About Bach

From the House of Aaron to the House of Johann Sebastian: Old Testament Roots for the Bach Family Tree

From the House of Aaron to the House of Johann Sebastian Old Testament Roots for the Bach Family Tree Mary Dalton Greer And you shall hallow the fiftieth year . . . It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. —Leviticus 25:101 I n 1735 Johann Sebastian Bach turned fifty. During the course of that year he drew up a family tree delineating six generations of male members of the Bach family and prepared an annotated family genealogy to accompany the family tree.2 In addition, at around the same time he began to assemble the musical compositions of his most gifted forebears into a collection: the so-called Old Bach Archive. All three endeavors attest to his deep connection to the Bach clan, nearly all of whom were musicians, and his commitment to preserving their musical legacy. The reason for Bach’s systematic documentation of his family heritage beginning in 1735 has never been satisfactorily explained. Christoph Wolff has pointed out that “Bach amassed the Archive at about the time that he witnessed, with pride, his older sons leaving the parental home and taking up careers as professional musicians in their own right.”3 To be sure, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel assumed their first official positions in the mid-1730s, but over a span of five years. Friedemann accepted the post of organist of St. Sophia’s Church in Dresden in 1733, and Carl Philipp Emanuel entered into the service of Frederick II, the future King of Prussia, in Berlin in 1738. Until now, no compelling documentary evidence has been presented to suggest why Bach undertook these projects in 1735. The wording of several of the entries in the genealogy and the fact that Bach, a close reader of Old Testament scriptures, commenced these ambitious family-history projects in his fiftieth year point to another explanation. His heightened interest in preserving his family’s history in 1735 may have been prompted, at least in part, by the injunction in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus to hallow one’s fiftieth year as 15 greer 16 a jubilee year and to return to one’s family and property. Bach may have carried out this command figuratively by preparing the family tree and genealogy and by compiling the Old Bach Archive. The premise that a command issued to the Israelites thousands of years earlier inspired Bach to compile his family’s genealogy and assemble the compositions of his distinguished musical forebears when he turned fifty is not as improbable as it might appear. Indeed, Christoph Wolff notes that, because Levitical rules regarding ritual purification still held sway in Lutheran churches during Johann Sebastian’s lifetime, his mother was excluded from his christening ceremony on March 23, 1685.4 There is ample evidence that Bach was familiar with the Old Testament book of Leviticus. He must have owned at least one copy of Luther’s German Bible, though it has disappeared without a trace.5 The inventory of his estate reveals that his theological library included at least two important commentaries on Luther’s translation: Abraham Calov’s learned Die deutsche Bibel and Johannes Olearius’s erudite Biblische Erklärung.6 Both publications incorporated nearly all of Luther’s translation, together with glosses by Luther and the authors. Bach’s copy of Calov’s Bible survives, and it reveals that he corrected, underlined, or added marginal notations to eleven passages in Leviticus.7 In the eighteenth line of Calov’s commentary on Chapter 25:9, which concerns the sounding of the trumpet in the jubilee year, Bach inserts the letter “s” in red ink to correct the word himmliche in the phrase “himmlische Jubel Jahr” (heavenly Jubilee year).8 Bach’s annotations in his Calov Bible also indicate that he read the First Book of Chronicles with great interest. His markings demonstrate his deep affinity for the Levite musicians and his especially strong identification with Asaph, King David’s Capellmeister. Bach’s view of his musical calling and his membership in a large, musically gifted family appear to have been shaped at the most fundamental level by his reading of Old Testament passages pertaining to the families of musicians who were called to serve in the Temple. The biblical texts provide crucial insights into Bach’s choice of words in numerous documents and into the motivating forces behind certain undertakings that are not readily explained...