J S Bach: piety and pleasure
When the Bach family arrived in Leipzig in May 1723, they became residents of a city that was one of the most cosmopolitan in Germany. Although Leipzig had long had an international character from its trade-fairs, at the start of the eighteenth century it underwent a particular transformation. The medieval fortifications were replaced by elegant gardens and promenades, while imposing houses were built in the town centre for the leading merchants. The citizens were renowned for their sense of fashion, their love of parties, and their fine food and drink. From the 1700s onwards the French courtly style was all the rage, with numerous Leipzigers emulating the manners and lifestyle of the galant homme. The city had numerous French tutors, dancing-masters and wig-makers, such was the desire of the residents to emulate the galant manner. Indeed Leipzig was so Frenchified at this time that it was known as ‘the little Paris’.
The pursuit of galant pleasures was centred upon Leipzig’s coffee houses. Not only was the beverage regarded as exotic and luxurious; etiquette manuals commended the drinking of coffee as a way to socialise and gain refinement. In Leipzig the coffee houses also had a range of newspapers and novels for their customers to read, as well as offering an Academie de Jeux that included such amusements as billiards, chess and draughts. Music provided a background to these entertainments, in the form of twice-weekly concerts at Zimmermann’s coffee house by the Collegium Musicum, which Johann Sebastian Bach directed between 1729 and 1741.
Yet despite Leipzig’s embrace of galanteries, it was also a deeply religious place, proud of its role in the Reformation, and throughout the eighteenth century it was dubbed a ‘principality of churches’. Every Sunday chains were drawn across the roads to halt all traffic, and the bells at the churches summoned the citizenry to the morning services. Many inhabitants owned a small library of devotional books, and all families were encouraged to gather together for daily worship as a ‘house church’. There was also a religious backlash against the craze for galant habits. Some theologians and clerics saw the French fashions as a cause of moral degeneration, while others worried that behind the outer charm and sophistication of the galant homme lay inner rottenness, hypocrisy and spiritual emptiness.
During his time in Leipzig, Bach would have daily encountered both the world of piety and that of the galant. One moment he might be leading a concert for the beau monde or enjoying his beaker of coffee and his pipe; the next, he might be directing the music at the funeral of a Leipziger, or contemplating the imminent death of one of his newborn children. Worldly pleasure would have gone hand-in-hand with spiritual reflection in his life. This duality of the religious and secular also pervades tonight’s concert, in which diverting secular pieces are interspersed with harrowing church cantatas.
Bach’s Suite No.1 in C major BWV1066 represents the musical genre closely associated with the galant lifestyle. As a series of stylised dances, the orchestral suite would appeal to any galant homme who had been training with a dancing-master and who would recognise the appropriate dance-steps and gestures for each movement. The suite was also a stereotypically French genre, devised originally at the court of Louis XIV and then emulated by countless small German courts eager to be the next Versailles. Bach’s C major suite has a strongly French flavour in the scoring, where two oboes and bassoons are added to the string orchestra; this wind trio often features as an independent sound in the middle of the Ouverture and in several of the dances. There are also archetypically French dance-movements such as the Passepied and Bourrée, although other movements include a Forlane (a Venetian dance popularised at the French court) and a vigorous Italian-style Gavotte. It is often supposed that Bach wrote the piece for the court of Cöthen, where he worked before coming to Leipzig; but the only manuscript dates from his years in Leipzig, so he certainly performed it in the city.
Also intended for Leipzig entertainments were Bach’s numerous harpsichord concertos, written in the 1730s for concerts by the Collegium Musicum at Zimmermann’s coffee house. Bach adapted most of his keyboard concertos from existing pieces, and his Concerto in D major for harpsichord BWV1054 is no exception, being derived from the well-known Concerto in E major for violin BWV1042. The violin original is already a virtuosic work, with an outpouring of semiquavers on the solo line; in the keyboard version, extra roulades are added to fit under the harpsichordist’s fingers. Such intense figuration tends to make the harpsichord version less extrovert: instead it seems as if the keyboardist is sharing his ebullience with a small string ensemble. In Zimmermann’s concerts it is possible that the keyboard soloist was one of Bach’s sons, Friedemann or Emanuel, while Sebastian himself may have played the viola in the string accompaniment.
Another side of Leipzig life in the eighteenth century is represented by the two cantatas in tonight’s programme. Because the church was so central to everyday routine, there was rarely a great divide between ecclesiastical and secular life. People behaved in much the same ways in church as they might elsewhere, gossiping in the pews or ostentatiously wearing their most fashionable clothes to the service. Indeed, church musicians used secular styles and dance rhythms in their compositions, justifying such practices with Luther’s advice that ‘the devil’s best tunes’ should be harnessed to advance the Gospel. Yet at the same time, preachers and theologians attacked the sinfulness, vanity and hypocrisy that they saw epitomised in the galant lifestyle, as did the librettists for Bach’s cantatas. When setting such librettos, Bach’s task was to make a musical depiction of worldly life so harrowing that sinners would turn to God’s path of salvation.
Human sin is the single theme of the cantata ‘Widerstehe doch der Sünde’ BWV54. In the first aria the string parts are serpentine and always enter on dissonance, as if to represent the venom of Satan mentioned in the text. The ensuing recitative lingers on the awfulness of sin, comparing it to ‘Sodom’s apples’; here again is the Baroque contrast between the outer ‘goldenness’ and inner rottenness. The final aria is a claustrophobic fugue, setting resolute chromatic lines to the words ‘Who does sin’. Bach wrote this concise cantata in 1714, during his time at the Weimar court. Like most of his other Weimar cantatas, it is scored for chamber forces, in this case using a countertenor as the only vocalist. Although the piece was probably intended to shock Bach’s congregations into renouncing their worldly ways, as a modern-day audience we tend instead to marvel at the composer’s imagination and skill in this portrayal of sin.
A similar disdain for the earthly world is found in the cantata ‘Geist und Seele wird verwirret’ BWV35, although here that disdain is merely the starting-point for a redemptive narrative that embraces God and salvation as the answer to worldly cares. The piece was written for 8 September 1726, the twelfth Sunday after Trinity, when the set Gospel reading was the story of Jesus healing a deaf and dumb man. Musically, the cantata is remarkable for its scoring for alto soloist, organ obbligato and orchestra. The organ obbligato is a feature of several cantatas from the autumn of 1726, and was probably played by Bach himself; the cantatas in Leipzig were typically performed in the organ loft, so it was a logical step to incorporate the organ as a solo instrument. The cantata is in two halves, each introduced by extended instrumental movements where the keyboard soloist is prominent; the opening movement, indeed, might well be from a lost concerto. The first aria, however, is an edgy siciliano, with feverish interpolations by the keyboardist. The text speaks of earthly disbelief and bewilderment at God’s miracles. In subsequent movements a gradual reconciliation occurs between God and man, as the believer accepts God’s love and looks forward to the paradise of heaven. The music changes too, with the second aria gaining a fluent ritornello, while the final aria is a celebratory minuet.
Given that the religious messages of Bach’s cantatas are tied so closely to his time, it is a measure of his achievement that his church music works so well in present-day concerts. Many concertgoers can enjoy the cantatas purely for their rich musical invention and imaginative scoring, irrespective of their religious context. Yet it can only heighten our appreciation of Bach’s achievement if we also understand the world in which he was working: the everyday Leipzig duality between piety and galant pleasures gave rise to some of the most timeless music ever written.
This formed the programme note for a series of UK concerts by the Academy of Ancient Music with director Masaaki Suzuki in October 2004.