Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

CONNECTION WITH WEIMAR. 229his musical periodical, ** Der Getreue Musik-Meister," publishedin 1728, he included a beautiful canon in four parts,of the most elaborate character, composed by Bach atHamburg in 1727, and dedicated to Dr. Hudemann. Lustigalso made acquaintance with this canon, mastered it andsolved it, and twelve years later Mattheson included thissolution in his " Vollkommene Capellmeister." We saw,when speaking of the cantata " Phoebus and Pan," howHudemann showed his appreciation of the honour done him.^^Bach also revisited his native province of Thuringia fromLeipzig. His connection with the Court of Weimar was atan end after Duke Wilhelm Ernst, in a pedantic whim, hadappointed Samuel Drese's son, a quite second-rate musician,to be Capellmeister, while Bach had every right to theplace. It is not even probable that any relations existedbetween Bach and the Court of Weimar so long as thatduke remained alive ; however, on the accession of DukeErnst August (1728-1748), they were renewed. Thissovereign prince, who in many respects was singularly andradically unlike his uncle, seems, like his half-brother, Joh.Ernst, to have inherited his love of music from his father,in whose service Bach had been for a short time in 1703.He was a persevering violin player, often beginning in themorning before he was up, and seems to have taken muchpleasure in Italian opera music, like Duke Christian ofWeissenfels.^^ One of the many purposes which the cantata*32 At the time when I wrote Vol. I., p. 632 (of the original German. Apassage omitted by the author's desire from Vol. II., p. 21, of this translation),Bach's visit to Hamburg in 1727 had escaped my notice ; but it is to be inferredfirom the passage in Marpurg, Krit. Briefe, IL, p. 470, where we have anaccount by Lustig of his own life, and this autobiography is chronologicallyarranged. The younger Kunze was born in 1720, and Lustig was teachinghim in 1724-5 ; then followed lessons in composition, which he learnt from hisfather and Telemann. In 172S Lustig went to Groningen, but he had previouslyheard Bach play in Hamburg, and, as it was in 1727 that Bach dedicated theabove-mentioned canon to Hudemann, he must have been in Hamburg in thatyear, and have written the canon there. This is evident also from Mattheson, pp.412-13 ; from Mizler, Mus. Bib. III., p. 482; and Marpurg, Abhandlung von derFuge, Part IL, p. 99 (Tab. XXXIII. , fig. 2). Hilgenfeldt also printed the canonwithout the solution, as the last musical supplement to his work.*^ See the notices borrowed from the memoirs of Baron von Pöllnitz inBeaulieu-Marconnay, Ernst August, Herzog von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach,Hirzel, Leipzig, 1S72, pp. 143-4 ^nd p. 104.