18 Aug 11

Whatever else Bach was, he was a success.  Think of it—he’s at the top of the list in every genre in the Baroque era except for one.  Actually, he brings the whole Baroque age to a climax, after which everybody else says, ‘forget about it, let’s do classicism instead….’

So what didn’t he do?   Opera, which probably isn’t too surprising. 

For one thing, opera was for the most part an Italian genre, and there Bach was, a German guy who didn’t get around that much.  Unlike Handel, another German who owns Baroque opera, and who spent over a decade in London—where the form was much more assessable.

Or maybe it was resources.  Opera consumes money on, well, a grand scale.  And he was a church musician, cranking out the cantatas and the motets as needed for the church season.  Why bother?

Or maybe it was temperament.  Here he is, below—and nothing about that stolid, industrious German suggests a flare for the histrionic art of opera….

                               

OK—so a definite success.  Except that what we all think about when we think of Bach are the compositions—and nobody much knew about them or cared about them when he was alive.  In his lifetime, he was valued as an organist, and for his ability to improvise.

Or so I used to think.  Confession time—most of my music history, despite having studied it in the University, comes from record liners I absorbed in my childhood.  And that was picture—the good industrious Bach, toiling away in his little church, gestating his masterpieces in obscurity.

The truth, as it so often is, may be different.

Wikipedia—which, come to think of it, may be this generation’s equivalent of record jackets—tells a different tale.  An orphan at age ten, he grew up with his uncle, Willem Christoph Bach, whose compositions are still occasionally played today.  And the whole family was musical, so much so that Bach put together a musical genealogy of his family when he was a teenager.

He travelled by foot or coach—citations lacking in Wikipedia—to a famous German music school in Luneburg (don’t ask me the name of the school—it’s German, I’ve forgotten, and my Internet connection has now disappeared….rain in the mountains!)

He probably played the famous Bohm organ at Luneburg, and may have studied with Bohm himself.  He achieved fame as an organist, and got a job as a court musician for seven months in Weimar.  He left, and went to a new gig at Arnstadt.  He had a fine new organ, light duties, and good money…

And then he took a hike.  Not happy with the quality of singers in the choir, he set off on foot for 250 miles to go see the preeminent organist / composer of the day—Buxtehude.   He did well there, and was offered the position Buxtehude held, only saying no because he didn’t want to marry Buxtehude’s daughter—which was part of the deal.

Oh, and while there, he managed to get himself into a brawl….

(OK, he was provoked—but Bach?  Good Herr Bach?)

And then there was the little matter of the fact that he was AWOL—or at least he extended his visit by several months.  Which got him sacked when he eventually DID return to Arnstadt…where he probably quarreled with his patron before then taking off for another post, and then still later to Weimar, which offered him generous pay, and a group of well trained professional musicians to work with.

Was he happy?  Apparently not, because he stirred the pot enough for his new patron, Duke Johann Ernst, to put him…

…in jail for three weeks.

That was after the Duke had canned him, and Bach was disputing the terms.

Dear me—not quite the boy we thought we knew…

The majority of his life—some 26 years—was spent in Leipzig, which was hardly a backwater.  There, Bach became well known, managed to get himself appointed Royal Court Composer to the King of Poland, Augustus III (Saxony being one of the king’s possessions at the time), and to play for the King of Prussia.

He died in 1750, a victim of a botched eye operation to restore his nearly completely failed sight.

So there he is, our man Bach.  Not an uncomplicated character, nor did he live a sedate life.

It’s better, perhaps, not to know too much.  It would be nice to think of him, alone and toiling in his church, just above penury, but going home to the 13 of the 20 children he sired with his two wives.   Going home to a simple meal of meat and potatoes, hearty German beer, and comfortable feather bed.

But enough men have done all that.  What Bach did was incomparably greater.  He became the greatest composer of this or any other age.