Chapter Eleven
J. S. Bach’s Dresden Trip and His Earliest Serenatas for Köthen
Gregory Butler
The period in December 1717 between J. S. Bach’s dismissal from his post as organist and concertmaster at the ducal court in Weimar and his arrival in Köthen to take up his new position as Kapellmeister has been a source of speculation for Bach scholars for some time. It is clear from documentary evidence that Bach was released on December 2 after having been held for four weeks under house arrest in the Landrichter Stube in Weimar.1 We next find him in Leipzig on December 17 when he signed his report after examining the newly completed Scheibe organ in the Paulinerkirche2 and on December 18 when he received his honorarium from the university “wegen Übernahme und Probirung der Orgel in der Pauliner Kirche.”3 We know that Bach had arrived in Köthen by December 29, on which date “der neu angenommene Capellmeister” received his pay for the month of January 1718 along with his back pay from August 1 to December 31, 1717, and a bonus for the conclusion of negotiations surrounding his hiring on August 7, 1717.4 The documentary evidence raises a number of questions. When exactly did Bach leave Weimar after his release? Did he go directly to Köthen and, if so, exactly when did he arrive?
These questions are important in that they bear on the music performed for Prince Leopold’s birthday on December 10, 1717. One piece of documentary evidence suggests that Bach did arrive in Köthen in advance of the prince’s birthday. This is the record of a rent payment by the court to Bach for the use of his house “vor das Collegium Musicum.” The twelve thalers “Hauszinß” covered the period of a year from December 10, 1717 to December 10, 1718.5 A payment made by the court on December 12, 1717, for “Musicalische Sachen zum Gebuhrts Tage zu Binden”6 is surely an indication that music was performed by the Kapelle for the prince’s birthday, but that music may not have been composed by Bach. Not surprisingly, the entry in the accounts gives no indication either of the composer or of the nature of the music performed on this occasion.
Köthen was reachable from Weimar in two days by coach, so if Bach had left immediately after his release the move could have been completed by December 5 at the earliest. But if Bach was involved in preparations for the move after his release and was travelling with his family, as Christoph Wolff has suggested,7 the transition to Köthen may have been more protracted. In addition, having music copied immediately upon his arrival in Köthen and rehearsing a work on the day of its performance at court, a scenario hinted at by the rent payment by the court to Bach, could have been a problem. If Bach had arrived in Köthen during the first week of December, he would no doubt have wanted to, and would even have been expected to, direct a performance of his music for the prince’s birthday. But given the time constraints, how ambitious could the music performed have been when, with birthday festivities only a few days away, the composer would have had so little time to prepare? Alfred Dürr has suggested that Bach may have resorted to presenting a less ambitious work needing less rehearsal time on this occasion. He has singled out as a candidate the birthday serenata Durchlautster Leopold, BWV 173a, for which there is no indication of the year of performance.8
The problem of severe time constraint also comes into play regarding the composition and performance of a New Year’s serenata three weeks later on January 1, 1718. Before Christmas, Bach travelled to Leipzig at the invitation of the university to examine the new organ in the Paulinerkirche recently completed by Johann Scheibe on November 4. We know from a letter written to the university on January 28, 1718, by the organist at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig and overseer of the building of the Scheibe organ, Daniel Vetter, that Bach “das werck . . . am 16. Decembr. 1717. examiniren müßen.”9 Bach thus would have arrived in Leipzig no later than December 15, and if he left Leipzig immediately after having received his honorarium on December 18 could have arrived back in Köthen a day or two later, less than a week before Christmas. Could Bach, then, have composed and rehearsed a new serenata for New Year’s in ten days? He certainly maintained this sort of schedule later in Leipzig, so such a scenario is not out of the question. On the other hand, he may not have left Leipzig immediately upon receiving his honorarium for the examination of the organ, but may have remained there afterward for a short time. If so, he would have had to have a previously composed work in reserve for the approaching New Year’s performance. Certainly, thus far, no work by Bach can be documented as having been performed on January 1, 1718.
Going back to BWV 173a and its possible performance on December 10, 1717, one movement, the bass aria “Leopolds Votrefflichkeiten,” is of particular interest. One uses the term “aria” here advisedly, for the movement is headed simply “Vivace” and, as Dürr notes, it is “auffallend kurz” and “formal offen” (peculiarly short and formally open).10 His reference to its “freie Dacapowiederholung” (free da-capo repeat) is somewhat misleading, in that any sign of wholesale repetition of a tonally stable, tonic-centered A section at the conclusion is absent; furthermore, at twenty-nine measures in length, the movement is far too short for such a designation. In fact, the movement is tonally open throughout and reminds one of nothing more than the B section to a da capo aria in which the A section is in D major. Besides the express exclusion of the two flutes made clear by Bach’s notation “Baßo è Stromenti. senza gli Traversieri,” the scoring is unique in another, more important, respect. In passing, Dürr notes “die fast stets Unisono geführte Violinen” (the almost invariable unisons of the prominent violins). Except for three brief ritornello segments (mm. 10–12, 22–23, 28–29) with their normal four-voice ripieno string scoring, violin 1 and 2 are doubled at the unison in a highly characteristic three-part ripieno string scoring.
This same scoring is very much in evidence in another birthday serenata from Bach’s first year in Köthen, Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück, BWV 66a. Given that its text was published by the Halle poet Christian Friedrich Hunold in 1719, the date of its performance has routinely been given as December 10, 1718. Neither autograph score nor parts for BWV 66a have survived, but a parody of the work has. This is the cantata Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen, BWV 66, first performed on the second day of Easter, April 10, 1724. Movement one, for chorus, and movement three, the bass aria, both include ripieno strings, and in both, three-voice ripieno string scoring in which violin 1 and 2 double each other at the unison is dominant. In the bass aria, it is only during pedal passages (mm. 50–56, 128–30, 138–44, 150–52, 167–74) that the ripieno strings adopt the normal four-voice ripieno string scoring. Otherwise, first and second violins double one another at the unison. In the chorus, three-voice ripieno string scoring is only one of a number of scoring options adopted by Bach in a kaleidoscopic array of scoring possibilities.
There is one aria from BWV 66a missing in BWV 66: movement six, the aria “Beglücktes Land von süßer Ruh und Stille.” Joshua Rifkin has argued convincingly that a parody of this omitted number has survived as the alto aria, “Wo zwei und drei versammlet sind,” movement three of the cantata Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats, BWV 42, first performed on the Second Sunday after Easter, April 8, 1725.11 As he demonstrates, both the scansion and affect of the two texts are virtually a perfect match. Further, the scoring of BWV 42 for ripieno strings, two oboes, bassoon, and basso continuo fits with that of BWV 66a. More important for this study, however, is the “Sinfonia” which opens BWV 42. Like the alto aria, it is clear from Bach’s autograph score that it was copied from a Vorlage, and Rifkin maintains that this sinfonia originally opened the serenata. In this movement, when the bass is silent, violin 1, 2, and viola triple each other at the unison. In passages in which the two oboes double each other at the unison, in pedal passages, and in the approaches to cadences, the upper strings are independent, appearing in normal four-voice ripieno string scoring. But for most of the movement, violin 1 and 2 double one another at the unison. In short, one encounters the same treatment of the ripieno strings in this sinfonia as one does in the two movements from BWV 66a discussed above. Since ripieno strings are included in its scoring, one might expect to find three-voice ripieno string scoring in the alto aria, but this is not the case. In a slow aria full of pedal passages in which the strings must sustain to accompany the continuous cantilena for the two oboes, such a scoring would not have been viable. To summarize, except for the recitatives, we now have later parodies of all the musical movements from BWV 66a.
The New Year’s serenata Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht, BWV 134a, performed on January 1, 1719, provides an interesting comparison. Three movements in the later Leipzig parody of this work, the Easter cantata Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiß, BWV 134 (April 11, 1724), are scored for ripieno strings: movement two, the tenor aria “Auf, Glaubige, singet die lieblichen Lieder”; movement four, the duet for alto and tenor “Wir danken und preisen dein brünstiges Lieben”; and movement six, the closing chorus “Erfreue dich, Erde, lobsinge dem Höchsten.” The ripieno strings in all three movements adhere to four-voice ripieno string scoring throughout.12 Given the performance of this work just three weeks after Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück, in which three-voice ripieno string scoring is dominant, one is hard-pressed to reconcile the disparate approach to ripieno string scoring in the two works. It forces us to accept Bach’s having adopted three-voice ripieno string scoring for a period of over a year between October 1717 and December 1718 and then suddenly during the Christmas season in 1718 to have taken up the more normal four-voice ripieno string scoring he employed later in Köthen, a scenario which I find highly implausible. I would submit that Bach adhered to three-voice scoring practice during a much shorter time immediately after encountering it during his stay in Dresden, a period extending from at least October 1717 to the end of the year. If this is so, then BWV 66a must have been written during this fairly narrow window.
Let us now turn our attention to a concerted vocal work for which neither music nor text has survived, Ihr wallenden Wolken, BWV Anh.197, listed as “Neujahrs Cantate” under Number 94 in the Forkel Nachlasskatalog of 1819. Although its authorship until recently has been in doubt, it was included in the critical notes to the Neue Bach-Ausgabe along with the five church cantatas known to have been composed by Bach for New Year’s Day.13 Werner Neumann did not rule out the possibility that the work originated as “eine höfische Huldigungsmusik (Köthen?) zum Neuhahrsfest,” and in his table “Vokalkompositionen für Köthen,” Christoph Wolff has listed it along with other works for New Year’s Day without date.14 Who acquired the manuscript of Ihr wallenden Wolken at the auction of Forkel’s estate remained, until recently, unknown. Now Peter Wollny has discovered a reference to the missing manuscript in a catalogue of the music holdings of Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl.15 The entry, “Neujahrs Kantate. An Sr. Hochfürstl. Durchl. zu Anhalt-Köthen etc. a Voce sola (di Basso) II Trav. II Violini, Viola, Violoncello, Cembalo obligato e Continuo di J. S. Bach,” confirms most importantly that Bach was the composer of the work and that it was written for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen as part of the annual New Year’s celebrations at court. Wollny gives January 1, 1718, as the most likely date for the first performance of the work.
Most arresting, though, is the inclusion in the work’s scoring of obbligato harpsichord, as obbligato harpsichord appears in only one other of Bach’s concerted vocal works, the alto aria “Willkommen! Will ich sagen,” from the cantata Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende, BWV 27. Given the inclusion of obbligato harpsichord along with traverso and violin in the scoring of this serenata, is it possible that one or more movements of the revised version of BWV 1050a, which became the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto BWV 1050, may have served as sinfonia to Ihr wallenden Wolken?16
Alfred Dürr’s identification of source C,17 a set of parts copied by Bach’s student Johann Christoph Altnickol and three other scribes, in all likelihood from the original composing score of BWV 1050a (Dürr’s source X), has, according to Pieter Dirksen, undermined the prevalent theory that the original version of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto was composed in Köthen. For him, this indicates that the early version predates the final version by a longer period of time, and he goes on to argue that BWV 1050a was composed in the fall of 1717 in connection with Bach’s Dresden visit.18 New evidence supports Dirksen’s dating of the composition of BWV 1050a to Bach’s sojourn in Dresden in the fall of 1717.
While in Venice between February 1716 and July 1717, the prince elector of Saxony, Friedrich August, hired the Venetian opera composer Antonio Lotti, asking him to assemble an opera troupe and bring it to Dresden.19 Lotti set out for the Saxon capital with his singers in early September 1717, and on his arrival began work on a new opera, Giove in Argo, which premiered in the Redoutensaal on October 25.20 Given that Bach was in Dresden during October at the same time that Lotti was involved in the composition of his first opera for the Saxon court, it is not out of the question to suggest that Bach kept abreast of progress on the opera. He may even have attended rehearsals of the work and been in the audience at the premiere. Whatever the case, during his sojourn in the Saxon capitol, Bach can be expected to have met Lotti and been exposed to his music.
An examination of the scores of Alessandro Severo (December 26, 1716, Teatro Grimani, Venice),21 the last of Lotti’s operas performed in Venice before his departure for Dresden, and Giove in Argo22 is revealing. In Alessandro Severo, the vast majority of the arias feature three-voice ripieno string scoring. As a general rule, in ritornello segments, passages marked forte, and fast movements, first and second violins are doubled at the unison, while in solo segments, passages marked piano, and slow movements, four-voice ripieno scoring prevails.23 In the opening sinfonia, violin 1 and 2 double each other at the unison throughout the finale, with four-voice ripieno string scoring only in thinly scored sections marked piano in the opening movement. The slow middle movement is scored for four-voice ripieno strings throughout. The same holds true for the arias in Giove in Argo as for those in Alessandro Severo. In many cases, when there is a single staff for violins, the composer adds the indicator “Violini Unisoni” at the beginning of the movement. In some cases, violin 2 doubles viola in a variant of three-voice ripieno string scoring. In at least one case, there are interjections by one or both oboes notated in the score, but they are entered on a single treble staff above the viola staff, an indication that in certain cases the oboes are meant to double the violins throughout.
The scoring of movements 2 and 3 of the opening sinfonia in Giove in Argo follows that in Alessandro Severo, but because of the inclusion of two horns in the instrumentation, the first movement features an even more varied scoring than the parallel movement in the earlier opera. Pairs of oboes and violins disposed in parallel thirds are involved in an opening dialogue, after which the violins take up their habitual doubling at the unison leading to the entry of the two horns to complete the tutti scoring which invariably includes unison violins. The treatment of two oboes in dialogue, with unison violins and viola and the variety in the scoring in this movement resembles Bach’s scoring in the presumptive opening sinfonia and in the closing chorus of BWV 66a, respectively.24 What is clear is that three-voice string scoring involving two ripieno violins doubled at the unison was, at least during this period, the basis for Lotti’s ripieno string scoring in both his concerted instrumental works and arias.
Surely, it was precisely during his sojourn in the Saxon capital during the fall of 1717 that Bach first encountered in Lotti’s music this quite particular doubling of first and second violins at the unison and subsequently adopted the variant of it for a single ripieno violin in the outer movements of BWV 1050a.25 This link to scoring practices current in the music of a Venetian composer resident in Dresden during Bach’s visit lends strong support to Dirksen’s contention that the early version of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, BWV 1050a, was composed in Dresden during Bach’s sojourn in the Saxon capital during the fall of 1717. If the first performance of Ihr wallenden Volken did take place on January 1, 1718 (with a version of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto serving as the entrée to the work or not), the inclusion of obbligato harpsichord in the scoring would indicate that Bach was keen to put himself forward as a virtuoso cembalist of the first order from the outset of his tenure as Kapellmeister in Köthen. If BWV 1050a had already been composed earlier during Bach’s stay in Dresden, it is possible that it was the revised version, BWV 1050, as sinfonia to Ihr wallenden Wolken, which served as a virtuoso vehicle for his formal musical introduction at court in Köthen.
Given the time restraints posed by the organ examination in Leipzig during the third week in December 1717, it is hard to imagine that Bach could have composed a demanding vocal work such as Ihr wallenden Wolken and then rehearsed it during the last two weeks in December, let alone offered a sinfonia of the utmost complexity as a companion piece. And yet, the dating proposed by Wollny is compelling. I would argue that such a performance is imaginable only if both the serenata and its sinfonia had been composed earlier, before Bach arrived in Köthen in December to take up his duties there. In fact, there was a likely, in fact an obvious, opportunity for the composition of the birthday serenata just prior to Bach’s move to Köthen, and that is the four-week period of his detention in Weimar during November 1717 following his return from Dresden. In anticipation of his release, he would surely have wanted to be prepared for the festivities surrounding the prince’s birthday on December 10 and the annual New Year’s celebration on January 1. I would submit that the most logical time for the composition of Ihr wallenden Wolken was during the period Bach was under house arrest in November 1717.
Given the prevalence of three-voice ripieno string scoring in Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück, could it, like Ihr wallenden Wolken, also have been composed during Bach’s month-long incarceration in November 1717 as part of Bach’s preparation for the birthday festivities in Köthen early the next month? The work’s not having been performed until December 10 of the following year might suggest that, although he had composed a serenata to celebrate it, Bach was not able to be present in Köthen for the prince’s birthday on December 10, 1717. Consequently, the first performance of Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück had to be put off until the following year.
This scenario would similarly rule out a performance of Durchlauchster Leopold, BWV 173a, on December 10, 1717, since apart from the bass aria, all movements including ripieno strings feature four-voice ripieno string scoring with independent violin 1 and 2 parts. This work must then have been composed sometime later during the Köthen years.26 The inclusion of three-voice ripieno string scoring in the bass aria, given its identification as a parody, suggests the inclusion of a movement composed earlier in Dresden or shortly after Bach’s stay there, which Bach incorporated into a later birthday serenata.
In this study, I have sought to establish links between Bach’s sojourn at the Dresden court during the fall of 1717 and the vocal music he composed as he was about to take up his duties as Kapellmeister to prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. At the same time, in revisiting the Bach biography for the last months of 1717, I hope to have shed light on the chronology of Bach’s earliest performances of gratulatory serenatas in Köthen.
Notes
1. Werner Neumann and Hans-Joachim Schulze, eds., Bach-Dokumente 2. Fremdschriftliche und gedruckte Dokumente zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs 1685–1750 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1969), 65–66.
2. Werner Neumann and Hans-Joachim-Schulze, eds., Bach-Dokumente 1. Schriftstücke von der Hand Sebastian Bachs (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), 163–65.
3. Neumann and Schulze, eds., Bach-Dokumente 1, 189.
4. Neumann and Schulze, eds., Bach-Dokumente 2, 67–68.
5. Neumann and Schulze, eds., Bach-Dokumente 2, 70.
6. Alfred Dürr, Johann Sebastian Bach. Neue Ausgabe Sämtlicher Werke, Serie I, Band 35: Festmusiken für die Fürstenhäuser von Weimar, Weißenfels und Köthen. Kritischer Bericht (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1964), 8.
7. Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 202–3.
8. Dürr, Kritischer Bericht I/35, 892–93.
9. Neumann and Schulze, eds., Bach-Dokumente 1, 166.
10. Dürr, Kritischer Bericht I/35, 893–94.
11. Joshua Rifkin, “Verlorene Quellen, verlorene Werke: Miszellen zu Bachs Instrumentalkomposition,” in Bachs Orchesterwerke. Bericht über das 1. Dortmunder Bach-Symposion, 1996, ed. Martin Geck and Werner Breig, 59–75 (Witten: Klangfarben Musikverlag, 1997), 65–69.
12. In one of these movements, in the B section of movement 2 (mm. 165–68), violin 1 and 2 double one another at the unison but the viola is silent, an instance of two-voice ripieno string scoring.
13. Werner Neumann, Johann Sebastian Bach. Neue Ausgabe Sämtlicher Werke, Serie I, Band 4: Kantaten zu Neujahr und zum Sonntag nach Neujahr. Kritischer Bericht (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1964), 118.
14. Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, 216.
15. See Peter Wollny, “Überlegungen zu einigen Kantaten aus J. S. Bachs Köthener Zeit,” presented at a colloquium celebrating the eightieth birthday of Hans-Joachim Schulze at the Bach Archiv, Leipzig, on Dec. 3, 2014. I would like to thank Dr. Wollny for discussing his findings with me and for his generosity in providing me with the text of the Griepenkerl catalogue entry for citation in my study.
16. It has always been assumed that the early version of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto was conceived from the beginning as a concerto, but there are sinfonias in the Dresden Cammer Musique repertoire which may have inspired this work.
17. This is a set of parts copied largely by Altnikol during the period 1744–1759. See Alfred Dürr, ed., Fünftes Brandenburgisches Konzert in D-dur. Frühfassung BWV 1050a (Nachtrag zu NBA VII/2) (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1975), Vorbemerkung.
18. See Pieter Dirksen, “The Background to Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto,” in The Harpsichord and its Repertoire: Proceedings of the International Harpsichord Symposium, ed. Pieter Dirksen (Utrecht: STIMU Foundation for Historical Performance Practice, 1990), 157–85. Dirksen’s argument for the Dresden provenance of Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto is summed up in the closing section of his study. Siegbert Rampe subsequently issued a lengthy rebuttal of Dirksen’s dating of BWV 1050a, claiming that the original version of the work could not have been composed before Bach’s arrival in Köthen at the end of 1717 or early in 1718. See Siegbert Rampe and Dominik Sackmann, Bachs Orchestermusik: Entstehung, Klangwelt, Interpretation (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000), 97–100.
19. See Janice B. Stockigt, Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745): A Musician at the Court of Dresden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 39.
20. For details on Lotti’s opera productions in Venice, see Janice B. Stockigt, “The Court of Saxony Dresden” in Music at German Courts 1715–1760: Changing Artistic Priorities, eds. Samantha Owens, Barbara M. Reul, and Janice B. Stockigt, 17–50 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), 23–24.
21. D-Dl: Mus. 2159-F-2. See imslp.org/wiki/Alessandro_Severo_(Lotti,_Antonio).
22. D-Dl: Mus. 2159-F-3. See imslp.org/wiki/Giove_in_Argo_(Lotti,_Antonio).
23. At the beginning of the first solo segment in the second-act aria “La mia Augusta e mi tiranna,” the notation “Piano I primi violini solé” is an indication that Lotti called for at least two first violins and, therefore, at least two seconds.
24. One wonders whether the scoring for two oboes, bassoon, and strings in such works as the sinfonia BWV 42/1 and the ouverture BWV 1066/1 in both his vocal and instrumental concerted music from this period mirrors the direct influence of current Dresden scoring practices on Bach.
25. Dirksen explains Bach’s limiting of the ripieno string scoring in the outer movements to a single “Violino in ripieno” in terms of Bach’s concern for balance. As part of his strategy “to leave the harpsichord fully audible . . . he decided to restrict the number of participating instruments to the barest minimum.” See Dirksen, The Harpsichord and its Repertoire, 159–60.
26. The fact that no print of the text for this work survives may be an indication that it was performed on January 1, 1722, after the librettist Hunold’s death the previous summer.
Bibliography
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