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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