Sources, repertory. 5 page

Bach’s state of health and ability to work must have fluctuated during his last year. He appointed Johann Nathanael Bammler, a former choir prefect at the Thomasschule for whom he provided two excellent references in 1749, to deputize for him as occasion warranted. But in spite of everything Bach was not entirely inactive. In spring 1749 he is known to have corresponded with Count Johann Adam vom Questenberg, apparently about a commission or some other project. Although no details are known, this reaffirms Bach’s obviously well-established connections with some major noble patrons from the area of Bohemia (Count Sporck of Lissa and Kukus), Moravia (Count Questenberg of Jaroměřice) and Silesia (the Haugwitz family). From May 1749 to June 1750 he was engaged in a controversial correspondence about the Freiberg headmaster Biedermann. In May 1749 Biedermann had violently attacked the cultivation of music schools; Bach immediately felt himself called into battle, and among other things he gave a repeat performance of the satirical cantata about the controversy between Phoebus and Pan, no.201. His involvement is understandable, for he must have seen parallels with the state of affairs at the Thomasschule, where the same tendency fuelled Ernesti’s reforms. Bach solicited a rejoinder on the part of C.G. Schröter, a member of Mizler’s society, and even Mattheson joined in, from Hamburg. Once again, the affair throws light on the situation in German schools during the early Enlightenment and Bach’s last years as Thomaskantor. The integration of academic and musical traditions, which had been an institution for centuries, was in the process of turning into an irreconcilable confrontation.

At the end of March Bach underwent an eye operation, performed by the English eye specialist John Taylor (who was later to perform a similar operation on Handel). It was only partly successful, however, and had to be repeated during the second week of April. The second operation too was ultimately unsuccessful, and indeed Bach’s physique was considerably weakened. Yet as late as the beginning of May 1750 Johann Gottfried Müthel could go to Leipzig, stay at Bach’s house and become his last pupil. To what extent regular instruction was possible under these circumstances remains uncertain. In the next two months Bach’s health had so deteriorated that, on 22 July, he had to take his last Communion at home. He died only six days later, on the evening of 28 July, after a stroke. He was buried two or three days later at the cemetery of the Johanniskirche. It is not known what form the funeral ceremony took or what music was performed.

Bach’s wife, Anna Magdalena, who in addition to her domestic tasks was a loyal and industrious collaborator, participating in performances and copying out music, survived him by ten years. She died in abject poverty in 1760. On his death Bach had left a modest estate consisting of securities, cash, silver vessels, instruments – including eight harpsichords, two lute-harpsichords, ten string instruments (among them a valuable Stainer violin), a lute and spinet – and other goods, officially valued at 1122 thaler and 22 groschen; this had to be divided between the widow and the nine surviving children of both marriages. Bach himself had evidently given instructions for the disposition of his musical Nachlass, which is ignored in the official valuation. According to Forkel, the eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann ‘got most of it’ (see §11).

Bach, §III: (7) Johann Sebastian Bach

Iconography.

The oak coffin containing Bach’s remains was exhumed in 1894: the detailed anatomical investigation by Professor Wilhelm His confirmed their identity and showed that Bach was of medium build. From a skull impression Carl Seffner, in 1898, modelled a bust, which shows an undoubted similarity with the only likeness of Bach that can be guaranteed as authentic, that of the Leipzig portraitist Elias Gottlob Haussmann. That portrait exists in two versions, one dating from 1746 (Museum für Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig; property of the Thomasschule) and one of 1748 (William H. Scheide Library, Princeton; see below, fig.4). The earlier, signed ‘E.G. Haussmann pinxit 1746’, was presented to the Thomasschule in 1809 by the then Thomaskantor, August Eberhard Müller. It is not known whence Müller had obtained the painting, but is quite probable that it had remained in the possession of one of Bach’s direct descendants until then. Of these the most likely is Wilhelm Friedemann (unless he had another replica of Haussmann’s painting) or Regina Susanna, who lived in Leipzig until her death in 1809. It is often supposed that the Thomasschule portrait is one that members of Mizler’s society were required by statute to donate to that institution, but that is highly unlikely: Bach probably did not present a portrait, at least in the form of a painting, to the society. With the passage of time the Thomasschule picture was severely damaged and repeatedly painted over. Thorough restoration in 1912–13 returned it more or less to its original condition, but it remains inferior to the excellently preserved replica of 1748. This has a reasonably secure provenance, out of C.P.E. Bach’s estate; it was owned privately for many years by the Jenke family in Silesia and then in England, before being exhibited in public by Hans Raupach in 1950.

The authenticity of an unsigned pastel portrait, probably painted after 1750, allegedly by either Gottlieb Friedrich or Johann Philipp Bach, and handed down in the Meiningen branch of the family, is not altogether certain, and neither is that of a group portrait of musicians, executed around 1733 by Johann Balthasar Denner (now in the Internationale Bachakademie, Stuttgart; a replica, in better condition, is in a private collection in the UK), which shows what may well be Johann Sebastian (with violoncello piccolo) and three of his sons.

Doubt hangs over the authenticity of all the other better-known and much reproduced portraits. The oil by Johann Jacob Ihle, dating from about 1720 and purporting to show Bach as Kapellmeister in Cöthen, comes from the palace at Bayreuth and was identified as a ‘picture of Bach’ only in 1897. But there is no concrete support for that identification, and the portrait’s earlier provenance is obscure; it now hangs in the Bachhaus in Eisenach. The portrait by Johann Ernst Rentsch the elder (now in the Städtisches Museum, Erfurt), allegedly representing Bach at the age of about 30, came to light only in 1907 and has no credible documentation. Many other apocryphal portraits, including the ‘portrait in old age’ discovered by Fritz Volbach in Mainz in 1903 (now in a private collection in Fort Worth), are of the ‘old man with a wig’ type and have nothing to do with Bach.

According to GerberL, probably authentic portraits that no longer survive were once owned by J.C. Kittel (from the estate of the Countess of Weissenfels) and by J.N. Forkel. A pastel from C.P.E. Bach’s collection (not the one referred to above) has not survived. During the 18th and 19th centuries many copies were made of the Haussmann portrait, both in oils and in various types of print; an engraving (1794) by Samuel Gottlieb Kütner, an art student at the Zeichenakademie, Leipzig, along with C.P.E. Bach’s son Johann Sebastian (1748–78), was said by Emanuel himself to be ‘a fair likeness’. The nearest we can nowadays get to his true physiognomy is probably in the 1748 version of Haussmann’s portrait, wherein, as a man in his early 60s, Bach is represented as a learned musician, with a copy of the enigmatic six-part canon bwv1076 in his hand to demonstrate his status (fig.4).

Bach, §III: (7) Johann Sebastian Bach

Sources, repertory.

The earliest catalogue of Bach’s compositions – admittedly a very rough one – was included in the obituary that C.P.E. Bach and J.F. Agricola wrote immediately after Bach’s death but did not publish until 1754. It scarcely provides an adequate idea of the extent of Bach’s works, but it shows that nearly everything printed during Bach’s lifetime has survived to the present day: Cantata no.71, composed for the Mühlhausen town council election in 1708 (but not its counterpart of 1709); the four parts of the Clavier-Übung; the Schemelli Hymnbook; the Musical Offering; the Canonic Variations bwv769; the Schübler chorales; the Art of Fugue; and the canons bwv1074 and 1076. The great majority of Bach’s compositions remained unprinted, and most of those survived. The most serious losses occurred among the cantatas: perhaps more than 100, certainly two cycles of church cantatas and several secular occasional works. The funeral music for Prince Leopold of Cöthen (1729) and the St Mark Passion (1731) are among large-scale vocal works of which only the texts survive. A greater proportion of the music for organ and other keyboard instruments has probably survived than that in any other category. Losses among the orchestral and chamber works are almost impossible to estimate, but may be regarded (on the evidence of existing transcriptions, for example) as substantial.

On the assumption that Bach managed to keep his music together as far as possible during his lifetime, it seems that major losses occurred only on the division of his legacy in 1750, when the manuscripts, especially of the vocal works, were divided between the eldest sons and Bach’s widow. Most of them went to Wilhelm Friedemann, but he, unfortunately, was the least succussful at managing his inheritance; he was compelled for financial reasons to sell them off item by item, and the material is not simply scattered but for the most part lost. Only a few of the items inherited by Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian, including a printed copy of the Musical Offering and the autograph of the organ Prelude and Fugue in B minor bwv544 (signed with Johann Christian’s nickname ‘Christel’), can be traced. C.P.E. Bach’s and Anna Magdalena’s shares were better preserved. Bach’s widow gave her portion (the parts of the cycle of chorale cantatas) to the Thomasschule while most of C.P.E. Bach’s estate passed through Georg Poelchau’s collection into the Berlin Königliche Bibliothek (later the Preussische Staatsbibliothek and now the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). This collection forms the basis of the most important collection of Bach archives. During the 19th century this library acquired further, smaller Bach collections, notably those from the Singakademie and the estates of Forkel, Franz Hauser and Count Voss-Buch (in some of which fragments from W.F. Bach’s inheritance appear).

Besides the original manuscripts – the autograph scores, and parts prepared for performances under Bach’s direction – which, in their essentials, Bach kept by him, many copies were made in the circle of his pupils, particularly of organ and harpsichord music. As many autographs of the keyboard works are lost, this strand is specially significant for the preservation of Bach’s works. In particular, important copies have come down through members of Bach’s family (including the Möllersche Handschrift and the Andreas-Bach-Buch, both compiled by Sebastian’s brother Johann Christoph), through J.G. Walther and through Bach’s pupils Krebs and Kittel. After Bach’s death Breitkopf in Leipzig became a centre for the dissemination of his music (again, primarily the keyboard music). In Berlin a notable Bach collection was made for Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, under the direction of Kirnberger, in which all facets of Bach’s creative output were represented (now D-Bsb Amalien-Bibliothek). These secondary sources have to serve when autograph material is not available – relatively often with the instrumental works (e.g. a large percentage of the organ pieces; the English and French Suites, toccatas, fantasias and fugues for harpsichord; duo and trio sonatas; concertos and orchestral works), more rarely with the vocal ones (e.g. Cantatas nos.106 and 159; motets bwv227–30; and the masses bwv233 and 235).

Research into source materials, notably in conjunction with the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, has proved fruitful. The use of diplomatic research methods has allowed most of the copyists who worked for Bach – and all the important ones – to be identified: ‘Hauptkopist A’ was J. Andreas Kuhnau (b 1703); ‘Hauptkopist B’ was C.G. Meissner (1707–60); ‘Hauptkopist C’ was J. Heinrich Bach (1707–83); ‘Hauptkopist D’ was S.G. Heder (b 1713); ‘Hauptkopist E’ was J.G. Haupt (b 1714); ‘Hauptkopist F’ was J.L. Dietel (1715–73); ‘Hauptkopist G’ was Rudolph Straube (b 1717); and ‘Hauptkopist H’ was J.N. Bammler (1722–84). Papers, inks and binding have been evaluated for the purposes of identification and dating; but above all Bach’s own handwriting, in its various stages of development, has served as the criterion for dating. A far-reaching revision of the chronology of Bach’s works (only some 40 of the originals are dated) has been made possible, leading to a substantial revision of previous conceptions, which were based for the most part on Spitta’s work. The new chronology was established in its important details by Dürr and Dadelsen during the 1950s. Since then it has been variously added to, modified and confirmed. For the vocal works it is now essentially complete; sometimes it is precise to the actual day. With the instrumental works the situation is more complicated, because the original manuscripts are often lost; in consequence, results have been less precise since the history of the secondary sources permits of only vague conclusions about composition dates (for example, copies originating from the circle around Krebs and J.G. Walther point to a date in the Weimar period); this makes it unlikely that any complete and exact chronology will be established for the instrumental works, though a relative one is now largely achieved.

Investigations of source material have also led to the solution of crucial questions of authenticity, particularly in connection with the early works but also affecting some of the later ones. For example, Cantata no.15, hitherto regarded as Bach’s earliest cantata, has now been identified as by Johann Ludwig Bach; similarly, Cantatas nos.53, 189 and 142 have been excised from the list of his works. Some instrumental works, such as bwv835–8, 969–70, 1024 and 1036–7, have been assigned to other composers. On the other hand, an important early organ work, bwv739, has now been authenticated and its manuscript ranks as probably Bach’s earliest extant musical autograph. Completely new finds have been made (bwv1081–120 and Anh.205) and numerous copies by Bach of other composers’ works have come to light; these provide additional information about his repertory and its context.

Bach, §III: (7) Johann Sebastian Bach

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 779