divendres, 22 d’octubre del 2021

BACH, Johann Christoph Friedrich (1732-1795) - Sinfonia (in E) à 6 Voci

Circle of Jean François de Troy (1679-1752) - A group of elegant figures seated in a park


Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-1795) - Sinfonia (in E) à 6 Voci (1769)
Performers: Orchestra of St. Luke's

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Composer, son of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Anna Magdalena Bach (1701-1760). He is known as the ‘Bückeburg Bach’. He received his musical education from his father. After leaving the Thomasschule, he is thought to have studied law briefly, but there is no record of his matriculation at Leipzig University. At the express wish of Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe he was appointed harpsichordist to the court in Bückeburg, where he may at first have been subordinate to the court organist Ludolf Münchhausen. In June 1751 his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel visited him in the retinue of Frederick the Great when the king awarded the Order of the Great Eagle to Count Wilhelm. On 8 January 1755 Bach had married Münchhausen’s daughter Lucia Elisabeth. The Seven Years War imposed considerable restrictions on the court of Bückeburg. Bach took this opportunity to apply, successfully, for the vacant post of organist at the German church in Altona, then under Danish rule, but for unknown reasons he never took it up. On 18 February 1759 he was appointed Konzertmeister of the Bückeburg Hofkapelle. However, court life did not return to normal until after the Peace of Hubertusburg, and the return of Count Wilhelm from his military missions in Portugal in November 1764. In the period up to 1770 Bach wrote symphonies, trio sonatas, a number of Italian arias and cantatas and perhaps his most important work of this time, the large-scale cantata Cassandra. After Count Wilhelm’s marriage to Marie Barbara Eleonore zur Lippe-Biesterfeld on 12 November 1765, Protestant sacred music was performed at the Bückeburg court. Perhaps encouraged by his successful application to Altona, Bach applied on 24 June 1767 to succeed the late G.P. Telemann in Hamburg. He was, in fact, one of the short-listed candidates, but his half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel gained the appointment. Between 1765 and 1773 Johann Christoph Friedrich set the best-known Protestant oratorio texts of his time. The tendency towards sacred vocal composition increased with the arrival in Bückeburg of J.G. Herder, who was court preacher and superintendent there from 1771 to 1776. 

The death of Countess Marie Barbara in 1776, Herder’s appointment to Weimar in the same year and the death of Count Wilhelm in 1777 marked a watershed in the intellectual life of the Bückeburg court. In spring 1778 Bach asked for three months’ leave to visit his brother Johann Christian in London. A series of string quartets and a set of six keyboard concertos, printed in London with dedications to members of the house of Schaumburg-Lippe, show how rapidly J.C.F. Bach adapted his music to English tastes. He also brought back an English piano from his travels, so his keyboard compositions after 1778 were not necessarily for the harpsichord. In 1780 Count Philipp Ernst took as his second wife Princess Juliane zu Hessen-Philippsthal, who was particularly fond of the fine arts. At the Princess’s wish, attendance at court concerts was now open to the citizens of Bückeburg and to visitors. Forkel regarded the little Kapelle as one of the finest in Germany. Juliane took lessons in foreign languages and drawing, and studied the keyboard with J.C.F. Bach. Among the better known of his pupils (in addition to his son Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst and C.F. Geyer) were the future Thomaskantor A.E. Müller and perhaps Adolf, Baron von Knigge. For teaching purposes Bach wrote a number of pedagogically valuable keyboard works, including the Sechs leichte Clavier-Sonaten, variations, concertos and sonatas for four hands. The arrival in Bückeburg about 1793 of the Bohemian musician Franz Neubauer presented Bach with unaccustomed competition in the last years of his life. It inspired him to write new works (including a dozen large-scale symphonies and several double concertos) but it also intensified the latent depression from which he had been suffering since the death of his half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel and which may have hastened the course of the chest ailment that brought about his death on 26 January 1795. In his obituary his friend Karl Gottlieb Horstig, superintendent at Bückeburg from 1793, described him as an industrious composer, always ready to be of service, and praised his upright character and ‘kindness of heart’.

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