree perfectly and hint at a thoroughgoingprocess of self-education. Here we also see for the first time his knowledgeof French organ music documented; however, he could have acquired thisknowledge only in Liineburg-Celle, certainly not in Weimar or Arnstadt.French music for the organ could hardly have been common at thattime in the little cities and residences of middle Germany. Many scholarsdate Bach's organ fantasia in G major (BWV 572) from Arnstadt; that


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J.S. Bach'sYouth 17would tally with the statements of Philipp Emanuel since this work hasits origin in an organ Mass by Fran?ois Couperin in the same key.The necrology mentions in one breath the report of Bach's furtherdevelopment in Arnstadt and the trip he made to Liibeck "in order tohear as many good organists as possible" and "[particularly] the famousorganist there at the Marienkirche, Dietrich Buxtehude." Even here asin the case of the journeys to Hamburg and Celle, the report in thenecrology is limited to one single purpose.While in Liibeck Bach probably "listened" to more than organ play-ing. On the 2nd and 3rd of December 1705 he most certainly heard theCastrum doloris, the mourning music for Emperor Leopold I, and theTemplum honoris, the music in tribute to Emperor Joseph I, celebratedin the Marienkirche with extraordinary splendor. These were veritableoperas commemorating the funeral as well as the new accession to thethrone (G. Karstaidt, Die "extraordinairen" Abendmusiken, 1962). Hewas also no doubt interested in other things. Whether any sort of con-nection sprang up between the sixty-six-year-old Buxtehude and theArnstadt organist, forty-six years his junior, whether Bach copied Buxte-hude's compositions, or even played the organ in Liibeck is not known.The collection of texts of the "Abendmusiken" from the year 1700, whichCarl Stiehl published in 1887, gives some idea of what Bach could haveheard in the winter of 1705-06. He must have been most impressed bythe splendor of these performances and by the pattern of the publicconcert in church, which had no parallel in the little cities of Thuringia.The brilliance of the "extraordinaire" evening musicales must have beenindeed something "entirely new" to him. The rich possibilities and theelaborate instrumentation (see Karstaidt, ibid.) could not in any way becompared with what Arnstadt could offer. The musical potentialities ofthe German north were once more revealed to Bach in Liibeck just asthey had been earlier in Liineburg.The picture gradually begins to take shape. Bach combined hisprivate, independent study with the experience of hearing a recognizedmaster and the wealth of stimulating ideas that a great north Germancity had to offer. Unfortunately the necrology does not reveal where hefound the models to carry out his independent study in Arnstadt. Therecan hardly have been much material at his disposal in that modest littlecity. So far nothing about any stock of old music in Arnstadt has turnedup. The two publications of the chapel inventory in Rudolstadt show,however, that even the smallest of Thuringian residences formerly had in


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18 The Musical Quarterlytheir possession important archives (Bernd Baselt in Tradition und Auf-gaben der Hallischen Musikwissenschaft, Halle 1963). The first part ofthis Rudolstadt inventory, which extends from 1697 to 1700, wasbrought to light in 1914 by Otto Kinkeldey in Denkmiiler DeutscherTonkunst 46/47. The second part of this inventory, alone covering theyears from 1714 to 1720, lists no less than 2640 individual composi-tions, primarily by German and Italian composers and almost exclu-sively from Bach's generation or the two preceding ones. The archivesof this little residence had evidently built up a collection comparable tothose in Liineburg, Liiheck, and Stockholm. Such mu:ic archives, alsofrom other Thuringian cities and churches, have, if to a lesser extent,been discovered by checking inventories. Unfortunately Arnstadt is notamong them.

The counts of Schwarzburg-Arnstadt maintained a small musicalestablishment for the court. Karl Miiller (in Arnstidter Bach-Buch,2/1957, in particular p. 65ff.) has very vividly shown just how modestit was. To be sure, when needed some twenty persons could be roundedup besides organists and cantors from Arnstadt and vicinity-teachers andpupils, court officials and employees all the way down to kitchen clerksand apprentices; the core of professional musicians, however, was verysmall. The theater and the musical theater were cultivated, "serenades,""operas" and "operettas" performed, and certainly Bach frequently tookpart as a performer, violinist, violist, or even as continuo player, if notperhaps also as composer. Karl Miller believes "with certainty" that weshould take Bach's participation for granted. But not one note of all thatmusic used at the Arnstadt court has been preserved, nor any inventory,not to mention any archive which Bach could have used to continue hisstudies. Again all questions pertaining to his formative years remainunresolved.

All in all, those four years in Arnstadt seem, nevertheless, to havebeen that period in Bach's life in which he educated himself primarily asa composer. He was eighteen years old when he went to Arnstadt andtwenty-two when he left, which is a normal age for a student in his field;no precocity or belated development is indicated. When Arnstadt nolonger suited him, he made his trial performances on the organ at St.Blasius' in Miihlhausen, which was also built by J. Friedrich Wender.The contract with the council of the Free Imperial City was concludedon the 15th of June 1707, and Bach took up the post in September.Almost exactly one year later, on the 25th of June 1708, he handed in


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J. S. Bach's Youth 19to the same council his resignation in which he tersely states that theDuke of Weimar had appointed him to his "court orchestra and cham-ber music." This petition for release was published for the first time justover a century ago by Carl Heinrich Bitter (1865). It is the earliestexample, except for salary receipts, of Bach's handwriting that has comedown to us and constitutes an invaluable document bearing on ourknowledge of him. This piece of writing marks the end of the period ofBach's youth. By the age of twenty-three he had become a mature master.Like the few months Bach first spent in Weimar, the brief year inMiihlhausen was also very fruitful, and as at Arnstadt, his official dutieshere were limited to playing the organ for the church service. In Miihl-hausen, however, he seems to have concerned himself much more withthe performance of vocal music than in Arnstadt. The necrologyis unfortunately silent about this, but Bach himself says in the resig-nation mentioned above that he had acquired from "far and wide"and at great expense "a good apparatus of the most select pieces ofchurch music." That can only mean that he had sought out and purchasedfrom a great variety of sources copies of such vocal-instrumental "pieces"in the style of the older church cantatas as were commonly knownaround 1700, and presumably like the ones he had studied at first handin Liineburg. It is unlikely that he had industriously copied all that musicwhile he was in Miihlhausen, as Charles Sanford Terry, Karl Miiller, andothers assume. How is he supposed to have obtained his models there?Copied music was a common trade in those days. Bach probably hadalready bought the greatest part of this collection in Arnstadt; he wouldhardly have had time for such activity in one short year at Miihlhausen.He wrote further to the councilmen that he had had in his endeavorsone "goal:" to put on "well-ordered performances of church music forthe glory of God and according to your wishes." He said he had stronglydesired to comply with the requirements of his appointment, but that it"could not be done without annoyances," and there was no prospect ofan improvement in the situation. He went on to say that even in thesurrounding villages church music was in some respects better thanin Miihlhausen. In the meantime, he continued, he had received an offerfrom the Duke of Weimar which promised to realize his idea of "well-conceived church music without petty annoyances," and it was for thatreason that he was requesting his release.

Aside from a commission relating to the rebuilding of St. Blasius'organ, begun by the city council while Bach was in office, this document


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20 The Musical Quarterlyis the sole primary source for Bach's activity in Mliihlhausen. His phrase,"well-ordered performances of church music," has been very frequentlymisinterpreted; in fact, the entire letter and the circumstances surround-ing Bach's departure have become a sort of legend. An unbiased inter-pretation of his petition reveals a very simple state of affairs. Bach wantedto put on normal "Music," i.e., cantata-like performances, for the servicesat St. Blasius', which is what the councilmen had hired him for. He spentmuch energy and money to fulfill this duty, but his intentions werehindered or made difficult by unfavorable conditions ("Widrigkeiten")and on top of that there were annoyances ("Verdriesslichkeiten"). Whatform these unfavorable conditions took is not said. C. H. Bitter back in1865 read no more into Bach's statement than the endeavor to organizea kind of church music that would "correspond equally to the innerneeds and outer forms of the divine service" (I, 73) : This would be thevery natural effort of a highly talented and ambitious young musicianwho had just been called to a church post of some importance andwanted to make the best he could of it artistically. It remained forSpitta, writing eight years after Bitter, to becloud this simple set of factsby playing up as the cause of Bach's resignation the theological argumentbetween Lutheran orthodoxy and Spener's Pietism, which was beingfought out in Miihlhausen by two opposing pastors. Bach, he assumes,was drawn into the pulpit and pamphlet controversy, stood on theLutheran side according to his education and belief, and since his su-perior at St. Blasius' was a Pietist, his position therefore became unten-able, all the more so since the people of Miihlhausen were opposed to himanyway (I, 353f.).For almost a century Spitta's historical misconception has spirited itsway, almost uncontested, through the literature on Bach, although thereexists not the slightest proof of it. With all due respect to Spitta, hislegend can be understood only if Bach is acknowledged to be already anorthodox Lutheran in his early period. Spitta's only support for this con-tention is the much overrated fact that the orthodox clergyman Eilmarwas godfather to Bach's first child.

Spitta read into the simple historical facts motives that were not there.Bach left Miihlhausen of his own accord apparently for the simple reasonthat the position in Weimar seemed more promising. He did not resignin the midst of discord, nor was he released with disfavor. There is nohint of his falling into squabbles with the people of Miihlhausen. Thereis no hint that he was ever interested in the disputes of the theologians.


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J. S. Bach's Youth 21He and the city councilmen expressed their mutual respect. The councileven requested his continued collaboration on the reconstruction of theorgan which was just begun. They did even more; they commissionedBach in 1709, when he was already in Weimar, to write a second cantatafor the inauguration of the new city council. Bach delivered the compo-sition and the council had both words and music printed just asthey had the first one he wrote in 1708. Unfortunately, it has disap-peared; we do not even know its title. Bach came to Miihlhausenin 1709 either to direct the performance or to hear it, and the councilpaid him for the composition and traveling expenses. Later in 1735 Bachin a letter to a Miihlhausen resident still remembered gratefully the"faveurs" he had enjoyed during his tenure there, signing the letter:"J. S. Bach, formerly organist at St. Blasius' in Miihlhausen." It canhardly be a question then of Bach's turning his back on the Free Im-perial City because of his annoyance at the unpleasant pulpit disputationsor any irritation with the council or people of the town. The only thingthat remains are the "annoyances" with the cantata performances. Itis high time for the Spitta legend to disappear from the literature onBach; it has caused enough mischief.What attracted Bach to Weimar was probably a combination of artis-tic and economic reasons. As was the case with all the young and ambitiousmusicians of his generation, he considered the court position as a rise inhis social status; at any rate it meant an economic improvement for him.Added to that was no doubt the sincere desire to be able to carry outhis plan of "well-ordered church music" at the Weimar court. He wasat first certainly disappointed in this, for he was not asked to composecantatas until six years later. Prior to that time we do not hear of anyperformances. However that may be, these questions no longer belongto thP theme "the youthful Bach." With Weimar begins the period ofmastery.Ail in all it is a rather scant yield that can be gleaned from thedocuments of Bach's life. The question posed earlier "Where did Bachget all that" is met with assumptions, conjecture, hypotheses, and notmuch else. If one tries to place Bach's works chronologically alongsidethe biographical documents and raises the same question, he will quicklysee that they do not contribute much to a clearer picture of his youth-ful development. One falls immediately into a maze. What do weactually know of Bach's early creative work? Very little, and of this littlealmost nothing with certainty. That is the case for Liineburg from 1700


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22 The Musical Quarterlyto 1702 or 1703, for the first stay in Weimar in 1703 and also for Arn-stadt from 1703-07. The first definite dates begin with Miihlhausen in1707/08 and even they are still very sparse.The number of surviving vocal compositions from Bach's early periodis very small. The cantata, Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Hillelassen (BWV 15) has to be eliminated, as mentioned above, from Bach'soeuvre. There is not one single vocal work that can be dated beforeMiihlhausen. At least two cantatas definitely have their origin in Miihl-hausen, both for the opening sessions of the couin il in 1708 and 1709.Gott ist mein K6nig (BWV 71), the cantata for 1708, survives, the onefor 1709 is known only from documents. Both were, moreover, the onlyones of Bach's many cantatas that appeared in print during his lifetime.The cantata Aus der Tiefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dlir (BWV 131) also be-longs indisputably to Miihlhausen; the autograph copy of the score saysexpressly that it was set to music "at the request" of the orthodox pastorEilmar "by J. S. Bach, Organista Mulhosino." Eilmar had put togetherthe texts of the two council election cantatas; he could possibly have beenthe author of the text to Cantata 131 also. The libretto to Cantata 106,the famous Actus tragicus, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, is perhapsalso by him.It is not known when the Actus tragicus was composed. Present re-search generally considers it funeral music for a relative of Maria Bar-bara's and therefore dates it in the year 1707. Whoever may have secondthoughts about connecting the work with the death of Bach's wealthyuncle L~immerhirt in Erfurt has to admit that the stylistic evidence cor-responds perfectly to this period and that a more suitable date cannot befound. It is very probable that the cantata i)er IHerr denket an uns(BWV 196) belongs here likewise for stylistic and biogeaphical reasons;it is the wedding cantata for Pastor Stauber who had recently marriedSebastian and Barbara Bach in Dornheim near Arnstadt; perhaps it wasa token of gratitude on Bach's part since his marriage fee had beenwaived. We must add to these four surviving cantatas possibly a fifthone for Miihlhausen: Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWVV ), a piece thathas been much shuffled around in the chronology of Bach's works. Forstylistic reasons it has to be set at a very early time but there is not ashred of evidence for the exact date, place, or occasion of its origin.That is all of the vocal compositions that can be placed with cer-tainty, probability, or conjecture in the period of Bach's youth, and allof these pieces fall in the closing year of this period. Any conclusions


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J. S. Bach's Youth 23about Bach's development that result from this can be quickly drawn.Bach knew the style of the older church cantatas by masters such asBuxtehude, Schelle, J. Ph. Krieger, Fbrtsch, Liibeck, Bohm, Bruhns, per-haps also by Pachelbel or Kuhnau, and he utilized types established bythem; this is precisely the material that he could have become acquaintedwith from the Liineburg archive. The strict variation technique in Can-tata 4, the formal concentration and the affecting expressiveness of Can-tata 106, the festive brilliance of 71, all this shows a perfect mastery ofthis genre and a power of invention that far surpasses the models al-though it still does not reveal at the outset any real originality. Somecantatas, like 131 and 196 for example, border very closely on the oldvocal concerto. Number 4 is a tremendously skillful resuscitation of thealready half-forgotten chorale variation "per omnes versus," as it waspractised primarily by north Germans such as Tunder and Buxtehude,but also by such south Germans as Pachelbel. 71 and 106 are scripturalcantatas interspersed with "madrigalian" verses and chorale stanzas. Thetype called "ode cantata" in its different variant forms, i.e., the cantatathat is set essentially to one continuous poem, is not yet to be foundamong Bach's works. Lacking above all is any touch of Italian forms ortechnical devices. There is no recitative, no da capo arias, no bel cantomelodies and no virtuoso concertante instruments. Even the textual basisfor such, the so-called Neumeister type, is still totally lacking, althoughErdmann Neumeister's first series of cantata librettos (Geistliche Kan-taten statt einer Kirchenmusik, 1704) had already appeared in print andhad been passed around earlier in manuscript form. In this respect Bach'searliest cantatas, viewed as evolutionary history, do not measure up tothose by some of the older composers (Kuhnau, Zachow). On the otherhand the Bachian "accent" is already recognizable in numerous move-ments. The force of his melody and harmony, the sturdy drama of thescenes, the compressed density of the part-writing, the contrapuntal web-bing with chorales, and the numerous appearances of symmetrical ar-rangements reveal the hand of the twenty-three-year-old master. Onesees clearly where he came from in spite of the small number of survivingcompositions, and one has an inkling of the primal power of his per-sonality. Shortly thereafter in Weimar his contact with Italian vocalmusic must have engendered the spark which decisively kindled Bach'sfurther path of development.

Of the greatest importance in this regard is a comment made re-cently by Bernhard Paumgartner (Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift, spe-


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24 The Musical Quarterlycial number, October, 1966). The famous chaconne theme which formsthe basis of the first movement of Bach's cantata

W'einen, Klagen,Sorgen, Zagen (BWV 12) and which later turns up as the Crucifixus inthe B minor Mass, stems from a secular cantata of an amorous natureby Vivaldi. Even the first line of Bach's text, "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen,Zagen . . ." is patterned after the original: "Piango, gemo, sospiro epeno ..." The opening movement of Cantata 12 thus constitutes a tex-tual-musical parody of Vivaldi's chamber cantata. Since Bach, however,composed this cantata on the 22nd of April 1714 (according to Diirr),by that time he must have been familiar with vocal works of Vivaldi, aswell as instrumental concertos. Paumgartner fixes the date of his Florentinesource at around 1710. Up to now no other example of such closeimitation of an Italian model has been found among Bach's cantatascomposed in Weimar. Even if one is never found, it remains incontestablethat it was here in Weimar, between 1709 and 1714 that a strong streamof Italian music flowed into Bach's style, a stream which was to shapehis later work so decisively.

The yield in the instrumental sphere is much more meager. Even ifthe vocal works from the final year of Bach's youthful period did allowus to draw a few conclusions about his studies in the early years, in thecase of the instrumental works we are stabbing in the dark. There areno surviving chamber pieces or orchestral works that dould belong to theearly period; only music for keyboard instruments is available to choosefrom (the difference between works written for the organ or for harpsi-chord or clavichord is not considerable enough for the purposes of thisstudy). It is nevertheless this genre that presents us with enormous diffi-culties. The fact that a great number of the pieces we might examinesurvive in various versions so that one hardly knows which to consideroriginal, which is of a later date, and which is an arrangement by Bachor someone else, is forbidding enough. More troublesome, however, is thatthere is, among the keyboard music that might possibly be dated in theearly period, not one piece handed down to us in a primary source, i.e.,in Bach's own handwriting or even in a copy by one of his sons. Every-thing that could belong to the early period comes from sources twice orthrice removed, copies by pupils or by pupil's pupils from the late 18thor even from the 19th century. Closely related is the third and perhapsgreatest difficulty, the question of authenticity. What is really by Bachand what is not? Anyone who uses the thematic index by WolfgangSchmieder (BWV) finds long rows of keyboard and organ compositions


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J. S. Bach's Youth 25with the note "authenticity doubtful;" there are certainly many morethat deserve this appellation. Here is a small sample of "free" pieces(i.e., without cantus firmus) which according to Schmieder are of doubt-ful authenticity:

553-560 Eight ittle preludesandfugues561 Fantasiaandfugue n a567 Praeludiumn C571 Fantasian G576 Fugue n G580 Fugue n D591 the so called "Little harmonic abyrinth"

In addition to Schmieder's findings the following pieces can also be con-sidered doubtful for various reasons:563 Fantasian b566 Toccata n E (C) afterVincentLiibeck574 Fugue n c afterLegrenzi579 Fugue n b afterCorelli581 Fugue n G583-585 Threeorgan rios.The organ trio (BWV 586) in any case is by Telemann. Karl Tittel

(Bach-Jahrbuch, 1966) has disproved the long supposed authorship ofJohann Ludwig Krebs for the trio BWV 585, but also puts Bach'sstrongly in doubt. His extensive examination of the well-known eightlittle preludes and fugues also yields uncertain results but it misleads himto a false conclusion (p. 123): one should not say that "we probablyhave to allow Bach's authorship to stand for the time being until furtherproof is found." On the contrary, in view of the weakness of the pieces,we can not uphold Bach's authorship so long as there is not one irre-futable bit of evidence in its favor. Karl Straube bestowed upon thesebeloved pieces the friendly epithet: "From the workshop of the master."Perhaps we should let the matter lie there for the present.The list of pieces based on chorales which Schmieder designates asdoubtful is even longer. Of the twenty-four chorale elaborations listedunder Bach's name in the Kirnberger collection, at least seven are notby Bach but by such composers as Walther, Krebs, Johann BernhardBach, and so on. Among the twenty-seven surviving in scattered sources(BWV 714-740) at least five are not by Bach. Schmieder's list fromnumber 741 to 765 bears the questioning remark "youthful works, doubt-ful fragmentary pieces;" of these twenty-five probably not one is by Bach.


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26 The Musical QuarterlyEven the partitas Ach, was soll ich Siinder machen (BWV 770) andAllein Gott in der Hih sei Ehr (BWV 771) are greatly disputed; thelatter no doubt has as its sole possible author Andreas Nikolaus Vetter.If one takes up the works written expressly for harpsichord or clavichord,the picture becomes no clearer. The keyboard suites BWV 820, 821, 822,823, 824, and 832, for example, are certainly all spurious, not to men-tion the many individual preludes, fugues, etc.In brief, all of this which survives under the name of J. S. Bachamounts first of all to an impenetrable jungle. In spite of all the effort,scholarly research has up to now not succeeded in doing anything morethan clarify a few isolated cases, for example by finding out that analleged Bach composition appears in a better source under the nameof another composer. Even the reports of Bach's "cousin and friend"Johann Gottfried Walther, the highly learned collector from Weimar,theoretician, organist, and composer, lexicographer and historian, whostood in close contact with Bach from 1708 on, do not help us along.He writes much later (6 August 1729) to his friend Heinrich Bokemeyerthat he had in his possession over two hundred organ pieces by Buxte-hude and Bach, "some in Buxtehude's own hand," and the pieces ofBach "by the author himself, who had been court organist here for nineyears" (Schiinemann in Bach-Jahrbuch, 1933, p. 99). That means noth-ing more than that Walther had in 1729 a great deal of Bach's organworks in his possession, apparently in the original. There is, however,nothing to suggest that any of the compositions date back to the pre-Weimar period. It is precisely during the Weimar years that Bach nodoubt composed by far the greatest number of his organ works, andmuch of that was further circulated by Walther's manuscript collection.That'was known anyway, but Walther's statement gives no hint of aprobable early dating of any organ piece by Bach.There is still an infinite amount of pioneering work to be done herebefore we can even determine the genuine from the spurious, not tospeak of the late from the early. The results of three recent attempts toarrange the early organ works of Bach chronologically were founded inpart on biographical sources, in part on stylistic considerations, and inpart on examinations of the organs that Bach played on, of their tonalproperties, or on Bach's pedal technique. One may say, however, insummary, that up to now not a single unequivocal result has beenattained.

The table clearly shows how greatly the datings diverge. Even the


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Tentativechronologyof the earlyorganworkscompiled from:

W. Schmieder, BWV; H. Klotz, "Bachs Orgeln und seine OrgelmuDie Musikforschung III, 1950, 189-203); Ernest ZavarskV,"Zum Pedes jungen Bach" (ibid., XVIII, 1965, 370-378).O: Ohrdraf; Liineburg; A: Arnstadt; M: Miihlhausen; W: Wei

ChoralesettingsBWV Peters BWV700 VII 55 Vom Himmel hoch W705 VI 21 Duch Adams Fall (genuine?) W715 IX 14 Allein Gott in der H6h A718 VI 15 Christ lag in Totesbanden L720 VI 22 Ein feste Burg W 170(for thin Miih721 Erbarm dich mein (genuine?) L722 V Anh. 1 Gelobet seist du, Jesu A723 VI 23 Gelobet seist du, Jesu724 VI 25 Gottes Sohn ist kommen729 V Anh. 3 In dulci jubilo A732 V Anh. 6 Lobt Gott, ihr Christen A734 VII 44 Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gmein A735a Valet will ich dir geben A737 VII 53 Vater unser im Himmelreich738 V Anh. 7 Vom Himmel hoch A739 IX 22 Wie sch6n leuchtet (genuine?) A


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Choralepartitas766 V Christ, der du bist der helle Tag L? O?767 V O Gott, du frommer Gott L? O?768 V Sei gegriisset, Jesu (source?) L? O?770 IX Ach, was soll ich Siinder machen L771 Allein Gott in der Hih (= A. N. Vetter)

Compositionswithout chorale531 IV 1 Preludeand Fugue, C W? L?532 IV 3 Prelude and Fugue, D W? A?533 III 10 Prelude and Fugue, e W? A?535 III 5 Prelude and Fugue, g W? A?549 IV 5 Prelude and Fugue, c A? L?550 IV 2 Prelude and Fugue, G W? A?551 III 9 Prelude and Fugue, a A? L?565 IV 4 Toccata and Fugue, d W? A?566 III 7 Toccata and Fugue, E (C) A568 VIII 11 Prelude and Fugue, G M? L?569 IV 33 Prelude and Fugue, a W? A?572 IV 11 Fantasia,G (after Couperin) W? A?

574 IV 6 Fugue,c (after Legrenzi) W? L?Keyboard compositions (excluding organ)992 Capriccio sopra la lontananza A 1704993 Capriccio in honoremJ. ChristophBachii A 1704L


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J. S. Bach's Youth 29chorale partitas, which ever since Spitta have been looked upon as veryearly, are placed, in so far as they are authentic, by Schmieder in Liine-burg or even Ohrdruf, by Klotz in Miihlhausen or Weimar, by Zavarskyin Liineburg; certainly all of this is done with good reason but in theend without any conclusive evidence. Among the little organ chorales, orchorale preludes, there are only two that are dated in Bach's Arnstadtperiod by both Schmieder and Klotz, and approximately a dozen sodated by at least one of the two scholars. In the case of the compositionswithout chorale, opinions are still more widely divergent. The dating ofonly one piece, the prelude and fugue in C minor (BWV 549, Peters IV,No. 5), is agreed upon by all writers, Schmieder, Klotz, and Zavarsky;they all place it in the Arnstadt period. In all other cases the opinionsvacillate between Liineburg, Arnstadt, and Weimar. Among the pos-sibly early keyboard pieces Schmieder places the capriccio on the depar-ture of Bach's brother Jakob (BWV 992) for biographical reasonsaround 1704 in Arnstadt, and the capriccio in honor of his oldest brotherJohann Christoph (BWV 993) also 1704 in Arnstadt, but thinks Liine-burg no less possible for this latter piece. Biographical considerationswould suggest the beginning of the century; in the end, however, theauthenticity of BWV 993 is very questionable. Suite 992 is so uncharac-teristic of Bach that conclusions cannot be drawn even if the dating isaccurate. In the field of keyboard music the question of the authenticityand chronology of numerous scattered preludes, fantasias, toccatas,fugues, fughettas, sonatas, etc., still remains completely unsettled.

As to instrumental music, the knowledge of how Bach's workshave come down to us helps even less in answering the question"Where did he acquire everything?" than it did in the field of vocalmusic. There is not one surviving vocal work from the years before1707/08, and among the instrumental works there is little that can bedated before 1707; even that is only hypothetical and hardly charac-teristic. What can one conclude from this? Either that Bach composedvery little in his youth-and this is highly improbable and contradicts thestatement in the necrology-or that his early efforts did not seem tohim to be worth saving. The move to Weimar must have constituted aturning point in Bach's own self-awareness. It is well to observe thatthe great number of works that have been preserved since 1709 comedown to us not through accidental channels but mainly as a result ofBach's own careful concern. It seems that ever since 1709 he himselfbegan collecting everything that seemed valuable to him, and he later


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30 The Musical Quarterlyused and reworked this material again and again. With due caution onewould like to conclude from this that he himself looked upon hisearlier years as a beginning, an elementary stage, thought very littleof the products of those years, perhaps even suppressed those "firstfruits of his labor" that (according to Philipp Emanuel) he had har-vested in Arnstadt. If it should turn out this way, it would mean abreak with the long tradition of the Baroque in which numerous com-posers were accustomed to make a particular show of the "first fruits oftheir labor." Disdain and suppression of early works is the sign ofromantic composers.

Let that be as it may, at any rate the little that we do know ofBach's youth proves that he did not fall from heaven a full-fledgedmaster, but that during his youth he had to make honest efforts andthat, like almost all great musicians in history, he combined his ownstudies with everything tradition had handed down to him and withall that he had sought to adopt and improve with "his own powers ofreflection." How this self-study was carried out and which served asBach's immediate models can only be surmised, and in that we havehardly progressed any further than Spitta eighty years ago. Spitta's as-sumptions were focused on a small group of older composers who werenothing more in Spitta's eyes than "forerunners," low rungs on theladder. Today we take into consideration a far larger group of composerswho appear to us to be masters in their own right and great artists ofan earlier time, whom Bach himself respected and emulated. The recog-nition of other musicians and the great esteem paid them is a fine charac-ter trait running throughout Bach's entire life and work. In his finalyears this trait is particularly evident. He never felt that he was the"consummator" of "forerunners," even if he actually was. In his youthhe had fitted himself into the endless chain of masters before him,became himself a link in this chain and so remained up to the very end;a musician among musicians.How Bach fits into the chain remains a mystery to us; the answerno doubt lies in Bach's nature. There are no accidents in the develop-ment of a genius, everything is imperative. From ancestry comes talent,from a modest but potentially active coincidence of life's circumstances,from an insight into the possible and from a sure grasp toward thenecessary, from all this grows the extraordinary, the mastery of themature Johann Sebastian Bach.

Wilburn W.

Documents

Blume JS Bach's Youth