Bach-Facetten. Essays, Studien, Miszellen. Mit einem Geleitwort von Peter Wollny by Hans Joachim Schulze

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bach-Facetten. Essays, Studien, Miszellen. Mit einem Geleitwort von Peter Wollny by Hans Joachim Schulze Markus Rathey (bio) Hans Joachim Schulze. Bach-Facetten. Essays, Studien, Miszellen. Mit einem Geleitwort von Peter Wollny (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017). 824 pp. A total of 327 items by Hans Joachim Schulze are listed in the catalogue of publications at the end of the fascinating essay collection Bach-Facetten. The items range from books to articles, from reviews to critical editions of music to CD and LP booklets. Schulze is arguably one of the most prolific and influential Bach scholars of the second half of the twentieth century. As director of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, co-editor of the Bach Jahrbuch, and editor of numerous works by Bach, Schulze has contributed to and shaped Bach scholarship for decades. The sixty-four articles selected for this collection of representative essays, written over a span of more than five decades, are a testament to the enduring quality of Schulze’s work. Most of the articles are still relevant and have not been significantly superseded by more recent scholarship. The articles have been published here without being updated; in cases where newer research has brought forth additional information, this information is included in a short “Nachtrag” (appendix) at the end of each article. The book opens with a selection of articles about Bach’s biography and family. Particularly fascinating is the first text, which was originally written in 1978 as a sample chapter for a planned but never written Bach biography. Here, Schulze explores the years 1722–1723 and the search for a new cantor at the Thomaskirche. Who should follow Johann Kuhnau? The international star composer Georg Philipp Telemann? The experienced court composers Johann Friedrich Fasch or Christoph Graupner? Or a man much lower on the list, Johann Sebastian Bach? Schulze weaves the familiar sources about the selection of the Thomaskantor into a chapter that eschews academic jargon and presents the facts in a way that almost has the narrative drive of a novel. It is regrettable that Schulze never finished his Bach biography. He follows the vestiges of it with two later articles further examining the years 1722 and 1723, primarily by discussing in more detail the sources he had paraphrased in the initial biographical article. Readers will have to [End Page 118] complete all three texts and cope with seeing some details at least three times to get Schulze’s full picture. What would be a problem in most other books is a forgivable flaw in a retrospective collection of essays like this. The repetition shows consistency in Schulze’s methodology and thinking, such that essays from the early 1970s can stand next to articles from the late 1990s. It is remarkable how Schulze can dress biting criticism in an almost charming way. When commenting on Ulrich Siegele’s essays on the cultural politics in Bach’s Leipzig, Schulze writes: A few years later, my own short sketch [about Bach’s election as cantor] was used by Ulrich Siegele as a basis for a broad, panoramic survey, which supplements the surviving sources with a lot of intriguing hypotheses and which has a compelling explanation for every opinion uttered by the burgomasters and members of the town council, and for the selection, assessment, and evaluation of the candidates. Astonishing is the confidence with which the reader is guided through the (real or seemingly) labyrinthian election process; it is remarkable in the way it continues its chosen path to the end, even if [the author] finds himself in a dead end created by himself. (45)1 The passage not only shows Schulze’s biting sarcasm but also reflects his reluctance to speculate about things that are not backed up by sources. This reluctance does not mean that Schulze was limited in his approach. His encyclopedic knowledge of the surviving documents on Bach’s life and works, of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, and of the history of central Germany allowed him to connect Bach’s life with other developments without resorting to speculation about hidden agendas. In the essay “Von Weimar nach Köthen,” Schulze provides details about Bach’s transition from the Lutheran court...