Since the nineteenth century, the analysis of music has undertaken to provide accounts of musical structure by explaining musical events and patterns that lend coherence to an individual work as well as contributing to its beauty and meaning. Drawing on a variety of musical building blocks – whether harmonic, contrapuntal, melodic, rhythmic or sectional – analysts of various theoretical persuasions have asked their readers to set aside their first impressions in order to pay attention to the way a piece of music works by examining the details of its ‘facture’. The ‘truth-value’ of such interpretations can of course never be divorced from the ideas an analyst holds about musical structure, since these notions or ‘theories’ largely determine which musical parameters count as structurally significant. Nonetheless within the realm of musical analysis – far different from, say, mathematics or physics – it has rarely been the elegance or grandiosity of a structural theory that has attracted adherents. Instead, successful analyses have always appealed to an inherently musical plausibility, fuzzy though such a concept must ultimately remain. For this reason, the seeming circularity of interpretation endemic to musical analysis will appear less troubling, especially when one realises that analysts – if they are to succeed – need to persuade a community of musicians that it is possible to hear a piece as proceeding ‘so and not otherwise’, to borrow a phrase of Theodor W. Adorno. And contrary to some popular perceptions, musicians are a famously hard-nosed lot when it comes to being told how to hear a piece with which they are intimate.

I shall attempt in this chapter to open up another mode of understanding Bach within his historical context. This involves comparing his attitude to music with the metaphysical theories of certain rationalist philosophers of the Baroque era. Much of what I propose here is certainly conjectural: there is no question of a direct line of influence, or even that Bach was necessarily conscious of these parallels. I intend rather to show that Bach's musical thinking and that of the metaphysicians might depend on a similar historical world-view and, more importantly, that Bach's musical mind is equal to the greatest intellects of the age, even though he had no academic pretensions himself.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) and particularly his pupil Christian Wolff (1679–1754) are certainly very close to Bach historically; indeed Leibniz's name has occurred intermittently in Bach criticism and research, particularly in the decades leading up to 1950. Bach was closely associated with a follower of Leibniz and Wolff, Lorenz Mizler, who published Leibniz's famous dictum concerning music in the second issue of his Musikalische Bibliothek: 'Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating.' But the metaphysics and personality of an older, consistently shunned figure, Benedict de (or Baruch) Spinoza (1632–77), may be even closer to Bach's creative personality, although – for religious reasons – this was something that Bach could not possibly have acknowledged consciously.

According to J. G. Walther's Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), Bach ‘learned the first principia on the clavier from his eldest brother, Mr. Johann Christoph Bach, formerly organist and schoolmaster at Ohrdruf’. No mention is made here (or in Bach's Obituary, which gives a similar account) of composition, and Johann Christoph is not known to have been a composer. In answer to a query of J. N. Forkel's, Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote in 1775: ‘The instruction received by [J. S. Bach] in Ohrdruf may well have been designed for an organist and nothing more.’ The clear implication is that composition was largely excluded.

Here we have a fact of great importance for the understanding of Bach's early development as a composer: unlike his great contemporary G. F. Handel, he seems to have received no formal tuition in the rudiments of composition. His early compositions, most of which are for keyboard, had dual roots: in his own rapidly growing skill as an organist and harpsichordist (‘In a short time he had fully mastered all the pieces his brother had voluntarily given him to learn’); and in his ‘observation of the works of the most famous and proficient composers of his day and … the fruits of his own reflection upon them’.

To judge by the character of Bach's early keyboard works, both the improvisatory and virtuoso aspects of his playing acted as spurs to his creativity. Improvisation was essential to the keyboard player's training in Bach's day, and numerous passages in the early keyboard works no doubt had an extempore basis, notably the free fantasy interludes in the sonata BWV 963 and in the toccatas BWV 910-15 or the ruminative elaborated chord sequences in the preludes BWV 921-3 and in the third section of the toccatas BWV 910 and 913.

The notion of consciously performing the works of Johann Sebastian Bach in a Baroque fashion, with Baroque forces, is a relatively recent development. Indeed, it is an idea that has taken firm hold only in the past fifty years. When we look back on the history of Bach's music – its birth in the Baroque, its eclipse in the Classical Period, its rediscovery in the Romantic era, and its canonisation in modern times – we find that musicians took many different approaches to playing it. The issues of what we now call ‘performance practice’ have constantly changed.

The Baroque era itself was a period of considerable stylistic self-consciousness, and this self-consciousness affected the way pieces were performed. As a German, Bach took an eclectic approach towards composition, calculatedly calling on aspects of at least five national styles: German, French, Italian, English and Polish. Each style implied particular forms, gestures, and – most importantly – modes of performance. For instance, the Overture in B Minor BWV 831, written in the French style ('nach Französischer Art’ as Bach put it), contains rhythms in the opening section that attempt to record the sharply dotted ‘French’ performing style. When Bach revised the early, C minor, version of this Overture, BWV 831a, for inclusion in Clavier-Übung II (where it is paired with an Italian Concerto ‘nach Italiaenischen Gusto’), he sharpened the rhythms to bring the execution more closely into line with the French manner of playing (Example 13.1). That is to say, he intentionally bowed to the conventions of French performance practice.

The musical family is by no means an unfamiliar phenomenon, and nearly everyone must be acquainted with at least one household in which practically every member delights not only in listening to music but also in singing or playing musical instruments. Even with the weakening of family ties and the proliferation of ready-made forms of home entertainment in western society today, it is still possible for many a paterfamilias to echo the words that J. S. Bach wrote in 1730 in a famous letter to his former schoolmate Georg Erdmann:

Moreover, musical talent of an unusual kind has manifested itself in modern times in families such as the Menuhins and the Torteliers. One could discuss at length the relative importance of heredity and environment in the formation of musical families at whatever level of attainment, but it seems quite clear that the role played by environment is more important in fostering a talent for music than it is in influencing other forms of artistic and intellectual endeavour. By its nature, musical activity impinges on everyone within earshot (and, some would say, even on the child in the womb) and therefore invites at least some degree of communal engagement. Literature, painting and mathematics (to mention three branches of cultural activity closely connected to music) are, on the other hand, solitary pursuits, and - the Brontes, the Breughels and the Bernoullis notwithstanding - the musical family is a phenomenon rarely paralleled in the other arts.

The second half of the eighteenth century: ‘adoption’ – ‘classical’ rephrasing – Mozart's image of Bach

The historical location of Bach in the music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the accompanying radical changes are determined by his position in the second half of the eighteenth century. The caesura ‘1750’ could indicate a break in the influence of Bach's music, or the beginning of a tradition where it and his understanding of it are transmitted to his sons, students and future generations in a linear, undisturbed fashion, or, conversely, the beginning of the process of reinterpretation that is more familiar after the turn of the nineteenth century. Each of these three positions has consequences for the writing of music history in the second half of the eighteenth century and for the development of a ‘Romantic Bach interpretation’ in the early nineteenth century. In the first case, the phase 1750–1800 can be portrayed without Bach, which, given the minor influence of Bach's music on the general public, would be correct. In the second case, the preservation of the Bach tradition, there is the danger that the ‘shift’ of the divergent horizons of expectation, in Blumenberg's sense, would be exaggerated and the historical portrayal would be focused too much on the monument ‘Bach’. The third position has the advantage of differentiating between the ideas of breaking with the past and continuity and sees the process of reinterpretation during the eighteenth century as the decisive precondition for the means whereby Bach's music, once functional and rhetorical, now becomes autonomous.

To raise objections about the very topic one has been asked to write about is surely unusual; perhaps it would be better not to address the topic at all. But that would be far too simple a solution. It makes more sense to formulate the discontent, not as a disclaimer soon to be forgotten, but rather as a critical undercurrent that will run throughout both this chapter and the next.

Three fundamental objections can be raised against the assigned topic. First, much of the material is ubiquitous, given that there is hardly a composer of the nineteenth or twentieth century who has not occupied himself with Bach, whether it be by choice or requirement. Perhaps it would therefore be more feasible to investigate those who have given Bach a wide berth. Delimiting the material in this manner would serve as a corrective to the unattainable goal of comprehensively listing and critically interpreting all forms of Bach reception. Secondly, there is the danger of mythologising Bach by producing yet another historiographically out-moded description of great heroes, a monocausal, linear music history delineated by monuments, Bach – Beethoven – Brahms – Schoenberg – Boulez. Thirdly, there is the historical and ontological difference between Bach's horizon of expectation and that of the present day; the ubiquity of Bach's music and the mythologising of Bach today contradict the situation in his own time.

Some understanding of the theological content and the liturgical practices of Lutheranism is essential for the historical appreciation of Bach's music. Bach's theological thinking was formed by the distinctively Lutheran responses to the Reformation debate of the sixteenth century, and he composed a great deal of his music for the Lutheran liturgies of his day. For example, the church cantatas usually relate in some way to the biblical readings, liturgical provisions, congregational hymnody, and ecclesiastical monody of the particular day, season or celebration. This chapter therefore outlines some of the distinctive features of the Lutheran Reformation in general, and Luther's musical and liturgical reforms in particular, as they relate both to later Lutheranism and to Bach's life and works.

The Reformation

Although it is customary to employ the term ‘Reformation’ as the ecclesiastical analogue of the ‘Renaissance’ of sixteenth-century Europe, it might be more accurate to speak of the ‘Reformations’ of the period. Although there were certainly a number of common concerns – such as the authority of the Bible in contradistinction to the authority of the church of Rome, or the concept of the general priesthood of all believers set against the particular priesthood of Catholicism – the Reformation in each European area developed its own characteristics, both theological and practical. Thus the Reformation in Switzerland, centred on such cities as Geneva, Basle and Zurich, was strongly influenced by the theology of such Reformers as Zwingli, Calvin and Bullinger.

The repertory

The Bach literature shows no unified approach to the categorisation of the instrumental music: while some writers describe the entire repertory as ‘chamber music’, others speak of ‘chamber and orchestral music’. The reason for this uncertainty lies in the historical change in the meaning of the terms ‘chamber music’ and ‘orchestra’. For Bach's contemporaries, the term ‘chamber music’ covered all types of music written for the court and for domestic consumption, but excluded music intended for the church and theatre. In his letter releasing Bach from his service in 1723, the composer's employer in Köthen could write, therefore, that Bach had served him as ‘Kapellmeister and director of our chamber music’. According to our contemporary understanding of the term, it is now restricted to ‘music written for and performed by a small ensemble, usually instrumental, with one performer on a part’.

The word ‘orchestra’ was occasionally used in Bach's day to refer to a relatively large body of players, or so it would appear to be used by Silvius Leopold Weiss in a letter to Johann Mattheson of 1723: ‘But to accompany on the lute in the orchestra, that would of course be too weak.’ In general, however, it may be said that neither Bach nor his contemporaries drew a distinction in principie between an ‘orchestra’ and an ensemble that performed ‘chamber music’.

Johann Sebastian Bach's activities as a teacher appear to have been both widespread and respected. Nevertheless, the substantial body of evidence concerning his teaching and methods is far from complete or authoritative. Furthermore, the circumstances of each individual pupil and Bach's own changing whim apparently led to a variability of approach. As in other areas of his activity, such inconsistency was probably also the result of the composer's continuing quest for improvement and his almost compulsive thirst for new challenges. Bach seems to have been a highly creative teacher, surprisingly so for his historical environment.

There are various ways in which we can identify Bach's pupils:

1. Recorded or preserved written evidence from Bach himself (say in a written testimonial) refers to personal instruction. It may also refer to collaboration in performance under his supervision (which is a rather different matter).

2. Written or reported evidence from an individual pupil may refer to study with Bach, sometimes with further comment concerning when and how the learning process was effected.

3. Sometimes music manuscripts compiled in collaboration with pupils demonstrate an educational purpose; but one needs to be careful here, since there may be many reasons why Bach required copying assistance without any specifically didactic intention.

4. Written reports by third parties, stating that others have been, are, or hope to become students of Bach.

5. The records of choir schools (the register of Thomasschule alumni, published by B. F. Richter in the BJb 1906 and subsequently destroyed, is useful, but it does not cover the Externer (day-pupils), including Bach's own sons).

At every period of his creative life Bach may be found altering, arranging and continuing to develop his own and other composers' works. For the young Bach, arranging other composers' works was a means of analysing and coming to terms with the various musical traditions that he was attempting to assimilate. Parody – the practice of re-using his own vocal works and providing them with new words in new contexts – became increasingly important to him during the Leipzig years 1723–50. His leadership of the local Collegium musicum from 1729 also resulted in a series of harpsichord arrangements of older concertos originally scored for solo melody instruments. And among the activities of his final decade, the compilation, completion and editing of earlier works occupies a not inconsiderable space: it is to this tendency that we owe collections such as the ‘18’, the ‘Schübler’ Chorales and the second book of The Well-tempered Clavier. Even more far-reaching revisions may be found in two instrumental works that were redrafted during the 1740s, namely, the Canonic Variations and The Art of Fugue. In consequence, both these works survive in characteristically different versions. Nor should we forget in this context Bach's completion, towards the end of his life, of his Mass in B Minor (a completion substantially based on the use of parody) and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, his recourse to the work of a younger contemporary in the form of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Stabat mater, which he rewrote as a vocal composition with new words, Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden BWV 1083/243a.

Studies of theology, religious symbolism, allegory and rhetoric tell us much about the historical context and function of Bach's music, but alone they do not adequately reveal how Bach conceived of his music. In other words, the purely theological viewpoint often illuminates the message of Bach's music without giving any explanation of his conception of the medium. It is the very basis of my approach here to contend that there may indeed be contradictions between the historical religious context and, specifically, the metaphysical basis of his creative work. Throughout, I negotiate a delicate and speculative tightrope: on the one hand in conjecturing about Bach's own view of the task of composition (and performance) from a sparse array of verbal documents, and on the other in surmising what his music and certain tendencies in his compositional output may tell us.

While I offer a general study of some of the conceptions of music and its relation to religion in Bach's age, I give particular attention to one particular hypothesis: that Bach saw the very substance of music as constituting a religious reality, that the more perfectly the task of composition (and, indeed, performance) is realised, the more God is immanent in music. Traditionally, something of this conception has been inferred from the intertwining of the sacred and secular in Orthodox Lutheran thought, and indeed in Luther's own attitude towards music as a vital aspect of the Christian life (see Chapter 3). Furthermore, the Pythagorean tradition of viewing music as the sounding evidence of God's creation was still evident in the writings of music theorists who embraced natural theology.