Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide
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Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252081767 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2016 |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Sales rank: | 1,067,309 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d) |
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Exploring the World of J. S. Bach
A Traveler's Guide
By Robert L. Marshall, Traute M. Marshall
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of TrusteesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-08176-7
CHAPTER 1
EISENACH (1685–95)
In October of 1671, Johann Ambrosius Bach (1645–95), a native of Erfurt and one of the town musicians there, set out for Eisenach, a town with a population of ca. 6,000, located some 70 km/43 miles to the west. With him were his wife, Maria Elisabeth (née Lämmerhirt, 1644–94 — also an Erfurt native) and their infant son, Johann Christoph (1671–1721).
At about the time of Ambrosius's arrival, Eisenach, still recovering from the devastation of the Thirty Years War, was beginning to recover its commecial importance as part of the medieval via regia, which, in Germany, led from Aachen in the west via Frankfurt am Main, Eisenach, Gotha, and Erfurt to Leipzig and points further east. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Eisenach had been the main residence of the Ludowingian landgraves. Beginning in 1263, the Wettin dynasty, whose origins can be traced back to 1030, became the rulers of Thuringia; Saxony was added to their domain in 1423. The landgraviate ended in 1440. Henceforth, Thuringia was no longer an independent political entity but purely a geographical region mainly ruled by Saxony. In 1485, the brothers Ernst (r. 1464–86) and Albert (Albrecht in German, r. 1464–1500) divided their Wettin inheritance, creating the Ernestine and Albertine branches. Eisenach, like most of the region of Thuringia, became part of the Ernestine branch.
Eisenach, along with Weimar and Coburg, was one of the duchies created in 1572 with the further partition of the Ernestine branch. Over the course of the next two centuries the duchies were repeatedly divided and reconfigured in a variety of combinations. In 1672, Johann Georg I (r. 1672–86) became the ruler of the duchy of Saxony-Eisenach. His successors were Johann Georg II (r. 1686–98), Johann Wilhelm III (r. 1698–1729, resident in Jena from 1690), and Wilhelm Heinrich (r. 1729–41). In 1741, with the death of Wilhelm Heinrich, who left no heirs, the duchy of Eisenach was absorbed by Weimar and became part of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach.
Johann Ambrosius Bach was a versa-tile instrumentalist, especially skilled as both a violinist and trumpeter. In Eisenach, he took up simultaneous positions as court trumpeter and Hausmann, that is, director of town music. In settling in Eisenach he joined his first cousin, Johann Christoph Bach (1642–1703), who, since 1665, had been organist at the town's principal church, St. George's, as well as organist and harpsichordist in the court kapelle of Duke Johann Georg I of Saxony-Eisenach. Until that time Eisenach had played a relatively minor role in the activities of the musical Bach family, certainly in comparison with the towns of Wechmar, Erfurt, and Arnstadt.
In 1684, after thirteen years of service to the duke, Ambrosius requested permission to return to Erfurt in order to accept a favorable position there as director of the municipal band. His petition was rejected. Had it been approved, his eighth and last child would, like his parents, have been born and raised in Erfurt. Instead, Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685, in a house almost certainly located on the Fleischgasse (now Lutherstrasse 35, long since replaced by a modern building), which Ambrosius had purchased in 1675 and held until his death. Two days later, the boy was baptized in St. George's Church.
At about the age of five or six, Sebastian began to learn the rudiments: reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. He may have received this instruction at a "German School" — perhaps one run by a family neighbor in the Fleischgasse, Franz Hering (d. 1708). At all events, Sebastian enrolled in the fifth class (Quinta) of St. George's Latin School for the 1692–93 school year, remaining there until the death of his father in February 1695 — less than a year after the death of his mother in May 1694 — left him an orphan. In the wake of the family's dissolution, Sebastian and his brother, Johann Jacob (1682–1722), were obliged to move to the town of Ohrdruf, located 46 km/28 miles southeast of Eisenach, where they were taken in by their oldest brother, the recently married twenty-four-year-old Johann Christoph, then the organist at St. Michael's Church.
Decades later, in September 1732, Bach may have passed through Eisenach again on his journey from Leipzig to Kassel and arranged at that time for the Eisenach cellist and court painter, Antonio Cristofori (1701–37), to execute the portrait of Bach's wife, Anna Magdalena. The oil painting, once in the possession of C. P. E. Bach, is now lost (Maul 2011). No other visits of Bach to Eisenach are documented.
Telemann and Eisenach
From 1708 to 1712, Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) was active in Eisenach as kapellmeister at the court of Johann Wilhelm III. During this period, he composed and performed several cycles of church cantatas on texts of Erdmann Neumeister (1671–1756). J. S. Bach, then residing in Weimar, may have met Telemann through his cousin, Johann Bernhard Bach. In later years, Bach in Leipzig performed a number of church cantatas that Telemann had composed in 1719/20 for the Eisenach court, which by then he was serving as visiting kapellmeister. During the same period (1716–25) Telemann continued to compose serenatas in homage to the duke, works that would have been performed either at Wilhelmsthal or in the Eisenach town palace.
In December 2012, a small stele was erected on the Georg Philipp Telemann Square, just off the market square. It bears an inscription that reads "Here he created the new form of the Protestant church cantata."
Landmarks
Churches
ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH (GEORGENKIRCHE). Eisenach's principal church, which served as both the city and the court church, is named after and dedicated to the town's patron saint. The most prominent features of the church's exterior — the neo-Baroque tower, the facade's decorations and the portal — were added around 1900. A ducal loge, from which court members attended services, was added in 1717; it is located on the right wall of the chancel. The interior of the three-aisled hall church as it now appears — with three levels of surrounding galleries — mostly dates from the second half of the sixteenth century, after the structure had sustained considerable damage during the Peasants' War (1525). The interior recently (2014) underwent a thorough renovation and now displays a brilliant white and gold color scheme with a salmon-red trim. As part of the renovation, the sarcophagi of the ducal family of Saxony-Eisenach, who were buried in the church's crypt from 1665 to 1741, have been thoroughly restored and are now accessible to the public in a ground-level hall located in the church tower.
The baptismal font at which Johann Sebastian was baptized on March 23, 1685, still survives. It is prominently positioned today at the foot of the altar near the pulpit, the latter dating from 1676.
For well over a century, from 1665 until 1797, beginning with Johann Christoph Bach — the temperamental "uncle" (actually first cousin, once removed) much admired by J. S. Bach and described by him in the Genealogy as "a profound composer" — members of the Bach family held the position of organist at St. George's almost continuously. The organ of St. George's Church, dating from 1696 to 1707, was built by Georg Christoph Stertzing (ca. 1650–1717), following a disposition proposed by Johann Christoph Bach. At the time of its completion, it was the largest organ in Thuringia with four manuals, each with a chromatic range from C to e, 58 stops, and a fully chromatic pedal board compass from C to e. Of Stertzing's instrument, only the original case survives.
Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) was court organist in Eisenach for one year (1677–78), performing at services both in St. George's Church and in the kapelle. In 1680 he stood godfather to Johann Sebastian's short-lived sister, Johanna Juditha (1680–86). Later that decade, as organist at the Prediger (Preachers) Church in Erfurt, Pachelbel was the teacher of Sebastian's older brother, Johann Christoph.
A series of thirteenth-century gravestones lining the walls of the chancel bears witness to the early history of Eisenach: the period of the Ludowingian dynasty (ca. 1030–1247) and the landgraviate of Thuringia (1130–1440). The gravestones include images of Ludwig "the Springer" (r. 1056–1123), founder of the dynasty, and of Ludwig IV "the Saint" (der Heilige, r. 1217–27), husband of Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia (1207–31). These figures play a role in Wagner's Tannhäuser, whose subtitle reads: "The Song Contest on the Wartburg" (Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg), referring to the medieval castle above Eisenach.
ST. GEORGE'S LATIN SCHOOL (LATEINSCHULE ST. GEORGEN), DOMINICAN MONASTERY, MARTIN-LUTHER-GYMNASIUM. From 1692 to 1695, Johann Sebastian Bach attended St. George's Latin School. Two centuries earlier, from 1498 to 1501, Martin Luther (1483–1546) had been a student at the same school, although it was located at the time in a different building. By Bach's time, the Latin School had been moved into a former Dominican monastery, dating from 1230; Luther had urged that it be used as a school. Surviving sections of the old monastery building are now integrated into Eisenach's high school (Martin-Luther-Gymnasium). The monastery church (Predigerkirche) currently houses a museum of sacred sculptures collected from Thuringian churches and monasteries.
The school materials used by Bach included the 1,000-page Eisenachisches Gesangbuch (Eisenach Hymnbook, 1673), which made available to him early on the texts of the extensive repertoire of Lutheran congregational chorales. Their principal musical source, containing over 300 settings of the chorales, was the Cantionale Sacrum (Gotha Cantional, 1646–48). As a student, Bach was no doubt a member of the chorus symphoniacus, which performed polyphonic music at St. George's under the direction of the kantor, Andreas Christian Dedekind (d. 1706).
CEMETERY. Adjacent to the Dominican monastery and just outside the partially surviving city wall is the former town cemetery, now a park. Bach's parents, as well as other family members, were buried here. Although their graves are lost, a marker in the form of a tombstone commemorates their resting place. The park encloses the Church of the Cross (Kreuzkirche), built in 1693 — at just the time that Bach was attending the Latin School. From his vantage point in the school building, he would have witnessed the ongoing construction of the church that was destined to be the venue, shortly after its completion, for the funeral services of both his parents.
JOHANN AMBROSIUS BACH HOUSE. Between 1671 and 1674 Johann Ambrosius and his family lived in a house located at Ritterstraße 11. Known as the Ambrosius-Bach-Haus, it still stands and faces the rear of the stately Bachhaus.
BACH MUSEUM (BACHHAUS). Long erroneously considered Bach's birth house, the low-slung yellow house at Frauenplan 21 dates from the mid-fifteenth century. It was selected in 1907 by the New Bach Society (Neue Bachgesellschaft) as the first official Bach museum. Decades earlier the town had raised funds — partly through benefit concerts by Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, Engelbert Humperdinck and others — to erect a statue of Bach. It was unveiled in 1884 at a ceremony that included a complete performance of the B-minor Mass under the direction of Joseph Joachim (1831–1907). The statue, executed by Adolf von Donndorf (1835–1916), stood at the time in front of St. George's. It was moved in 1938 to its current location, to the right of the Bach Museum, as part of a redesign of the area around the museum.
In entering the exhibition area from the visitor lobby, one passes the original entrance door belonging to Bach's Leipzig apartment in the St. Thomas School. It was salvaged when the Thomas School was demolished in 1902. Expert members of the museum staff offer hourly live demonstrations and performances on five different keyboard instruments in the Instrumentensaal (instrument room). The upper floor of the original house contains period rooms, original artifacts, and instruments organized according to four topics: "A Baroque Life," "Town Musicians," "Wives and Children," "Residential Quarters."
A new wing, inaugurated in 2007 — connected to the original building and designed by Berthold Penkhues, a student of the American architect, Frank Gehry — offers conceptual exhibits illustrated with original pictures and documents and touching on such subjects as the changing images of Bach over time, historiography, biography, and performance practice traditions. The museum stages a special exhibition each year, usually accompanied by a scholarly catalog.
JOHANN CHRISTOPH BACH RESIDENCE. A narrow house with a steeply pitched roof, located a few steps beyond the Dominican Monastery Church on the street An der Münze (At the Mint), was the domicile of the "profound composer." A plaque on the wall commemorates the former St. George's organist — arguably the Bach family's most talented composer before Johann Sebastian.
MARKET SQUARE: COURT RESIDENCES AND TOWN HALL (RATHAUS). The court where both Johann Christoph and Ambrosius Bach were active was housed in a complex of buildings across from St. George's Church at the south side of the main market square. Some had previously existed as private homes. Two buildings from Bach's time still survive in the square: the so-called Residenzhaus, featuring a distinctive round tower, and the Creuznacher Haus, named after an early owner. A new palace, the Town Palace (Stadtschloss), a typical Baroque, four-wing edifice built in the 1740s (and, like its counterpart, incorporating previously existing buildings), occupies the north side of the market square. It now houses the Eisenach tourist information bureau and the Thuringia Museum.
The Town Hall (Rathaus), a Renaissance structure dating from the sixteenth century, occupies the east side of the square. From its tower, Ambrosius Bach, in his role as town musician (Stadtpfeifer) — in collaboration with his apprentices — played trumpet calls twice a day.
Additional Sites
WARTBURG. Located at the crossroads of important commercial routes, Eisenach required the protection of a fortress — hence the construction, by Ludwig I the Springer, of the Wartburg, the ancestral castle. Building began in 1067. The imposing and iconic structure served as a center of power and culture during the ensuing period of the Thuringian landgraviate. Ludwig's grandson, Ludwig II (r. 1140–72), founded the town of Eisenach and added the Wartburg Pallas (royal residence) to the fortress. A gem of late-Romanesque architecture, it functioned as the residence, administrative center, and site of feasts and entertainments. These included recitations by medieval minstrels, among them the most famous minstrel of all: Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230).
In 1521/22 Martin Luther, under the name "Junker Jörg," (Squire Jörg) lived in the castle, shielded from the wrath of the emperor and the church by his sovereign, Elector Frederick III the Wise of Saxony (r. 1486–1525). During this time Luther translated the New Testament into German, rendering the foundational text of the Christian faith accessible to laymen and creating the basis for the Lutheran concept of the "general priesthood of all believers." Convinced of the unequaled power of music to inspire religious feeling, Luther insisted that the laity participate in church services by singing congregational hymns (chorales) in their native language. His educational agenda, accordingly, gave music a role second in importance only to theology in the school curriculum. The high level of musical literacy and competence achieved thereby in Thuringia and Saxony undoubtedly provided the basis for the extraordinary flowering of music in the German-speaking world in the following centuries up through Bach's time and beyond — a cultural phenomenon unthinkable without Luther's transformative influence.
MARTIN LUTHER HOUSE. During his years as a student at the Latin School, 1498–1501, the future Reformer lived in the home of the Cotta family. According to a popular anecdote, they had taken the young man in after Ursula Cotta, wife of the prosperous patrician and Bürgermeister, Conrad Cotta, had been delighted when she heard the young man singing as a member of the school Kurrende, the traditional chorus consisting of indigent boys who made the rounds singing for alms. The spacious half-timbered house, located near the market place, and one of the oldest in Eisenach, is thought to have been their residence.
WILHELMSTHAL PALACE (SCHLOSS WILHELMSTHAL). Located 7 km/4 miles south of Eisenach, the palace was originally a hunting lodge. Later named for Duke Johann Wilhelm III, the architect Johann Mützel (1647–1717) converted the property into a summer residence in the years 1709–15. The cluster of buildings, surrounded by gardens, is notable for its elegant Telemann Hall (1714), one of the oldest surviving freestanding concert halls and currently the venue for occasional concerts.
The Palace ceased to function as a princely residence after Eisenach reverted to Weimar rule in 1741. During Goethe's years of service to the Weimar duke Carl August (r. 1758–1828), he often accompanied the court on its summer sojourns in Wilhelmsthal. In 1777, however, he preferred to escape the courtly turmoil and withdrew to the nearby Wartburg castle.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Exploring the World of J. S. Bach by Robert L. Marshall, Traute M. Marshall. Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by George B. Stauffer, vii,Preface, x,
Introduction, xvi,
Notes on Usage, xxvii,
Maps, xxix,
Part One: J. S. Bach's Principal Residences (Chronological),
Chapter 1. Eisenach 1685–95, 3,
Chapter 2. Ohrdruf 1695–1700, 15,
Chapter 3. Lüneburg 1700–1702, 21,
Chapter 4. Arnstadt 1703–7, 29,
Chapter 5. Mühlhausen 1707–8, 41,
Chapter 6. Weimar 1703, 1708–17, 49,
Chapter 7. Köthen 1717–23, 63,
Chapter 8. Leipzig 1723–50, 73,
Part Two: Towns Certainly or Presumably(•) Visited by J. S. Bach (Alphabetical),
Appendix: Bach's Travels: An Overview, 209,
Bibliography, 215,
Illustration Credits, 227,
Index, 231,