Sources, repertory. 3 page

In summer 1722 there was no Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, and Bach was commissioned to write a birthday cantata for the prince; for this he was paid 10 thaler in April and May. The birthday was in August, and payments made during that month presumably refer to the performance. If so, the work, which seems to have disappeared, was scored for two oboes d’amore and ‘other instruments’.

Several didactic works for keyboard belong to the Cöthen period. One is the Clavierbüchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach. 25 leaves are extant, about a third of the original manuscript; there is a kind of title-page, on which Anna Magdalena (probably) wrote the title and the date and Bach (certainly) noted the titles of three theological books. Despite the sceptics, it remains reasonable to suppose that Bach gave the book to his wife early in 1722. It seems to have been filled by 1725. The autograph of Das wohltemperirte Clavier (book 1 of the ‘48’) is dated 1722 on the title-page but 1732 at the end. The writing is uniform in style, and for various reasons it is incredible that he did not finish the manuscript until 1732. This handsome fair copy was preceded by drafts, like those in W.F. Bach’s Clavier-Büchlein (begun in 1720); and some of the movements look earlier than that. Presumably Bach brought them together for convenience, partly to serve as the last step in his keyboard course, partly to exhibit the advantages of equal temperament. As in book 2, no doubt Bach transposed some of the pieces to fill gaps in his key scheme; the odd pairing of the prelude in six flats with the fugue in six sharps suggests that the former was originally in E minor, the latter in D minor.

The title-page was almost certainly the only part of the Orgel-Büchlein that Bach wrote while at Cöthen, but as another educational work it is best mentioned here. It was meant to be a collection of chorale preludes, not only for the ordinary church seasons but also for occasions when such subjects as the Lord’s Prayer, or Penitence, were being emphasized. The paper is of a kind that Bach used, as far as is known, only in 1714. A few items date from about 1740; in the rest, the writing resembles that of the cantatas of 1715–16. Of the 164 preludes Bach allowed for, he completed fewer than 50. Last in this group of works come the Inventions and Sinfonias, whose autograph fair copy is dated ‘Cöthen, 1723’. Its contents had already appeared, in earlier versions and under different titles, in W.F. Bach’s Clavier-Büchlein of 1720.

The story of Bach’s move to Leipzig begins with the death of Kuhnau, Kantor of the Thomasschule there, on 5 June 1722. Six men applied for the post, among them Telemann, who was still remembered for the good work he had done at Leipzig 20 years before. He had been doing a similar job at Hamburg for about a year, and was probably the most famous of German musicians actually living in Germany. One of the Kantor’s duties was to teach Latin. Telemann refused to do that; nevertheless, he was appointed on 13 August. But the Hamburg authorities would not release him, and offered to increase his pay; in November he declined the Leipzig post. At a meeting on 23 November Councillor Platz said that Telemann was no loss; what they needed was a Kantor to teach other subjects besides music. Of the remaining five candidates, three were invited to give trial performances; two dropped out, one because he would not teach Latin. By 21 December two Kapellmeisters had applied, Bach and Graupner. The other candidates were Kauffmann of Merseburg, Schott of the Leipzig Neukirche, and Rolle of Magdeburg. Of the five candidates, Graupner was preferred; he was a reputable musician, and had studied at the Thomasschule. He successfully performed his test (two cantatas) on 17 January 1723. But on 23 March he too withdrew, having been offered more pay at Darmstadt. Meanwhile, Bach had performed his test pieces (Cantatas nos.22 and 23) on 7 February 1723. Rolle and Schott had also been heard, and possibly Kauffmann too. The Princess of Cöthen died on 4 April, too late to affect Bach’s decision. On 9 April the council considered Bach, Kauffmann and Schott. Like Telemann, none of them wished to teach Latin. Councillor Platz said that as the best men could not be got, they must make do with the mediocre. The council evidently resolved to approach Bach, for on 13 April he obtained written permission to leave Cöthen. On 19 April he signed a curious document that reads as if he were not yet free from Cöthen, but could be free within a month; he also said he was willing to pay a deputy to teach Latin. On 22 April the council agreed on Bach, one of them hoping that his music would not be theatrical. On 5 May he came in person to sign an agreement; on 8 and 13 May he was interviewed and sworn in by the ecclesiastical authority; on 15 May the first instalment of his salary was paid; and on 16 May he ‘took up his duties’ at the university church, possibly with Cantata no.59. With family and furniture, he moved in on 22 May, and performed Cantata no.75 at the Nikolaikirche on 30 May. On 1 June, at 8.30 a.m., he was formally presented to the school.

This story has been told in some detail, because it throws light on the circumstances in which Bach worked at Leipzig. To him, the Kantorate was a step downwards in the social scale, and he had little respect for his employers. To the council, Bach was a third-rater, a mediocrity, who would not do what they expected a Kantor to do – teach Latin, as well as organize the city church music. The stage was set for trouble, and in due course trouble came. Councillor Platz on Telemann is curiously echoed by Councillor Stieglitz, ten days after Bach’s death: ‘The school needs a Kantor, not a Kapellmeister; though certainly he ought to understand music’.

Bach, §III: (7) Johann Sebastian Bach

Leipzig, 1723–9.

The position of Kantor at the Thomasschule, held conjointly with that of civic director of music, had been associated with a wealth of tradition since the 16th century. It was one of the most notable positions in German musical life both in this and in the esteem it commanded; and there can be little doubt that the general attractiveness of the position in itself played a part – very likely the decisive part – in Bach’s decision to move from Cöthen to Leipzig. His subsequent remark about the social step down from Kapellmeister to Kantor must be seen in the context of his later disagreements with the Leipzig authorities, as indeed the letter in question (to Erdmann, a friend of his youth, on 28 October 1730) makes unequivocally clear. In any event, Bach was not the only Kapellmeister to apply for the post. The duties were incomparably more varied and demanding than those in Cöthen or Weimar (to say nothing of Mühlhausen or Arnstadt) and more or less corresponded to those undertaken by Telemann in Hamburg. It cannot have been mere chance that Bach wanted to tackle a range of duties comparable with those of his friend. Above all he must have preferred the greater economic and political stability of a commercial metropolis governed democratically to the uncertainties of the court of an absolute prince, where personal whim often held sway. The university – the foremost in the German-speaking world at the time – must have been another special attraction in the eyes of a father of growing-up sons.

The ‘Cantor zu St. Thomae et Director Musices Lipsiensis’ was the most important musician in the town; as such, he was primarily responsible for the music of the four principal Leipzig churches – the Thomaskirche, the Nikolaikirche, the Matthäeikirche (or Neukirche) and the Petrikirche – as well as for any other aspects of the town’s musical life controlled by the town council. In carrying out his tasks he could call above all on the pupils of the Thomasschule, the boarding-school attached to the Thomaskirche, whose musical training was his responsibility, as well as the town’s professional musicians. Normally the pupils, about 50 to 60 in number, were split up into four choir classes (Kantoreien) for the four churches. The requirements would vary from class to class: polyphonic music was required for the Thomaskirche, Nikolaikirche (the civic church) and Matthäeikirche, with figural music only in the first two; at the Petrikirche only monodic chants were sung. The first choir class, with the best 12 to 16 singers, was directed by the Kantor himself, and sang alternately in the two principal churches, the Nikolaikirche and Thomaskirche; the other classes were in the charge of prefects, appointed by Bach, who would be older and therefore more experienced pupils of the Thomasschule.

Musical aptitude was a decisive factor in the selection of pupils for the Thomasschule, and it was the Kantor’s responsibility to assess and train them. This was furthered by the daily singing lessons, mostly given by the Kantor. There was also instrumental instruction for the ablest pupils, which Bach had to provide free of charge but was thus enabled to make good any shortage of instrumentalists for his performances. Indeed, the number of professional musicians employed by the town (four Stadtpfeifer, three fiddlers and one apprentice) was held throughout his period of office at the same level as had obtained during the 17th century. For further instrumentalists Bach drew on the university students. In general the age of the Thomasschule pupils ranged between 12 and 23. Remembering that voices then broke at the age of 17 or 18, it is clear that Bach could count on solo trebles and altos who already had some ten years’ practical experience – an ideal situation, impossible in boys’ choirs today.

As far as church music was concerned, Bach’s duties centred on the principal services on Sundays and church feasts, as well as some of the more important subsidiary services, especially Vespers. In addition, he could be asked for music for weddings and funerals, for which he would receive a special fee. Such additional income was important to Bach, as his salary as Kantor of the Thomaskirche and director of music came to only 87 thaler and 12 groschen (besides allowances for wood and candles, and payments in kind, such as corn and wine). In fact, including payments from endowments and bequests as well as additional income, Bach received annually more than 700 thaler. Further, he had the use of a spacious official residence in the south wing of the Thomasschule, which had been renovated at a cost of more than 100 thaler before he moved in in 1723. Inside the Kantor’s residence was the so-called ‘Komponirstube’ (‘composing room’), his professional office containing his personal music library and the school’s. The buildings of the old Thomasschule were, scandalously, demolished in 1903 to make room for what is now the senior minister’s quarters; it was also then that the west façade of the Thomaskirche was rebuilt in the neo-Gothic style.

During his early Leipzig years, Bach involved himself in church music with particular thoroughness and extreme energy. This activity centred on the ‘Hauptmusic’ composed for Sundays and church feasts. The performance of a polyphonic cantata, with a text related as a rule to the Gospel for the day, was a tradition inherited from previous Kantors. Even so, Bach engaged on a musical enterprise without parallel in Leipzig’s musical history: in a relatively short time he composed five complete (or nearly complete) cycles of cantatas for the Church year, with about 60 cantatas in each, making a repertory of roughly 300 sacred cantatas. The first two cycles were prepared immediately, for 1723–4 and 1724–5; the third took rather longer, being composed between 1725 and 1727. The fourth, to texts by Picander, appears to date from 1728–9, while the fifth once again must have occupied a longer period, possibly extending into the 1740s. The established chronology of Bach’s vocal works makes it clear that the main body of the cantatas was in existence by 1729, and that Bach’s development of the cantata was effectively complete by 1735. The existence of the fourth and fifth cycles has been questioned, because of their fragmentary survival compared with the almost complete survival of the first, second and third; but until a positive argument for their non-existence can be put forward the number of five cycles, laid down in the obituary of 1754, must stand. Compared with the high proportion of Bach’s works of other kinds that are lost (orchestral and chamber music, for instance), the disappearance of about 100 cantatas would not be exceptional. (The preservation of Bach’s works is discussed below, §11; see §15 for the correspondence of excess chorales in the Breitkopf collection of 1784–7 to the number of lost cantatas.)

The first cycle begins on the first Sunday after Trinity 1723 with Cantata no.75, which was performed ‘mit gutem applausu’ at the Nikolaikirche, followed by no.76, for the second Sunday after Trinity, performed at the Thomaskirche. The two largest churches in Leipzig are both Gothic in style, and in Bach’s time they contained stone and wooden galleries. The choir lofts were on the west wall of the nave above the council gallery. The organs too were in the choir lofts (the ‘Schüler-Chor’): the Nikolaikirche and the Thomaskirche each had a three-manual organ with 36 and 35 stops respectively (Oberwerk, Brustwerk, Rückpositiv, Pedal). The Thomaskirche had a second organ, fitted to the east wall as a ‘swallow’s nest’, with 21 stops (Oberwerk, Brustwerk, Rückpositiv, Pedal); this fell into dilapidation and was demolished in 1740. The organs were always played before cantata performances, during which they would provide continuo accompaniment; they were played by the respective organists at each church; during Bach’s term of office these were Christian Heinrich Gräbner (at the Thomaskirche until 1729), J.G. Görner (at the Nikolaikirche until 1729, then at the Thomaskirche) and Johann Schneider (at the Nikolaikirche from 1729). Bach himself, who had not held a regular appointment as an organist since his time in Weimar, directed the choir and the orchestra, and would not normally be playing the organ. However, he frequently must have directed his church ensemble from the harpsichord, as is documented for the performance of bwv198 in 1727. At any rate, the harpsichord was often, if not regularly, employed as a continuo instrument in addition to the organ.

The cantata was an integral part of the Leipzig Lutheran liturgy. It followed immediately on the reading from the Gospel, preceding the Creed and the sermon (the second part of a two-part cantata would follow the sermon, ‘sub communione’). Apart from organ playing and the congregational singing of hymns, selected by the Kantor, the other musical constituent of the liturgy was the introit motet, which would be taken from the Florilegium Portense (1618) by Erhard Bodenschatz, a collection mainly drawn from the 16th century (Lassus, Handl etc.), and was performed a cappella with harpsichord continuo. Services began at 7 a.m. and lasted three hours; this allowed a mere half-hour for the cantata, and Bach rarely overstepped this duration. The normal performing forces consisted of some 16 singers and 18 instrumentalists; the precise number varied according to the work, but it was rare for the total number of singers and players to fall below 25 or to exceed 40 (the figure required on exceptional occasions, like the St Matthew Passion, which demanded two Kantoreien and double the normal number of instrumentalists). Ordinarily the performing forces consisted of four groups: pupils from the Thomasschule (the first Kantorei); the eight salaried town musicians, until 1734 headed by J.G. Reiche and thereafter by J.C. Gentzmer; University students (principally Bach’s private pupils); and additional assistants (probably regularly including one or two paid soloists) and guests.

Bach took up his additional duties as musical director to the university, a post traditionally held by the Thomaskantor, in summer 1723, perhaps as early as 16 May, with the performance of Cantata no.59 in the university church, the Paulinerkirche, but in any event by 9 August, when he performed the Latin Ode bwv Anh.20 (now lost) at the university’s festivities marking the birthday of Duke Friedrich II of Saxe-Gotha. The major part of his duties for the university comprised the musical provisions for the so-called quarter-day orations and the ‘old’ services in the Paulinerkirche, employing pupils from the Thomasschule and town musicians on the four major festivals of Christmas Day, Easter Day, Whit Sunday and Reformation Day; Bach was paid 2 thaler and 6 groschen on each occasion. He carried out the most important of his civic duties for the first time on 30 August 1723, when he introduced Cantata no.119 as part of the annual celebration of the change of town council. The enormous scope of Bach’s new responsibilities, as well as his vast workload, may be gauged from the fact that the day before (14th Sunday after Trinity) Cantata no.25 was heard for the first time, and the first performance of no.138 (for the 15th Sunday) was soon to follow.

September 1723 saw the start of Bach’s protracted wrangle with the university. In a written request for payment, he laid claim to the traditional right of the Thomaskantor to be responsible for the ‘old’ services and the quarter-day orations. The university, however, wanted to combine these duties with responsibility for the ‘new’ services (normal Sundays and holy days), which it had in April 1723 entrusted to J.G. Görner, organist of the Nikolaikirche, together with the title of ‘Musikdirektor’. On 28 September Bach’s request was turned down, and he was paid only half the fee. He would not give in, and turned to the Elector of Saxony in Dresden with three petitions. Following the intervention of the Dresden court, the university decided to put Görner in charge of the ‘new’ services only, and awarded Bach his traditional rights with payment as before. Thereafter, as the regular fee payments prove, Bach retained responsibility for the ‘old’ services and quarter-day orations until 1750.

About 2 November 1723 Bach inaugurated a new organ (which he had previously appraised) in Störmthal, outside Leipzig, with Cantata no.194. Then, from the second Sunday in Advent to the fourth, came his first break in the weekly routine of composing and performing cantatas; in Leipzig, unlike Weimar, this period was a ‘tempus clausum’, as was Lent up to and including Palm Sunday. On Christmas Day figural music returned, in a particularly splendid manner, with Cantata no.63 and the D major Sanctus bwv238 at the main service and the Magnificat bwv243a at Vespers; these were Bach’s first large-scale compositions on Latin texts such as were customary in Leipzig on major feast days. At this point in the calendar his duties were unimaginably heavy, yet he carried them out with incomparable creative vigour, producing Cantatas nos.40 and 64 for the feasts of St Stephen and St John the Evangelist, no.190 for New Year, no.153 for the Sunday after New Year (2 January 1724), no.65 for Epiphany (6 January) and no.154 for the following Sunday (9 January); after that, normal weekly services were resumed.

During the next ‘tempus clausum’ Bach composed his first large-scale choral work for Leipzig, the St John Passion, first performed at Vespers in the Nikolaikirche on Good Friday (7 April). This Vespers service had been introduced specially for the performance of a Passion only in 1721; in that year Kuhnau’s St Mark Passion (now lost) had been performed. Performances alternated annually between the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche, an arrangement to which Bach strictly adhered. There is no documentary evidence of a Passion performance under Bach’s direction on Good Friday 1723, from which the older dating of the St John Passion derives. The work had several further performances, each time in a greatly altered version (see §14): on 30 March 1725 (in a second version adapted to the annual cycle of cantatas), probably on 11 April 1732 (in a third version) and on 4 April 1749 (fourth version); in about 1739 Bach undertook a revision of the work which remained unfinished.

With the first Sunday after Trinity 1724 (11 June) Bach began his second cycle; these were chorale cantatas. Not least because it included works composed at Weimar, the first cycle had been thoroughly heterogeneous in character, both musically and textually, but Bach gave the new cycle a unifying concept, with all the works based on texts, and their melodies, from the hymnbook. Unfortunately this series of chorale cantatas, beginning with no.20, O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, and its programmatic overture, was interrupted early in 1725 and Bach did not complete the cycle. On 25 June he was in Gera for the dedication of the organ at the Salvatorkirche. In July he went to Cöthen with Anna Magdalena for a guest appearance as a performer; he had retained the title of Court Kapellmeister there, and it lapsed only on the death of Prince Leopold in 1728. There is evidence of further visits to Cöthen, with Bach performing alongside his wife (who sang as a soprano), in December 1725 and January 1728. During 1725 Bach started to prepare a second Clavierbüchlein for Anna Magdalena. On 23 February 1725 he performed Cantata no.249a at the Weissenfels court for the birthday of Duke Christian; this was the original version of the Easter Oratorio bwv249, first given at Leipzig the following 1 April. No.249a represents the beginning of a long-standing collaboration with the fluent Leipzig poet Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander), the chief supplier of texts for Bach’s later Leipzig vocal works.

Bach produced congratulatory cantatas for two Leipzig University professors in May and August (nos.36c and 205). On 19–20 September he played on the Silbermann organ at the Dresden Sophienkirche before the local court musicians, thus continuing his practice of giving virtuoso organ performances on concert tours – and undoubtedly in Leipzig, too, although he no longer held a post as organist. His favourite instrument in Leipzig was evidently the great organ of the Paulinerkirche built by Johann Scheibe in 1716, with 53 stops, three manuals (Hauptwerk, Seitenwerk and Brustwerk) and pedals; Bach had been one of its examiners in 1717. Early in 1726 – during the third cycle, which had started in June 1725 – there was an interruption of Bach’s production of cantatas, for reasons that remain obscure: between February and September 1726 he performed 18 cantatas by his cousin (6) Johann Ludwig Bach (3/72). In particular, between Purification and the fourth Sunday after Easter, he performed none of his own music at the main Sunday services; even on Good Friday he used a work by another composer, Reinhard Keiser’s St Mark Passion, which he had performed once before, in Weimar. Difficulties with performers may have been partly responsible; the instrumental forces required in J.L. Bach’s cantatas are more modest than those Bach himself normally used. Even apart from this, however, the pattern of Bach’s cantata production – as far as can be judged from the available material – changed during the third cycle; there are considerable gaps as early as the period after Trinity Sunday 1725, and it seems that the third cycle, unlike the first two, extended over two years. In the gaps, cantatas by other composers and further performances of Bach’s own works were given.

Michaelmas 1726 saw the appearance in print of Partita no.1, under the general title of Clavier-Übung: with this Bach began his activity, later to increase in scope, as a publisher of keyboard music. Partita no.1, published singly, was followed by nos.2 and 3 (1727), no.4 (1728), no.5 (1730) and no.6 (1730 or 1731; no copy is known). Evidently the series was originally planned to comprise seven partitas. There are early versions of nos.3 and 6 in the second book for Anna Magdalena of 1725. Bach sent no.1, with a dedicatory poem, to the Cöthen court as a form of congratulation on the birth of an heir, Prince Emanuel Ludwig (born 12 September 1726). In December 1726, on the installation of Dr Gottlieb Kortte as university professor, Bach produced a more sizable occasional work, the dramma per musica, Cantata no.207.

In 1727 Bach composed two extremely important works. The St Matthew Passion, for double choir to a libretto by Picander, was performed on Good Friday (11 April; there is evidence that it was repeated in the Thomaskirche in 1729, 1736 and 1742; see §14). The other work was the Trauer Ode (Cantata no.198), performed in October at a memorial ceremony, planned by the university, on the death of the Electress Christiane Eberhardine, who had remained a Protestant when her husband, August the Strong of Saxony, converted to Roman Catholicism. For this Bach was commissioned to set a text by the Leipzig professor of poetry, Johann Christoph Gottsched. This became a somewhat controversial affair, as the university director of music, Görner, felt he had been slighted. Bach however retained the commission and performed the two parts of his work, ‘composed in the Italian manner’, directing it from the harpsichord, in the university church, on 17 October. Between 7 September 1727 and 6 January 1728 there was a period of national mourning, with no other musical performances.

In September 1728 a brief dispute with the church authorities flared up. The sub-deacon, Gaudlitz, demanded that he himself should choose the hymns to be sung before and after the sermon at Vespers; as it was usual for the Kantor to select these hymns, Bach felt that his rights had been encroached upon. The dispute was settled in the sub-deacon’s favour. Bach must have seen this as a setback, for once again his grievances had not been met; but his relations with the ecclesiastical authorities were on the whole good throughout his time at Leipzig. His relations with the town council and the head teachers of the Thomasschule went less smoothly, and were to become even more difficult in the 1730s. Documents dealing with the various disputes show Bach to have been a stubborn defender of the prerogatives of his office who frequently reacted with excessive violence and was often to blame if there was a negative outcome. It would be wrong, however, to draw hasty inferences about Bach’s personality and his relations with the world about him. It is unfortunate that about a half of Bach’s surviving correspondence is concerned with generally trivial but often protracted disputes over rights. This material is extant in public archives, while utterances of kinds not appropriate to archival preservation, which might have complemented this rather austere view of his personality, have survived in only small quantity. From Bach’s behaviour during these disputes it can be seen that, under pressure, he would defy bureaucratic regulations in order to preserve his independence and to clear himself an artistic breathing-space. His taking over of the collegium musicum in 1729, to be directed under his own management, must be seen in this context, as it represents something more than an incidental biographical fact.

Early in 1729 Bach spent some time at the Weissenfels court in connection with the birthday celebrations in February of Duke Christian, with whom he had long been associated. On this occasion the title of court Kapellmeister of Saxe-Weissenfels was conferred on him (his Cöthen title had lately expired); he retained the title until 1736. At the end of March he went to Cöthen to perform the funeral music for his former employer; only the text survives of this large-scale work in four parts (bwv244a), but much of its music can be reconstructed as it consists of parodies of bwv198 and 244. On 15 April (Good Friday) the St Matthew Passion was performed again at the Thomaskirche. On the second day of Whit week (6 June), what was probably the last cantata of the Picander cycle was performed, no.174. The manuscript, uniquely for Bach, is dated (‘1729’); perhaps this represents some sort of final gesture after a heavy, six-year involvement in cantata composition.

Beside the production of cantatas, Passions and other vocal occasional works, both sacred and secular, instrumental music retreated to the background during Bach’s first years in Leipzig. Apart from some keyboard and chamber works (including the sonatas for harpsichord and violin bwv1014–19) there appear to have been only a relatively small number of organ works (preludes and fugues, trio sonatas) which are hard to date individually but will have been primarily connected with Bach’s activities as a recitalist.

In June 1729 an invitation to visit Leipzig was delivered to Handel, then in Halle, by Wilhelm Friedemann, in place of his father who was ill at the time; but nothing came of it. Thus Bach’s second and last attempt to establish contact with his highly esteemed London colleague met with failure. Significantly, in both cases the initiative was taken by Bach.

Bach, §III: (7) Johann Sebastian Bach

Leipzig, 1729–39.

On his appointment as director of the collegium musicum, decisive changes came about in Bach’s activities in Leipzig; and at the same time new possibilities were opened up. The collegium had been founded by Telemann in 1702 and had most recently been directed by G.B. Schott (who left to become Kantor at Gotha in March 1729); it was a voluntary association of professional musicians and university students that gave regular weekly (and during the fair season even more frequent) public concerts. Such societies played an important part in the flowering of bourgeois musical culture in the 18th century, and with his highly reputed ensemble, in such an important commercial centre as Leipzig, Bach made his own contribution to this. He took over the direction before the third Sunday after Easter – in other words, by April 1729 – and retained it in the first place until 1737; he resumed it for a few more years in 1739. He must have had strong reasons for wanting to take on this fresh area of work in addition to his other duties. To some extent it is possible to guess those reasons. For six years he had immersed himself in the production of sacred music, and he had created a stock of works sufficient to supply the requirements of his remaining time in office. In his efforts to provide sacred music that was at once fastidious and comprehensive he had met with little appreciation from the authorities, and no additional facilities (for example, much needed professional instrumentalists) had been placed at his disposal: it would be understandable if he now felt resigned to the situation. Further, as a former Kapellmeister, he must have been attracted by the prospect of working with a good instrumental ensemble, and another important incentive must have been the thought that, as director of the collegium, he would be able to establish a wholly independent musical praxis, in accordance with his own ideas. It is not known whether the new position brought him some additional income.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 745