Cöthener Bach-Hefte, 12 (review)

As with other numbers in the Cöthener Bach-Hefte series, this slim volume brings together a group of essays relating, for the most part, to Bach's five-and-a-half-year tenure as Kapellmeister at the Köthen court (1717-23). The contributions by Hans-Joachim Schulze, Andreas Glöckner, andWerner Breig were originally presented at the Köthener Herbst symposium in 2003, and a further, introductory essay by Schulze derives from the Köthener Bach-Festtage of 2004. Filling out the volume are contributions by the late Günther Hoppe and Christine Siegert.

Schulze's 'Johann Sebastian Bach und Köthen — Wege und Irrwege der Forschung' (Johann Sebastian Bach and Köthen: Paths and Wrong Turnings of Research) surveys scholarly approaches to the Köthen period over the past century and a half, from Carl Hermann Bitter in the 1860s to Hoppe in the 1980s and 1990s. He begins with the case of Bach's 1722 birthday cantata for Prince Johann August of Anhalt-Zerbst, the text of which surfaced only in 1999. In speculating that Bach in fact never travelled to Zerbst, Schulze underscores his main theme: that the relatively sparse documentation surviving from the Köthen period tends to raise more questions than it answers. Indeed, determining which works were composed at Köthen is a project requiring more than a little guesswork. Schulze asks, for example, whether the revision and repeat performance of aWeimar cantata such as Mein Herze schwimmt in Blut, BWV 199, counts as a Köthen work. In his view, many scholarly hypotheses regarding Bach's music from this period— doubtless a reference to the long-held notion that many of the instrumental ensemble works originated at Köthen—rest on fragile foundations. Schulze further suggests that the cantata Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest, BWV194, was not composed for the consecration of a new organ at Störmthal near Leipzig, but for the consecration of a church there, and that the lost Köthen cantata on which it is based performed the same function for the church of St Agnus. He concludes his miscellany by offering new biographical information about Ernst Christian Rolle, organist at St Agnus during Bach's tenure in Köthen, and Augustin Reinhard Stricker, Bach's immediate predecessor at court.

Several aspects of Bach's personal life at Köthen are brought more clearly into focus by Günthur Hoppe's 'Zur Haustrauung Johann Sebastians und Anna Magdalenas und zur "Nottaufe" Christina Sophia Henriette Bachs' (The Home Wedding of Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena, and on the 'Emergency Baptism' of Christina Sophia Henriette Bach). Here Bach's second wedding is placed within a rich documentary context that illuminates the legal and financial implications of remarrying in the principality of Anhalt. Hoppe speculates that Anna Magdalena Wilcke arrived in Köthen as early as spring 1721, leading to the possibility that she and Bach may have become romantically involved well before the year of mourning for Maria Barbara Bach had ended. He also discusses the commemorative service for Maria Barbara, at which, unusually, the entire choir of the Lutheran school participated; Bach's trip to Karlsbad with Prince Leopold, during which Maria Barbara took ill and died; and the apparent difference in piety between Bach's two wives. Finally, Hoppe provides an ecclesiastical and theological background for Bach's failure to register the lay baptism of Anna Magdalena's first child, Christiana Sophia Henriette, who died aged 3 in June 1726

Prince Leopold's trip to Florence in June and July 1712 is explored in Christine Siegert's 'Florentiner Musikkultur zur Zeit des Besuchs von Prinz Leopold von Anhalt-Köthen' (Florentine Musical Culture at the Time of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen's Visit). Drawing on the prince's travel diary (written by a page), she attempts to reconstruct his musical itinerary, but the diary records little detail about the music that...