Wilhelm Friedemann Bach When Wilhelm Friedemann Bach died aged 73 in July 1784, his obituary mourned the passing of ‘a man who is irreplaceable. All who honour true harmony and greatness in music will be deeply affected by his loss.’ However, instead of assuming a place in the pantheon of composers, as one who in the words of Johann Sebastian Bach’s first biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel ‘came nearest to his father in the originality of his genius’, Wilhelm Friedemann remained in death, as he had in life, overshadowed by his younger siblings, brother Carl Philipp Emanuel, the ‘Berlin Bach’, deemed by Mozart ‘the father of us all’, and half-brother Johann Christian, the ‘London Bach’. His music fell into obscurity and the story of his life was distorted by the unforgiving and selective judgements of ‘friends’ and contemporaries who painted an unflattering picture of an underachiever who was obstinate, proud, quarrelsome, ungenerous as an artist, careless of the musical heritage of his father, not to mention a drunkard! No less partial was the more sympathetic but equally misleading concept of him as a free-spirited but feckless proto-romantic figure, which derived from the 19th-century ‘biographical’ novel of Albert Brachvogel. Even his visual appearance was until relatively recently usurped by another man – the Weitsch portrait of the smiling figure in the stylish hat and fur-lined coat, often used to illustrate books, articles and recordings, being in fact that of his pupil and distant relative Johann Christian Bach (1743–1814 – the ‘Hallescher Clavier-Bach’, not to be confused with Wilhelm’s half-brother of the same name). The facts about the life of the ‘enigmatic Bach’, as he has been described, are few. He was born on 22 November 1710 in Weimar, the eldest son (and second child) of Johann Sebastian and his first wife, Maria Barbara, and before he was 13, the family had moved twice, first to Köthen in 1717 and then to Leipzig in 1723. The loss of his mother in 1720 and his father’s relatively quick remarriage to Anna Magdalena has been adduced as a contributory factor in his later problems, yet it does not seem to have affected Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was six at the time (various attempts to diagnose psychological reasons for his subsequent ‘instability’ – including potential schizophrenia – are fruitless in the absence of hard biographical evidence). There was certainly no issue with the care and affection he received from his father: Johann Sebastian lavished attention on his favourite son’s musical education and in 1720 presented him with the famous Klavierbüchlein. This collection combined compositional and notational theory with Johann Sebastian’s own keyboard works, including some of the inventions and preludes and fugues, whose range and complexity attest to the young Wilhelm Friedemann’s performing abilities (if indeed they were intended for him to play rather than merely study). Over the next few years, its pages were filled out with music copied in Wilhelm Friedemann’s hand, some of which may represent his own earliest compositions.
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To complement his keyboard studies, he was sent in 1726 to Merseburg to learn the violin with J.G. Graun, the only one of the Bach boys to receive formal tuition on that instrument. He attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig and then Leipzig University where he studied law, philosophy and mathematics (a subject of abiding interest to him). At the same time he assisted his father as a copyist in rehearsals and performances of his music and in the tuition of his students. In 1729, he was despatched to Halle to invite Handel – on a rare visit to his home city – to come to Leipzig, an offer Handel was unable to take up (and so by meeting him in person Wilhelm Friedemann achieved at least one thing his father did not!). After failing to land a post in Halberstadt, he was appointed organist at the Sophienkirche in Dresden in June 1733. He had visited Dresden several times with his father, who regularly performed there and whose influence was no doubt a factor in his son’s successful application. It could not be considered a plum job – a contemporary described it as ‘a place of penitence’ – and it was extremely ill paid, the annual salary of 74 thalers (plus three barrels of beer) comparing unfavourably with the 6,000 thalers reputedly paid to the court opera composer Johann Hasse. Had Wilhelm Friedemann achieved a position at court, as his predecessor had done, his financial position would have been much improved, but this never materialised. However, he remained in Dresden for 13 years, moving in the city’s congenial and relaxed aristocratic circles and supplementing his meagre income by teaching, composing (the bulk of his orchestral music dates from this period) and performing at private musical events, such as those held by the Electress Maria Antonia Walpurgis, and in public at the Collegium Musicum. His father visited on several occasions and they probably performed together (as a copy of the concerto for two harpsichords [F10] in Johann Sebastian’s hand suggests). In 1742, he applied for and failed to get the more prestigious post as organist at the Frauenkirche, and in 1746, he moved to Halle to become organist and Music Director at the Liebfrauenkirche with an improved but by no means lavish annual salary of 180 thalers (that the appointment was made without the customary demonstration of his skills is testament to his reputation as an organist). His duties involved directing and providing music for two other churches, for which he produced a large number of his own cantatas as well as performing many of his father’s, suitably adapted for prevailing taste. On the death of Johann Sebastian in 1750, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel divided their father’s manuscripts between them, the former taking the bulk of the church music on the basis that it would be more useful to him than to his brother, then at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin. The death of his father, to whom he had been close, removed a strong source of influence over his life and work but perhaps such independence was not entirely good for him. A prolonged
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(and apparently unauthorised) absence, firstly in Leipzig sorting out the estate, and then in Berlin where he had escorted the young Johann Christian to be entrusted to the care of his half-brother, brought him into conflict with the town authorities and marked the beginning of a deterioration in his professional relationship with them (he had already been in dispute with the Kantor of the Liebfrauenkirche over alleged embezzlement of funds by the latter). In 1752, relatively late in life, he married Dorothea Georgi, daughter of a local tax official and they had three children, only one of which, a daughter, survived. In the 1750s he is reported to have written a treatise on composition, perhaps drawing on his mathematical studies, but although advertised for sale in 1758 it does not seem to have been printed and no trace of it remains. In the early 1760s he began looking around for alternative employment, firstly in Zittau and then in Frankfurt, unsuccessfully on both occasions, and in 1761 his request to be excused the extraordinary taxation levied as a result of the Seven Years’ War (his financial hardship was such that he had already been forced to sell some of the manuscripts inherited from his father) was rejected with marked hostility by the civic authorities, who took the opportunity to detail his professional shortcomings, revealing a mutual sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo. The following year, he was offered the position of Kapellmeister in Darmstadt, which surprisingly, under the circumstances, he never took up. In fact, he seems to have gone out of his way to make difficulties with his prospective employers (although he later referred to himself by the title, whether or not on an official basis). In 1764, he abruptly and unceremoniously resigned his post without having any alternative employment or source of income. His movements over the next few years are uncertain: while probably remaining based in Halle supporting himself and his family by teaching, he is thought to have travelled to Vienna, the Baltic states and perhaps even Russia as an itinerant ‘freelance’ musician, anticipating what was to become standard practice for musicians and composers. In 1768, he reapplied for his old job at the Liebfrauenkirche without success and in 1770, the family left Halle for Brunswick where he failed in his attempt to become town organist. Since he was acknowledged as one of the greatest living performers on that instrument, one can only suspect that his reputation as a difficult person to work with had preceded him. He visited Forkel in Göttingen (who subsidised the expenses of his trip) and passed on invaluable information about Johann Sebastian to his future biographer as well as lending him a year’s cycle of cantatas (for two louis d’or – he offered to sell them to Forkel for 20). When he left Brunswick for Berlin in 1774, he left behind the bulk of the remaining manuscripts of his father’s music to be auctioned, thus breaking up a unique collection of 18th-century music (although at the time his pressing financial needs must have been more important to him than the studies of future musicologists). His reasons for moving to Berlin are unknown –
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he had no position to go to – but perhaps he thought he could replace his brother, who by then had been in Hamburg for several years, as the ‘Berlin Bach’. Following what was now an established pattern, he did not secure any permanent position there (surviving documents refer to his ‘bad character’ and ‘instability’) although he gave some highly acclaimed organ recitals. For a time he enjoyed the patronage of Princess Anna Amalia, sister of Frederick the Great, who described him as ‘the one composer of today who will serve as the model for all ages’ and to whom he dedicated the eight Fugues (F31) for which he received a silver coffee service and a grant of money. However, whatever chance he had of advancement through this connection disappeared after he made an illjudged attempt to supplant her resident musical advisor Johann Kirnberger by spreading malicious rumours about him. His relationship with Sarah Itzig, an accomplished keyboard player who studied with him during the last ten years of his life and who probably kept him afloat financially, had a more lasting effect since it was through her collection of his works, eventually donated to the Berlin Singakademie, that many of them survived. The Itzig family were to have an even more profound influence on the reception of the music of the Bach family since it was Sarah’s sister Bella who arranged for a copy of the unpublished St Matthew Passion to be presented to her grandson Felix Mendelssohn as a Christmas present in 1823, an act which proved the catalyst for a revival of Johann Sebastian’s music in the 19th century. Wilhelm Friedemann composed little in the Berlin years – an opera Lausus und Lydie was begun but not completed (no music from it survives) – and a song, composed for the occasion of Sarah Itzig’s marriage to Solomon Levy in 1783, may have been the final piece he wrote. He died, apparently destitute, in 1784 and was buried in the Luisenstadt cemetery but the precise site of his grave is unknown since the area was levelled during the Second World War – consigning his physical remains to the oblivion that his works were to suffer for so long. Compared to other members of his family, Wilhelm Friedemann’s musical legacy is modest. No systematic attempt was made to compile a comprehensive catalogue of his work until Martin Falck’s pioneering study of 1913 (which established the F or Fk reference system), later supplemented and complemented by the work of Peter Wollny, editor of the Bach-Repertorium (from which the BR numbers derive – those with the suffix A denoting keyboard works). The recent repatriation of the Singakademie archives – including the uncatalogued collection of Sarah Itzig/Levy – from Kiev, where they ended up after the Second World War, added several previously unknown works to the repertoire, as did the discovery of a manuscript of keyboard music, now in Vilnius. Occasionally, too, a piece attributed to another composer has been reassigned, for example the flute concerto, previously thought to be by Quantz. However, it is unlikely that the future will uncover a significant amount of newly discovered material to supplement what is now extant. Several factors contribute to this dearth
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of material, principally, Wilhelm Friedemann’s taste for improvisation, which meant he did not write down much of the music that apparently captivated his audiences. Forkel found it a matter of regret that ‘his preference [was] to follow his fancy in extemporisations and to expend his genius in fugitive thought rather than work them out on paper’, and many works that do survive exist in single copies made by or for his pupils or as commissions. He only ever published two pieces – the sonatas F3 and F5 – and although the former was advertised as the first of a set of six, the others never appeared, which suggests that there had not been sufficient interest to make their publication commercially viable. This highlights another factor working against the survival of his music: it made few concessions either to prevailing tastes or to the technical capacity or interpretative abilities of ordinary players, who might have copied out pieces in sufficient numbers to ensure their survival in the Darwinian world of manuscript transmission. The Janus-like quality of his music – looking back to the rigorous contrapuntalism of his father’s era while embracing the lightness and expressivity of the empfindsamer style – was perhaps as disconcerting to his contemporaries as it is intriguing to modern listeners. This CD collection is the first to present a comprehensive selection of all facets of Wilhelm Friedemann’s musical output – orchestral, chamber, keyboard and vocal – of which only a brief survey is possible here. The Sinfonias on CD1 were composed at a time when the form was in the process of evolving from an orchestral prelude to an opera or religious work into a self-contained instrumental piece – the forerunner of the modern symphony. Four were originally attached to cantatas and therefore probably date from the Halle period (although it is likely that F64, whose three-movement format is not entirely appropriate for an ecclesiastical context, is a recycled piece) with the others almost certainly composed in Dresden. F67 straddles the baroque and classical eras with its four discrete movements, ending on a double minuet (to become a common feature of the symphony although not usually in that position), and its title ‘Dissonant’ while not authentic accurately describes the sudden and surprising modulations and disjointed progressions evident from the opening bars. The version of F88 performed here has been reconstructed by Hartmut Haenchen from various sources, as the string parts of the autograph score (datable to the mid-1750s on the basis of its watermarks) are damaged and the solo oboe parts missing. The four-movement work originally attributed to Johann Sebastian is now recognised as that of his son on stylistic grounds. The harpsichord concertos (CDs 2–3) can be dated to the Dresden period, apart from F43, which was dedicated to Princess Maria Antonia Walpurgis in 1767. All were probably written for his own use and combine the binary format associated with the sonata (and in due course the symphony) with traditional ritornello. F44 survives in three non-identical copies – one in the handwriting of Johann Christian Bach of the misleading portrait (and so probably made in Halle), another signed
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by Sarah Itzig and therefore copied out in Berlin before her marriage in 1783. CD4 contains examples of his chamber music, including the trio sonatas for flute and a sonata in F, which has recently been formally attributed to him on the basis that its three movements all derive from material from his keyboard sonatas. CDs 5–10 contain a wide selection of the keyboard works which make up the bulk of Wilhelm Friedemann’s surviving output, all of which were almost certainly intended to be performed on the harpsichord. The Fantasias which give some idea of his improvisatory style are believed to date from later in his career, apart from the relatively recently discovered work in D minor (BR A105), and some incorporate themes from his own and other composers’ works. F17 and F18, once considered separate pieces, are joined in the Vilnius manuscript in the reverse order and so intended to be played as a single work as here. F22 and probably BR A106, with their manic perpetual motion figuration, were written for mechanical clockwork instruments, as are the Chorale Preludes and the Minuet and 13 Variations, which together with BR A50 are his only known works in this format. The sonatas in three movements combine sonata allegro structures (with double bar and repeat) with throughcomposed movements. F5 was included in a technical manual to illustrate the technique of crossed hands – apparently a trademark of Wilhelm Friedemann’s technique. The key progressions of the first pieces in the set of three-part Fugues (F31), collected and dedicated to Princess Amalia, suggest they may originally have been intended for a cycle of 24, covering all the keys, which might also be the case with the similarly arranged Polonaises (F12). The polonaise in the 18th century was a more sedate dance form than it was to become in the hands of Chopin, and Wilhelm Friedemann’s set became popular in the edition for piano made by Forkel’s pupil Friedrich Griepenkerl. Perhaps the most regrettable lacuna in what survives of Wilhelm Friedemann’s music is the negligible number of works for the organ, of which he was acknowledged to be the greatest exponent of his day. Forkel wrote of the ‘reverent awe’ his playing inspired, while the otherwise critical Carl Zelter said he was the most perfect organist he had ever known. CDs 11–12 contain all known music composed unequivocally for the organ, in which the fugue features prominently. Filippo Turri, who performs them here, has compared them to the ‘grand tormented fugues that Beethoven composed in the last years of his life … like problems to be solved, like containers that are no longer sufficient to encompass the composer’s intrepid discourse and abundance of feelings’. The titles of 24 cantatas are known (including a work in 11 movements to celebrate the birthday of Frederick the Great in 1756) but apart from a small number of such secular works, all were composed as part of his duties as musical director at the Liebfrauenkirche in Halle and those included on CDs 13–14 represent examples of multi-movement works composed for major feast days. © David Moncur 7