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Images of Bach
in the Perspective of
Basic Research and
Interpretative Scholarship
CHRISTOPH WOLFF

T
he core element in the title of this paper,
“Images of Bach,” can be interpreted in numerous ways, indeed in as
many ways as there exist different images of the composer. Hence my
topic would allow me to go in diverse directions. I have no intention,
however, to present a panorama of Bach images, past and present, nor 503
do I see a realistic method for constructing a new composite image that
combines and integrates the countless constituent elements of an ex-
tremely multi-faceted phenomenon. Instead, I should like to take a crit-
ical look primarily at the methods as they have over time contributed to
and shaped the images of the composer. The first part of my essay is
concerned with a review of various approaches to the topic of Bach
images from a methodological angle, based on specific examples. The
second part focuses on an aspect that is rarely explored, namely the
composer’s self-image and the emergence of a Bach image in the gen-
eration immediately after the composer’s death.

This study, read as a paper at the symposium in honor of George

Buelow and Malcolm Brown at Indiana Univ. on 16 October
2004, represents a revised version of the keynote address given
at the Biennial Meeting of the American Bach Society at Rutgers
Univ. on 16 April 2004; its second part is an expansion of a
paper read in Philadelphia, “Defining Genius: Early Reflections
of J. S. Bach’s Self-Image,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 145 (2001): 474–81.

The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 22, Issue 4, pp. 503–520, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347.
© 2005 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s
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02.Wolff_pp503-520 12/15/05 10:05 AM Page 504

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The first part requires some preliminary remarks. Bach scholar-

ship, one of the oldest and most active subfields of historical study in
music, has developed quite a number of more or less specialized
branches, from archival research to the study of musical sources, from
philological and chronological to aesthetic and theological scholarship,
from performance practice to numerology and gender studies, and so
forth.1 There is no need to enumerate them further, but they generally
fall into two categories of scholarly method: basic research (Ger., Grund-
lagenforschung) and interpretive scholarship—incidentally, a categoriza-
tion by no means unique to Bach scholarship or historical musicology
in general. It affects all branches of scholarship in the humanities and
social sciences.
As to Bach studies, I don’t mean to position basic research against
interpretive scholarship or vice versa. On the contrary, the interdepen-
dence of the two methods must be taken for granted. For it is hardly
necessary to stress that a plain archival document may well establish a
fact, but that by itself won’t make a difference. It needs to be contextu-
alized and explained by means of interpretation.2 Furthermore, by jux-
taposing the two contrasting methods of inquiry I have no intention to
504 reenter the philosophical dispute on critical rationalism and positivism
initiated and primarily conducted in the social sciences now half a cen-
tury ago. Arthur Mendel’s magisterial address “Evidence and Explana-
tion” at the 1961 Congress of the International Musicological Society
was musicology’s major contribution to that debate.3 In the humanities
the term positivism, though frequently inappropriately applied, gener-
ally still has a negative ring. It also has methodological connotations
and implications not to be confused with basic research, a term bor-
rowed from the natural sciences. But just as the sciences cannot at all
function without foundation-building basic research, neither can hu-
manistic scholarship.
Let me draw another link between the sciences and the humanities
on a more pragmatic level. More often than not, basic research requires

1 A fairly recent overview is presented by Daniel R. Melamed and Michael Marissen,

An Introduction to Bach Studies (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998).

2 A good case in point is presented by the chronology of Bach’s Weimar cantatas as

compared with the Leipzig cantata cycles. Whereas for most of the latter exact dates can
be established, the majority of the Weimar works cannot be dated with any degree of cer-
tainty, and scholars disagree in the interpretation of what it meant when the newly ap-
pointed concertmaster Bach was “obliged to perform new works monthly.” Alfred Dürr,
for instance, proposes a strict four-week rhythm, while others suggest a more loosely de-
fined time frame; cf. the discussion in Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned
Musician (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 161–64.
3 International Musicological Society, Report on the Eighth Congress, New York 1961, vol. 2,

ed. Jan LaRue (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1962), 3–18.

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team work and, preferably, an organized if not institutionalized ap-

proach, for the main tasks are ordinarily beyond the reach of an individ-
ual. The Leipzig Bach Archive, for example, represents an institution
that focuses primarily on basic research. One of its current projects, for
example, involves a systematic search for materials related to the Bach
family of musicians in all church, communal, and state archives of cen-
tral Germany—specifically of Thuringia, Saxony, and Anhalt—in order
to broaden and solidify the documentary basis for historical study. Such
a foundation-building effort had never before been undertaken, as in-
dividual scholars would hardly be able to afford engaging in a project
where more than 95 percent of the work is bound to be fruitless.4 Nev-
ertheless, and fewer than three years into the project, several dozen
new documents, many of them providing significant information, could
be uncovered, most recently even a completely unknown composition
by Johann Sebastian Bach in an autograph manuscript.5
However, the kind of team approach that fosters basic research6
does not ordinarily suit interpretive scholarship. On the contrary, inter-
pretation embodies first and foremost the ideas, insights, and judgment
of an individual scholar. At the same time, both basic research and
interpretive scholarship are in search of the truth. In general, however, 505
interpretive scholarship remains in search of the truth, even invites dis-
agreement about what the truth is. Basic research, on the other hand,
establishes genuine facts, promotes agreement, and thereby essentially
makes possible and facilitates individualized interpretive scholarship or
provides corrective measures.

I
Curiously, the concept of the likes of a Bach-, Goethe-, or Luther-
“Bild” seems to be a prevailingly Germanic idea. As far as Bach studies
are concerned, a bibliographic check turns up only one genuine English

4 A byproduct in the form of a published catalogue of organists and cantors active

in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt from 1600 to 1800 is envisioned in order to balance ef-
forts that would otherwise produce relatively little.
5 See the various presentations by Michael Maul and Peter Wollny in Bach-Jahrbuch

2002, 2003, and 2004. All documents compiled by the end of 2004 are included in Bach-
Dokumente, vol. 5, ed. Hans-Joachim Schulze (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005); for the new com-
position, see Michael Maul, “Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn – eine neu aufgefundene
Aria von Johann Sebastian Bach,” Bach-Jahrbuch 2005 (forthcoming).
6 Although Alfred Dürr and Georg von Dadelsen were the chief proponents and ex-

ponents of the new chronology of Bach’s vocal music as developed in the late 1950s, the
work was by no means done by solitary researchers but by a team of scholars from the
Bach-Archiv Leipzig, the Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut Göttingen, and the Musicologi-
cal Institute of the University of Tübingen under the direction of Walter Gerstenberg. Be-
sides Dürr and Dadelsen, the principal players included Paul Kast, Wolfgang Plath, and
Wisso Weiss.
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title: “Toward a New Image of Bach”—a piece written in 1970 by the

German-born Gerhard Herz, who conceptually followed and expanded
upon an exchange between Friedrich Blume and Alfred Dürr and re-
lated articles.7 Their discussion of the subject of the changing image
of Bach was triggered by specific and important developments in Bach
research, notably the new chronology of Bach’s Leipzig cantatas. To
sum up the principal arguments, Blume in 1962 interpreted the results
of basic research that had led to redating Bach’s Leipzig cantatas to the
first several years immediately after 1723 in such a way that it showed
the composer as having lost interest in sacred music and gradually turn-
ing into a rather secularized figure. Dürr, one of the principal re-
searchers responsible for what was perceived as a shocking landslide,
demonstrated that a more balanced view was in order.8
The research results from that time have long since been accepted,
corroborated, and continue to be further refined. Hence, there is no
obligation for me to address, let alone reshape this side of the Bach pic-
ture. I also don’t intend to pursue the route taken by scholars like
Bernd Sponheuer, Wolfgang Sandberger, or Hartmut Krones, who ana-
lyzed the “Bach-Bild” of Hans-Georg Nägeli, of Philipp Spitta, or that of
506 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung—all variants on the theme of a liter-
ary Bach portrait as drawn up by an individual or represented by a par-
ticular periodical or school of thought.9 Least of all do I want to deal
with the kind of ideological discussion as it prevailed during the totali-
tarian periods in 20th-century Germany, with the appropriation of a
certain “Bach-Bild” for specific nationalist and socialist purposes. How-

7 “Toward a New Image of Bach” in Essays on J. S. Bach (Ann Arbor: UMI Research

Press, 1985) 149–84 (repr. of article originally published in 1970–71). Blume’s paper ap-
peared first in 1962; Eng. trans., “Outlines of a New Picture of Bach,” Music and Letters
46 (1963): 214–27; Alfred Dürr, “Zum Wandel des Bach-Bildes. Zu Friedrich Blumes
Mainzer Vortrag,” Musik und Kirche 21 (1962): 232–36, and “Neue Bach-Forschung,”
Musica 20 (1966): 49–53. A later summary is presented by Dürr in “Das Bachbild im 20.
Jahrhundert,” in Im Mittelpunkt Bach. Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1988), 178–91 (repr. of paper first published in 1976). A related, yet different and criti-
cal, take is offered by Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Zur Kritik des Bach-Bildes im 20. Jahrhun-
dert,” in Bach in Leipzig – Bach und Leipzig. Konferenzbericht Leipzig 2000, ed. Ulrich
Leisinger, Leipziger Beiträge zur Bach-Forschung 5 (Hildesheim: Olms, 2002), 13–25.
8 Bibliographic references to the exchange in Melamed-Marissen, An Introduction to

Bach Studies, 34.

9 Bernd Sponheuer, “Das Bach-Bild Hans Georg Nägelis und die Entstehung der

musikalischen Autonomieästhetik,” Die Musikforschung 39 (1986): 107–23; Wolfgang

Sandberger, Das Bach-Bild Philipp Spittas. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Bach-Rezeption im 19.
Jahrhundert, Beihefte zum Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft 39 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner,
1997); Hartmut Krones, “Das Bach-Bild der Allgemeinen Musikalischen Zeitung mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat (Wien 1817–23) und der All-
gemeinen Wiener Musikzeitung (Wien 1841–1848),” in Johann Sebastian Bach. Beiträge
zur Wirkungsgeschichte, ed. Ingrid Fuchs (Wien: VWGÖ, 1992), 97–111.
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ever, I am afraid that the Germanic predilection for articulating and

discussing images of Bach has first and foremost ideological roots,
without showing any relationship whatsoever to basic research. Even
Blume’s famous 1962 lecture “Umrisse eines neuen Bach-Bildes” im-
plies an interpretive dimension that also runs deeply ideological, a phe-
nomenon that oddly enough affects virtually all of the numerous reac-
tions, especially with respect to the completely artificial juxtaposition of
Bach the church musician vs. Bach the secular artist.
We quickly recognize that the business of Bach imagery is least of all
a matter of iconography, i.e., of historical portraiture. After all, we do
possess only one authentic portrait, by Elias Gottlob Haußmann, several
doubtful likenesses, and a number of spurious pictures. Nevertheless,
largely wishful thinking and an understandable desire for likenesses
other than that of the composer in his sixties, as depicted by Haußmann,
has over time upgraded even some of the definitely spurious portraits to
nearly authentic status. Consider, for example, the portrait of an uniden-
tified middle-aged man painted by Johann Jacob Ihle, instantly recog-
nized as Johann Sebastian Bach by Oskar von Hase, then owner of
Breitkopf & Härtel, in 1897 at the house of a master baker in Bayreuth.
He purchased and later donated it to the Eisenach Bachhaus. Pure 507
fantasy—not interpretive scholarship however carefully reasoned—
created a completely fictional fact. For today every music lover easily rec-
ognizes it as the image of the Cöthen kapellmeister; the Harnoncourt-
Leonhardt “Complete Cantata” recording set on the Telefunken label
and serious Bach books use it on their title covers. The same is true of
the portrait of another unidentified younger man, supposedly from the
hand of the Weimar court painter Johann Ernst Rentsch, discovered in
1877 in the attic of a house in Erfurt and today at the Angermuseum
in Erfurt.10 Again, this completely invented image has become an icon
of the young Bach and regularly decorates even scholarly Bach volumes
such as the series of Dortmunder Bach-Forschungen.11 The infamous
sculpture of the young working-class Bach at the market square in Arn-
stadt, created by an East German artist in the early 1980s, could claim
just as much authenticity.
The Ihle and Rentsch portraits with their notorious Bach impostors
demonstrate rather impressively how images of the composer, even in
the field of historical portraiture, are largely a matter of imagination,
that is, of forming mental images. Unfortunately, however, definitely au-
thentic and definitely unauthentic pictures do not differ in this respect.

10 For the Ihle and Rentsch portraits, see Werner Neumann, Pictorial Documents of

the Life of Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach-Dokumente 4 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1979): 14–15.
11 Vols. 1–4 (Dortmund: Klangfarben-Verlag, 1997, 1999, 2002, and 2003).
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Take the Haußmann portrait. It is surely inappropriate to call it a snap-

shot of Bach because he poses in an official habit very much like that
of the various town councillors or, even more closely, the senior town
musician Johann Gottfried Reiche—all painted by Haußmann.12 At the
same time, we can be fairly sure that the sitter wanted to be painted this
way, from the top of the periwig down to the buttons of the coat, from
the friendly face to the small leaf with the enigmatic canon. At any rate,
we must assume that Bach intended to shape his image for the be-
holder in a deliberate and conscious way. Why does he hold and show a
sheet inscribed with three short lines of encoded musical notation
whose complex contents would remain obscure to the general viewer
and challenge even the well versed musician? By not having a keyboard
instrument included in the picture, he chose to disclaim his fame as a
virtuoso performer (a fact perhaps involuntarily underscored by the
poorly executed, clumsy, mole-like hand). And by not clasping a paper
roll, the conductor’s attribute (as Thomascantor Johann Hermann
Schein does in his portrait),13 Bach elected to play down his office as
cantor, music director, and kapellmeister.
In the Haußmann portrait, Bach the man takes a back seat to his
508 work, and that is how we have always understood him and how we ordi-
narily see him: Compared with his imposing oeuvre, the human being
seems of secondary importance. It is, indeed, as hard to gain insight into
Bach’s character as it is difficult to glean much detail about his domestic
situation, his family and everyday life, the environment within which he
moved, the external conditions under which he worked, the various as-
pects of his manifold professional engagements, and the broad spec-
trum of his extensive private activities. Compounding the scarcity of per-
tinent historical information is the extreme paucity of personal writings
and letters. While the rich correspondence of the Mozart family, for
example, opens up many aspects of that composer’s life, thoughts, and
experiences, the few extant Bach letters offer a distinct contrast,
though they also raise some questions. Did Bach really limit his writings
to organ reports, student recommendations, petitions, and financial re-
ceipts? If so, how would we explain the noticeable difference between
Bach and his second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, whose copious body of
correspondence ranks among the more interesting and important of
such 18th-century collections? If the father did not engage much in
regular and personal correspondence, why then did he use a private
secretary between 1737 and 1742?14

12 The New Grove 2, vol. 21, 142.

13 The New Grove 2, vol. 22, 461.
14 See Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, 392f.
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It is indeed difficult to see the real person behind the posed por-
trait, a genuine challenge for the Bach biographer—yesterday, today,
and tomorrow. Images of historical figures are formed less by their por-
traits than by biographers as interpreters of their lives; but as there is
no uniform 19th- or 20th-century approach to Bach biography, I am
afraid there won’t be one in the 21st century either. Only a few years
ago, we heard the demand for a distinctly psycho-biographical approach
in humanizing Bach, coming to terms with his personality and charac-
ter, as well as a call for a more extensive and critical exploration of
Bach’s musical failings, especially on the basis of examples of presum-
ably poor writing by the young composer.15 There is no question that
any notion of the superhuman misrepresents the facts and violates the
evidence to the contrary.16 But can appeals for a Freudian analysis of
Bach’s character and for contemplating Bach’s shortcomings as a com-
poser actually be satisfied, let alone fulfilled? A brief review of two promi-
nent examples that supposedly help to build a case seems in order.
First, regarding the infamous invective “Zippelfagottist” uttered on
the occasion of a nightly brawl in which Bach was involved: Does this
expletive really show his “capacity for sexual innuendo”?17 If yes, what
would it mean? A linguistic analysis of the word in question offers quite 509
a few choices.18 Moreover, the word was actually noted down in the
minutes of the Arnstadt church consistory, surely not an agency ready
to record four-letter words. In this context, “Zippel” most likely derives
from “discipulus” (Lat., student), as in the word “Zipfelmütze” (student
cap). Meant derogatorily, of course, the 20–year-old Bach (who had
graduated from Latin school at age 17), ridicules his opponent, the stu-
dent Geyersbach, who at age 24 had not yet graduated and, moreover,
was a poor bassoonist. We can be sure that, in line with the practice of
his day, Bach often used colloquial language much stronger and worse
than has been documented—but it only confirms what we know anyway,
namely that Bach was an impulsive character, impatient with dilettantes.
Second, the Ouverture in F, BWV 820, attributed to Bach:19 Does a
movement like the minuet from this overture really show how poor a

15 Robert Marshall, “Toward a Twenty-First-Century Bach Biography,” The Musical

Quarterly 84 (2000): 497–525.

16 For an attempt at interpreting some personality traits in a non-Freudian manner,

see Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, chap. 11.
17 Marshall, “Toward a Twenty-First-Century Bach Biography,” 501.
18 The manifold meanings of “Zipfel” and “Zippel” are discussed in vol. 15 of Jacob

and Wilhelm Grimm’s Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1965), cols. 1543–64; Mar-
shall cites only col. 1548. Andreas Glöckner, in his discussion of BWV 150 (Neue Bach-
Ausgabe, vol. 1/41. Krit. Bericht, 19), prefers the interpretation of “Zippel” as “Zwiebel”
(Eng., onion) and the emissions resulting from digesting onions; cf. Grimm, col. 1563.
19 Published in the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, vol. 5/10.
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composer the young Bach might at times have been? Is this a true
demonstration of a genuine effort by the 20-year-old (by no means a
child)? If the musical text is taken literally, it indeed represents a true
failure where, as Robert Marshall put it, “the level of basic craftsman-
ship does not compare favorably with the compositional skill, much less
the sophistication and elegance, displayed in the eight-year-old Mozart’s
well-known Minuet in G, K. 1.” Philological examination of the evidence,
tools of basic research, reveals that the work is transmitted in an early
and generally trustworthy manuscript, the so-called Andreas Bach Book.
It is unclear whether or not the work represents a transcription of per-
haps an orchestral piece, but—most importantly—its keyboard nota-
tion is sketchy throughout. When a voice enters and drops out for no
good reason, or when the repeats in the minuet and trio show disconti-
nuities in the bass line, this clearly suggests that the piece is not to be
played as written.20 In other words, the notated composition represents
a blueprint for its performance and must not be taken as a fully devel-
oped text. Thus the text with its often implied harmonies and voice
leadings does not reflect “the level of basic craftsmanship” but rather
an attempt on the part of the young Bach to get a feel for, and to focus
510 on, the essence of the flexible keyboard textures of French suite style.
Be that as it may, we can be sure that Bach had bad days, as a young
and as a mature composer. Hence, it is possible to point to passages in
the Leipzig cantatas which sound labored and not particularly inspired,21
or at movements which reflect compositional routine more than any-
thing else.22 Similarly, we must assume that the youthful Bach’s brawl
with Geyersbach, as harmless as it may seem in retrospect, was but one
instance of an impatient, fairly arrogant, and easily irascible human
being. After all, how many composers were locked up in a prisoner’s
cell like Bach before being dishonorably discharged from his Weimar
post? Nineteenth-century critics and writers have by no means over-
looked or disregarded these matters. Yet, as revelations of character
flaws or identifications of mediocre compositional specimens have not
really influenced the past image of Bach, they continue to provide non-

20 See the discussion of BWV 820 by Peter Williams, “French Overture Conventions

in the Hands of the Young Bach and Handel,” in Bach Studies, ed. Don O. Franklin (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 183–93, and especially by David Schulenberg, The
Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach (New York: Schirmer, 1992), 30–32.
21 For example, see BWV 76, the second cantata Bach composed in Leipzig, begin-

ning of the choral fugue in the opening movement (mm. 13ff.).

22 On another level, Bach’s works have been scrutinized for specific compositional

mistakes and faulty writing, especially by Johannes Schreyer, Beiträge zur Bach-Kritik
(Dresden: Holze & Pahl, 1910); idem., Beiträge zur Bach-Kritik, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1913);
idem., “Neue Beiträge zur Bach-Kritik,” Allgemeine Musikzeitung 41 (1914): 683–86, 923–
26, 949–51, 976–78, 1006–1008, 1030–31.
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negligible nuances but will hardly shape, let alone change, its outlines.
For “outlines” is the key notion. The paucity of both surviving biographi-
cal documents and available autograph composing materials thwarts a
full image of Bach even though it invites conjecture ad infinitum.

II
The second part of this essay is concerned with the foundation of
all Bach images, namely the creation of, and earliest reflections on,
Johann Sebastian Bach’s self-image. Here I should like to pursue the
question of what the composer himself contributed to the shaping of
his image. Did he add to his image beyond determining how to pose
for Haußmann?

Well before the end of the 18th century a conscious and deliberate
discussion about self-image—that is, the way an artist sees himself—
became a matter of course. Hence Mozart could write in 1778, at age
22: “I am a Composer and was born a Capellmeister. I must not and
cannot bury my gift for composing that a benevolent God has bestowed
upon me in such a rich measure—I may say so without arrogance be- 511
cause I am aware of it now more than ever before.”23 Even when simi-
larly uninhibited in self-congratulatory approval of their own talent,
musicians and composers of earlier generations generally did not refer
to their metier and vocation in such terms. Critical self-knowledge was
an unnecessary notion for those who understood themselves to be in
the service of church, court, or town—in other words, serving God’s
representatives, whether bishop, prince, or civic authority.
However, when in 1784 the German poet and writer Christian
Schubart discussed Johann Sebastian Bach’s significance, he showed no
interest in whom his “Orpheus of the Germans” had once served or
what he had produced in that capacity.24 Intending to give his idol
Bach divine status and immortality, he borrowed the Orpheus analogy
from the classicist Johann Matthias Gesner who, in his Quintilian com-
mentary of 1738, had stated “Favorer as I am of antiquity, the accom-
plishments of our Bach . . . appear to me to effect what not many
Orpheuses, nor twenty Arions, could achieve.”25 Schubart then pro-
claimed “Sebastian Bach was a genius of the highest order. His spirit

23 Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life: Selected Letters, ed. and newly trans. by Robert Spaeth-

ling (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 128 (letter of 7 February 1778).

24 The New Bach Reader. A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, ed.

Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, revised and enlarged by Christoph Wolff (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1998; 21999), no. 366 (henceforth NBR).
25 NBR, no. 328.
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was so original, so vast, that centuries would be needed to measure up

to it.”26
As is the case with the Orpheus reference, there is a background to
the notion of Bach the original genius as well. Although the use of the
term “genius” is clearly the choice of Schubart as a later 18th-century
admirer, its connotations reveal rather close links not just to the inner
Bach circle but to the composer himself. It can be demonstrated that
none other than Johann Sebastian Bach himself, in a rather self-aware
and markedly self-assured manner, laid the foundation for the image of
genius that emerged after his lifetime and reached full bloom by the
1770s and 80s.
The discussion of genius or, more specifically, original genius (Orig-
inalgenie) entered the philosophical and aesthetic discourse in Ger-
many only around the middle of the 18th century. This is not the place
for a review of the French and English use of the term genius that goes
back to the 16th and 17th centuries.27 Suffice it to say that the French
“génie,” where (as in the English “genius”) the Latin genius and ingenium
blend, was adopted by philosophers in Germany despite the rejection of
the word by Bach’s younger Leipzig contemporary, the philosopher
512 Johann Christoph Gottsched. Although the latter preferred “Geist” to
the un-German “Genie,” Gottsched’s discussion of the concept of
genius reflects his reception of French and English theories, particu-
larly those of Batteux and Shaftesbury, and helps prepare its use as a
fundamental idea of both aesthetic discourse and a genuinely aesthetic
art. William Shakespeare was considered not only in England but also
in Germany the prototypical genius in literature; Isaac Newton joined
him early on as the paradigmatic scientific genius.28
Genius connotes not only a characteristic disposition, inclination,
bent, turn, or temper of the mind—“a man endowed with superiour
faculties,” as Samuel Johnson puts it in his 1755 dictionary.29 “By the
word Original, when applied to Genius,” William Duff writes in 1767,
“we mean that native and radical power which the mind possesses, of
discovering something New and Uncommon in every subject on which
it employs its Faculties. . . . The word Original, considered in connec-
tion with Genius, indicates the Degree, not the Kind of this accomplish-
ment, and . . . it always denotes its highest Degree.”30 Here we basically
find the definition of original genius that Schubart applied to Bach.
26 NBR, no. 366.
27 Cf. Joachim Ritter, “Genie,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 3, ed.
Joachim Ritter (Basel: Schwabe, 1974), cols. 279–87.
28 Jochen Schmidt, Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philoso-

phie und Politik 1750–1945, vol. 1 (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 8 and 363.
29 Ritter, “Genie,” 282.
30 Ritter, “Genie,” 283f.
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What is its background? The obituary for Johann Sebastian Bach,

written in 1750 and published four years later, provides some crucial in-
formation and a number of key points. The piece was coauthored by
Bach’s second son Carl Philipp Emanuel and his former student Jo-
hann Friedrich Agricola, at the time both members of Frederick the
Great’s court capelle in Berlin.31
The obituary begins: “Johann Sebastian Bach belongs to a family
that seems to have received a love and aptitude for music as a gift of na-
ture to all its members in common.” In the same way that Shakespeare
was considered “a poet of nature”32 and “an illustrious instance of the
force of unassisted Genius,”33 Bach is portrayed as talented by nature.
This basic emphasis on the importance of natural gifts and talent corre-
sponds with Bach’s serious interest in, indeed preoccupation with,
genealogical matters. In 1735 he put together a family tree, comple-
mented by an archive of musical compositions by his ancestors. Each
member of the extended family of musicians receives a brief commen-
tary in the tree, but of particular importance for Bach are the very be-
ginnings of the family talent.34
Thus, he describes “No. 1. Veit Bach, a white-bread baker in Hun-
gary, [who] had to flee Hungary in the sixteenth century on account of 513
his Lutheran religion. . . . He found his greatest pleasure in a little cit-
tern, which he took with him even into the mill and played upon while
the grinding was going on. (How pretty it must have sounded together!
Yet in this way he had a chance to have time drilled into him.) And this
was, as it were, the beginning of a musical inclination [der Anfang zur
Music] in his descendants.” Then of no. 2, Johannes Bach, great-grandson
Johann Sebastian registers a “particular inclination [Zuneigung] for mu-
sic” which led to his receiving a formal training as town piper.
Talent, however, must be coupled with hard work and study, in the
same way as ingenium must be complemented by studium. Hence the
obituary presents a report about the orphaned child receiving tutelage
from his older brother Johann Christoph: “The love of our little Johann

31 NBR, no. 306. The division of labor between the two authors of the obituary can

be clearly determined on the basis of writing styles and contents. Bach’s son wrote the
first (biographical) section, concluding with the statement “This is the brief description
of the life.” Agricola then added the shorter (laudatory) section, beginning with the
words “If ever a composer showed polyphony in its greatest strength”; he ended: “Our
lately departed Bach did not, it is true, occupy himself with deep theoretical speculations
on music, but was all the stronger in the practice of the art.” Lorenz Christoph Mizler, ed-
itor of the published version, appended a final sentence mentioning what Bach had done
for the Society of Musical Sciences: “To the Society he furnished the chorale Vom Himmel
hoch da komm ich her fully worked out.”
32 Ritter, “Genie,” col. 282.
33 William Sharpe, 1755; cf. Schmid, Die Geschichte, 150.
34 Facsimile and transcription of the document in NBR, p. 284 and no. 303.
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Sebastian for music was uncommonly great even at this tender age,” a
statement immediately followed by a very effective story about “the zeal
to improve himself.” It is the story about a notebook with a challenging
repertoire that was kept in a locked cabinet, secretly taken out by the
boy, and copied by moonlight. “In six months’ time he had these musi-
cal spoils in his own hands,” the obituary relates and connects the “very
passion to improve himself in music” with “the very industry applied” to
the music in the book.35 Nobody except Johann Sebastian himself
could have transmitted this wonderful heartbreaking story which was to
illustrate, for his own children and students, the necessary combination
of talent and industry. The story also presents the basis for the more ab-
stract statement later formulated by Bach and quoted by Johann Abra-
ham Birnbaum in 1738: “What I have achieved by industry and practice,
anyone else with tolerable natural gift and ability can also achieve.”36
The study of exempla classica, the reliance on and imitation of good
models as the conventional method of learning, must be rounded out
and capped by independent intellectual involvement. Hence the obitu-
ary authors specifically mention Bach’s “application to the art of organ
playing and to composition, which he had learned chiefly by the obser-
514 vation of the works of the most famous and proficient composers and
by the fruits of his own reflection upon them.”37 Carl Philipp Emanuel
Bach, replying in 1775 to a questionnaire submitted to him by Johann
Nicolaus Forkel, the first Bach biographer, adds supplementary infor-
mation by stating that his father became “a pure and strong fugue
writer in his youth . . . through his own study and reflection alone.”38
Whether this actually reflects Sebastian Bach’s own view is hard to tell,
but it is obvious that in regard to the development of the unparalleled
wide range of fugal techniques as reflected, for example, in part 1 of
The Well-Tempered Clavier, there were no viable models Bach could
have turned to.39 More likely, the son’s interpretation rather than the
father’s account seems to have played a role in answering a specific
question put to Emanuel Bach by Forkel about influential masters in
Sebastian’s early years. Here he lists “the Lüneburg organist [Georg]
Böhm,” but originally he had written “his teacher Böhm.” The words
“his teacher” are crossed out,40 apparently for the simple reason that, in
line with the new aesthetic concept of genius now in vogue in German

35 NBR, 299.
36 NBR, 344.
37 NBR, 300.
38 NBR, 398–99.
39 See the discussion of pre-Bach fugues in part 3 of Paul M. Walker’s Theories of

Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach (Rochester: Univ. of Rochester Press, 2000).
40 NBR, no. 395; facsimile in Bach-Urkunden, ed. Max Schneider (Leipzig, 1917).
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philosophy, Bach’s son wanted to stress the autodidactic nature of his

father’s upbringing. As Carl Philipp Emanuel knew well, a genius is not
supposed to have teachers; a genius has only himself as a teacher.
English philosophers like Addison, Pope, and Young differentiated
between natural and original genius. Edward Young in his 1759 trea-
tise, Conjectures on Original Composition, uses metaphorical language in
order to clarify his point. “An Original,” he writes, “may be said to be of
a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the vital root of Genius;
it grows, it is not made.”41 An essential element in the definition of
genius, especially as it was adopted by and propagated in 18th-century
German philosophy, consists of the notion of originality, an identifiable
and strong individual creative contribution. The obituary anticipated
this aspect and addresses it in the non-biographical section of the text.
In the passage that characterizes Bach’s general musical accomplish-
ments and particularly his achievements in composition, we find the
following sentence: “His melodies were strange [Ger., sonderbar: apart
or away from others], but always varied, rich in invention, and resem-
bling those of no other composer.”42 This by all accounts most unusual
statement is without precedent or parallel. As far as we can tell, no mu-
sical oeuvre prior to 1750 had ever been thus described. The obituary 515
authors must have been intensely aware of the fact that Bach’s music
stood indeed in many ways apart from that of his contemporaries. The
specific reference to “invention” (Erfindung) not only underscores
the point but also connects it to Johann Sebastian Bach’s own view. In
the aforementioned 1775 letter to Forkel, C.P.E. Bach mentions the
power of invention, “the invention of ideas,” as a decisive criterion by
which his father identified a promising composition student: “He re-
quired this from the very beginning, and anyone who had none he
advised to stay away from composition altogether.”43
The Leipzig composer was intensely aware of, and apparently culti-
vated, the fact that an excess of novel ideas and their mastery made his
music come out distinctly different from, and implicitly better than,
other music. The report on Louis Marchand shying away from compet-
ing with Bach, another story transmitted exclusively by Bach himself,44

41 Ritter, “Genie,” col. 283.

42 NBR, 305.
43 NBR, no. 399. On this point, see Christoph Wolff, “Invention, Composition and

the Improvement of Nature: Apropos Bach the Teacher and Practical Philosopher,” in
The Keyboard in Baroque Europe, ed. Christopher Hogwood (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2003), 133–39.
44 The oldest source for this story in Johann Abraham Birnbaum’s Vertheidigung of

1739 (NBR, no. 67) predates its appearance in the obituary. Jakob Adlung (Anleitung zu
der musikalischen Gelahrtheit [Erfurt, 1758], 69) specifically reported that Bach, when he
once visited with him in Erfurt, “told him all” about the incident.
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provides a striking testimony in this respect. Likewise, it does not come

as a surprise when, in a 1736 dispute with the rector of the St. Thomas
School, he describes his church compositions as being “incomparably
harder and more intricate.”45 Moreover, he certainly knew that no
other composer had written anything on the scale of the St. Matthew
Passion or the B-Minor Mass or anything like the Well-Tempered Clavier,
the unaccompanied violin and cello solos, the concertos for one to four
keyboards, or the Clavier-Übung series, to mention but a few. Even if is-
sues of originality and individuality, in contrast to the more general no-
tions of amenity, beauty, artfulness, and the like, played no role in the
aesthetics of Bach’s lifetime, he himself apparently paid attention to
them in a rather self-aware manner. This is actually reflected in the
obituary as well. From the first summary worklist included there it be-
comes evident that, within the category of unpublished works, particu-
lar attention is drawn to those compositions which are unlike anything
to be found elsewhere.46
While the bulk of the repertory is accommodated in lump-sum
fashion (“Five full annual cycles of church pieces” or “A mass of . . . in-
strumental music of every kind”), specific and unmistakably identifiable
516 works are singled out, as for example: a Passion “for double chorus;”
“Six trios for the organ with obbligato pedal”; “Twice twenty-four pre-
ludes and fugues, in all keys”; “Six sonatas for the violin, without bass”;
“Six of the same for violoncello”; or “Various concertos for one, two,
three, and four harpsichords.” Where not self-evident, the distinctive
features (“for double chorus,” “with obbligato pedal,” “in all keys,” or
“without bass”) are noted. What all these works and work groups have in
common is that they have no equivalent in the musical repertoire of the
time. In other words, they are unparalleled, unique contributions to
the art of musical composition.
Originality and incomparability are not to be valued and measured
as isolated parameters but in the context of important traditions in a
given field (one need only remember Newton’s famous view of himself
as standing on the shoulders of giants). An illuminating example is pre-
sented in 1752 by Johann Joachim Quantz. When he discusses Bach’s
eminence in the development of organ playing, he writes: “As early as
the last century, in fact from the middle of the same, a few famous men
. . . began to strive for an improvement of musical taste [he then gives
the names of Froberger, Pachelbel, Reinken, Buxtehude, and Bruhns].
But particularly the art of organ playing, which had to a great extent
been learned from the Netherlanders, was already at this time in a high

45 NBR, 176.
46 NBR, 303–5.
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state of advancement, thanks to the above mentioned and some other

able men. Finally the admirable Johann Sebastian Bach brought it to its
greatest perfection in recent times. We can only hope that now, after
his death, owing to the small number of those who still devote sufficient
industry to it, it will not again fall into decline or even decay.”47
Part of this passage seems to derive from a story first reported in
Bach’s obituary. It concerns Bach’s visit to Hamburg in 1720, and his
playing the organ before a large and distinguished audience, among
them the octogenarian organist Jan Adam Reinken, who was brought
up in the Netherlands. Reinken is quoted as having made the following
compliment to Bach: “I thought that this art was dead, but I see that in
you it still lives.”48 Again, there could only have been one person respon-
sible for the transmission of this dictum: Bach—picking up the Reinken
statement but styling himself as preventing the art of the Netherlanders
from declining or even decaying. Quantz, ordinarily not concerned with
the tradition of organ music or the likes of Reinken, Buxtehude, and
Bruhns, may actually have heard the story directly from Bach himself,
perhaps in a more fleshed-out version, on one of the several occasions
when the Leipzig kapellmeister-virtuoso gave organ recitals in Dresden,
reportedly in the presence of the court musicians.49 With Quantz’s 517
help, the story about Bach’s place in the tradition of organ music made
it into the annals of music history.
Regarding links with tradition, there is the issue of a well recognized
authoritative benchmark, a superior paradigm. Shakespeare serves in
that capacity in both English and German literature. Forkel, discussing
in 1774 Bach’s musical splendors, refers to a remark by Lessing: “Even
the most minor of his splendors bears a stamp which calls out to the
whole world: I am Shakespeare.”50 Corresponding references can also
be found to Albrecht Dürer, in the form of Bach as “the Albrecht Dürer
of German music.”51 The earliest, most widely circulating and signifi-
cant parallel, however, is drawn between Bach and Newton. The first
such reference already can be found in the year of Bach’s death and
was made by Johann Adolph Scheibe, who had studied at Leipzig
University, in the 18th century a center of Newtonianism in Germany.52

47 NBR, no. 350

48 NBR, 302.
49 NBR, 117 and 188, related to recitals in 1725 and 1736, respectively.
50 Dokumente zum Nachwirken Johann Sebastian Bachs 1750–1800, ed. Hans-Joachim

Schulze, Bach-Dokumente 3 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1973), no. 800a (trans. by the author).
51 Schulze, ed., 558n25).
52 The anonymous text used to be attributed to Johann Friedrich Agricola; see Kai

Köpp, “Johann Adolph Scheibe als Verfasser zweier anonymer Bach-Dokumente,” in

Bach-Jahrbuch 2003, 173–96.
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By way of analogy, Scheibe explains that Bach’s music is best appreci-

ated by real connoisseurs, just as Newton’s writings are best understood
by readers with a deep knowledge of science. Three decades later, in his
discussion of Bach the genius, Daniel Schubart states: “What Newton was
as a philosopher, Bach was as a musician,” and in 1801 the Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung associates Bach’s art with “Newton’s spirit.”53 In other
words, just as Newton brought about fundamental changes and estab-
lished new principles in the world of science, Bach did the same in the
world of music, both in composition and in performance. With a work
such as the Well-Tempered Clavier, to mention just one characteristic
example, the world of musical composition was no longer the same.
Newton the prototype of scientific genius and Bach the musical genius
are juxtaposed with respect to the universal and timeless impact of
their extraordinary inventions and discoveries.
It seems worth noting at this point that Bach’s most important mu-
sical contemporaries, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Rameau, who all
wrote music with a broader appeal and more widely disseminated than
Bach’s, were completely remote from the discussion and the scene in
which the 18th-century concept of original genius emerged. Three ex-
518 planations offer themselves:
First, their compositional art, whether applied to opera, oratorio,
concerto, or any other vocal and instrumental genre, was widely recog-
nized and acknowledged as superior. There is no question about the
quality, beauty, appeal, technical make-up, or poetic and expressive
character of their music. Yet none of their compositional achievements
brought about any fundamental and long-lasting changes in musical
craftsmanship by way of providing exemplary models for contrapuntal
writing and harmonic design as represented, in particular, by two didac-
tic collections: the Well-Tempered Clavier, circulating among profes-
sional musicians after 1750 in countless manuscript copies, and the four-
part chorale harmonizations, first published in two volumes (Berlin,
1765 and 1769) and later in an expanded four-volume edition (Leipzig,
1784–87).
Second, considering the example that Handel and Bach were both
well recognized keyboard virtuosos and composers of keyboard concer-
tos, it once again becomes clear that the principal difference between
them lies in their exertion of influence. Bach multiplied his efforts not
only by playing concertos with friends, sons, and students for multiple

53 NBR, 370; cf. Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, 1–11; idem.,

“ ‘Newtons Geist’ und die Grundlagen Bachscher Kompositionskunst,” in Musik, Kunst

und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter J. S. Bachs, ed. Ulrich Leisinger and Christoph Wolff, Leipziger
Beiträge zur Bach-Forschung 7 (Hildesheim: Olms, 2005), 11–23.
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harpsichords but especially by starting a major trend, if not a tradition.

Adding up the keyboard concertos composed by his students and sons
(Carl Philipp Emanuel alone wrote more than 50), the total not only
gets into the hundreds but the repertoire as such links up with the fu-
ture of the piano concerto genre; the names of Johann Christian Bach
and Mozart may illustrate it.
Third, Bach lived and worked for 27 years in an academically chal-
lenging environment where his main activities consisted of teaching on
several levels. Hence scores of students and their pupils’ students natu-
rally contributed to organizing and eventually consolidating Bach’s last-
ing influence, a phenomenon that none of his musical colleagues sus-
tained. Moreover, the productivity of Bach’s students as contributors to
music pedagogy and theory is unmatched; Johann Philipp Kirnberger,
who codified his teacher’s compositional principles in Die Kunst des
reinen Satzes (Berlin, 1771 and 1779), is but one of them. It therefore
hardly comes as a surprise when Joseph Haydn from far-away Vienna
put the finishing touches on the fully evolved Bach icon when he hailed
him in 1799 as “the man from whom all musical wisdom proceeded.”54
Like his contemporaries, and in line with the conventions of his
time, Bach left virtually no direct documents transmitting his own view 519
of himself, a kind of self-assessment. At the same time, we observe, be-
ginning with the obituary of 1750, the gradual emergence of a unique
image of Bach the original genius, an image shaped by the generation
of his sons and students, but continually contributed to by later ones—
even beyond Beethoven. Particularly remarkable, however, is the evidence
—not merely a suspicion—that the groundwork for the image of Bach
the genius was laid by none other than the composer himself. As the
obituary and related sources demonstrate, they essentially incorporate
reflections of a strong self-image, a desire to accentuate and safeguard
those aspects of his art of which he was, justifiably, most proud, and fi-
nally to define his place in history, well beyond the narrower confines
of the family tree that he drew up in 1735. Most importantly, however,
the original narrative that so clearly reflects Bach’s self-image and self-
promotion astonishingly complements the man who posed for the
Haußmann portrait—the man with the restrained smile who wanted his
onlooker to feel challenged. It worked in 1746 and still does today.

Harvard University

54 NBR, 374.
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ABSTRACT
Beginning with remarks on the complementary functions of basic
research and interpretive scholarship, the first part of the essay focuses
on varying concepts of Bach images, discusses authentic and unauthen-
tic Bach portraits as well as images of the composer’s personality, and
criticizes the often insufficient regard for basic research. The second
part of the article deals with the development of Bach’s self-image on
the basis of documentary evidence and its interpretation. It suggests
that the composer himself contributed significantly during his lifetime
to the shape of the emerging “genius” image that emerges during the
second half of the 18th century and that constitutes the foundation
of the icon of “the man from whom all musical wisdom proceeded”
(Haydn).

520