Arnstadt

I once wanted to make a film about Bach, by the way.

Young Bach, who at 19 did this pilgrimage from Arnstadt, where he was a kapellmeister, to Buxtehude.

Anyway, but that Bach thing was always there.

And then I could see that, you know, because I'm fusing things, I'm fusing the personal and historical culture that's broken down, family that's broken down, you know, it's my melancholy about where it's all going, you know, so I just fused a lot of things, you know, hoping for the best.

Among the many members of the Bach family who have excelled in practical music, as well as the building of new musical instruments, the following, in addition to our Johann Sebastian, are particularly noteworthy for their composition.

Heinrich Bach, an organist in Arnstadt who died in 1692, and his two sons, Johann Christoph, organist of the court and town of Eisenach, who died in 1703, and Johann Michael, organist and clerk in the district of Geren, Johann Sebastian's first father-in-law.

Johann Ludwig Bach, Kapellmeister to the Duke of Meningen, Johann Bernhard Bach, chamber musician and organist in Eisenach who entered into eternity in 1749.

Of all these men, we still have works at hand bearing witness to their strength in vocal as well as instrumental composition.

He was born in the year 1685 on March 21st in Eisenach.

His parents were Johann Ambrosius Bach, court and town musicians there, and Elisabeth, nay Lemehert, the daughter of a town official in Erfurt.

His father had a twin brother named Johann Christoph, who was court and town musician in Arnstadt.

The two brothers were so much alike in every respect, even as concerns their health, their knowledge of music, that when they were together they could be distinguished only by their clothing.

It is said that the music this orchestra made was more or less unique.

The best part of all this musical exploitation of Hans was that one of his boys, Heinrich by name, applied himself so diligently to the art that he became the organist in the village church, and then he was called to play the great organ at Arnstadt.

Heinrich was not a roisterer like his father; he was a man of education and dignity.

He composed many pieces and trained his choruses so well that his fame went abroad as the chief musician of all Thuringia.

He held his position at Arnstadt for fifty years and died in 1692, at which time Johann Sebastian Bach, his nephew, was seven years old.

In his day Heinrich Bach was known as "The Great Bach," and he had two sons who were nearly as famous as himself and would have been quite so were it not for the fact that they had a cousin by the name of Johann Sebastian.

Johann Sebastian was the son of Johann Ambrosius, a brother of Heinrich, and Johann Ambrosius, of course, a son of the merry Hans.

They wanted Bach at Weimar.

He began to long for an organ post of his own and the steady income it would assure.

Late in 1702, the news spread that a new organ was being completed at the Church of St. Boniface in Arnstadt, one of the ancestral seats of the Bach family and rich in its traditions.

Doubtless Arnstadt had its eyes on the promising disciple of Böhm and Lanken, young as he was.

Bach too felt it wise to watch the situation at close range, so he returned to Thuringia.

The new instrument of St. Boniface was not ready nor was it completed till the summer of 1703.

Yet by Easter, Bach found himself enrolled in the service of Duke Johann Ernst, brother of the reigning Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar.

His stay in Weimar on this occasion was brief though it seems to have earned him some honors including the useful if misleading title of Princely Saxon Court Organist.

But scarcely three months later he was back in Arnstadt where the St. Boniface organ was ready for its test.

[laughs] Um, and so, you know, playing a lot of the famous organs in Germany and France and England and Italy and Spain.

Um, and like, for example, like Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, like the Bachkirche in Arnstadt.

The, um, I saw the video where you went to the, uh, Marienkirche in Lübeck.

Um, that's one of my bucket list places where I wanna go.

So yes, very good.

But for our intents and purposes, this cantata survey, we were looking at the seven that survive, written in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen.

BWV 21, we should cover it in, you know, soon enough on the show because it does retain a lot of these same stylistic features.

So let's move on to a summary of those very features, of these seven early cantatas.

For example, why haven't you done the Chaconne? This is why.

The Weimar cantatas.

Obviously, it was so fun doing the Arnstadt and Mühlhausen cantatas.

I've got to go on to the Weimar ones next.

The dancing mania of the year thirteen seventy-four was in fact no new disease, but a phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories were traditionally current among the people.

In the year twelve thirty-seven, upwards of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Arnstadt.

When they arrived at that place they fell exhausted to the ground, and according to an account of an old chronicle, many of them, after they were taken home by their parents, died, and the rest remained affected to the end of their lives with a permanent tremor.

Another occurrence was related to have taken place on the Moselle bridge at Utrecht.

The dancing mania of the year thirteen seventy-four was, in fact, no new disease, but a phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories were traditionally current among the people.

In the year twelve thirty-seven, upwards of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Arnstadt.

When they arrived at that place they fell exhausted to the ground, and according to an account of an old chronicle, many of them, after they were taken home by their parents, died; and the rest remained affected to the end of their lives with a permanent tremor.

Another occurrence was related to have taken place on the Moselle bridge at Utrecht, on the seventeenth day of June, AD twelve seventy-eight, when two hundred fanatics began to dance, and would not desist until a priest passed, who was carrying the Host to a person that was sick.