From the Reformation to the Enlightenment, musicians who participated in the liturgies of the deviating factions of a once unified western Christianity often found themselves on the front lines of the theological battlefields. Music operates at the level of the intimate spiritual life of the individual: was it not over this foundling that all the custody disputes were being waged ? With the establishment of each new religious persuasion, with each reform, with each military victory granting temporary legitimacy to this or that interpretation of the Scriptures, the role of music in the liturgy , in the home , in private devotions , as instigator of profane, even lascivious thoughts, as idleness, distraction, vanity or , perhaps, as one of the refinements of civilization, was hotly contested. In Switzerland, Holland, France, England, and parts of Germany, there was as much risk in the career of a musician as in that of a writer in Soviet Russia.
As each new hurricane blast of the Reformation sent tidal waves rolling into the churches, courts and households of Europe, musicians and composers found themselves persecuted, ruined, dispossessed, sent into exile or jailed. They were never completely safe on either side of the divide, though it must be acknowledged that all of the arts were more on the defensive under the Protestants, with their puritanical reformist zeal, than the Catholics, addicted to hyper-aesthetic spectacle. It was the scientists that the Catholics wanted to scalp: although Galileo Galilei was silenced by the Inquisition and his works placed on the Index, his less illustrious composer father, Vincenzo Galilei, was never in any danger
. The concern which cut across all religious boundaries was that the new forms of music would not be so gratifying to the senses that worshippers would be distracted from the solemnity of worship:
" [ The Papal edicts of 1665, 1678 and 1692] were aimed at curbing a dual reality. From a moral point of view they represented an attempt to bring under control ....... a form of sensuous enticement suspected of contravening the officially sanctioned decorum, sobriety and, indeed, compunction of the church."-Bianconi, pg. 109
Protestant reformers felt much the same way. Luther put a heavy censorship on all artistic expression in the church, excepting only music. Zwingli would have eliminated music altogether, while Calvin seemed to allow it the status of a prisoner on whom a constant vigilance must be maintained!
Johann Sebastian Bach himself had to deal with disputes over the role of music in religious contexts every time he changed jobs, in Luneberg, Ohrdruf, Mulhausen, Arnstadt and Leipzig. He avoided conflict in the princely court of Kothen only because its administration subscribed to the Reformed Church . Apart from the fact that Bach himself was a Lutheran, Calvinism had no use for his kind of music in the church . He was quite happy to invest his astonishing energies into the production of chamber and instrumental music: that Bach was a great composer of religious music does not mean that he appreciated being pigeon-holed as one! The very distinction between sacred and secular music is a product of the late Reformation and has never sat well with practicing composers.
The objections voiced by his Italian Baroque innovations in organ music, leveled against him by the worthies of Arnstadt( 1703 -1707 ) sound like an echo of the censures made at the Papal Council of Trent in the 16th century - against German music! They accused him of smuggling 'foreign tones' into the melodies; of 'confusing the congregation'; of playing 'peculiar variations' in the chorale, and so on. We may compare this with the opinions expressed at the Council of Trent in June of 1543 :
"...it will be necessary after peace is established to do away with those German songs. which they use very much in their churches. Not a few of these are hymns which go contrary to the authority of the Supreme Pontiffs...." -Hayburn, pg 26
In Muhlhausen (1707-1708 ) Bach found himself squarely in the eye of the hurricane. There he had to supply music for two congregations, the Pietists of the church of St. Mary's, and the orthodox Lutherans of the church of St. Blasius. The tension became insupportable and he quit after only one year. Puritanism in the promotion of religious spectacle struck no resonance in Renaissance Italy. In the context of Florence it was not surprising that a fulminating Savanorola would encounter the same fate as the books and paintings he burned. The marks left by the crusading zeal of the more extreme manifestations of the Protestant reform were more indelible. Its effects, both good and bad, have persisted down to our own times.
Speaking of the early stages of the Baroque style in 17th century Italy, Paul Henry Lang states:
"The pontificate of Sixtus V ( 1585-1590) may be considered the time at which the early baroque took definite form... From the sphere of quiet devotion the faithful were lifted into the world of the triumphant Church whose cult was celebrated by richly decked clergy under the vaults of a mighty architecture, surrounded by statues and pictures, before scintillating altars ornamented with gold and silver, to the accompaniment of the impressive and resonant music of multiple choirs, orchestras and organs.."-Lang, pg. 321
With regards to the situation in Protestant lands at this time he writes: " The situation in the realm of art took a turn for the worst when religious fanaticism began to claim a part in it. In its initial determination to assert its independence, Protestantism exhibited a strong dislike for all churchly ornament, considering artistic embellishment of the divine service contrary to evangelical precepts.... The many products of the goldsmith's, ironsmith's, mosaic maker's, tapestry weaver's, wood carver's, and embroiderer's art .... all were banished from the churches as offensive to the puritanical sense of the Protestant clergy.....There was one field however, in which Protestantism created an art of its own stamp: music."
This did not happen overnight. Many musical traditions have yet to recover from the ideological violence of the 17th century.
Music and Reformed Christianity: Zwingli and Calvin
Zwingli was himself an accomplished musician. However ,
"Zwingli's service order is largely an original creation. Of basic importance is the introduction of the vernacular and of continuous reading as well as active participation by the congregation in the prayers and, finally and most important, the exclusion of all musical elements. This signified a breach with a service tradition of 15 centuries." -Walter Blankenburg, in Blume, pg 509
Calvin's policies were guided by his self-proclaimed "awareness of the possibility and danger of human misuse of music in the service of vanity and sensualityÉ his regard for the traditional use of music in the service as a papist aberration proved that he had no feeling at all for the developing art of sacred music."-Op. Cit. pg. 516
In "Protestant Worship Music", Etherington writes:
"... the flower of church music that had blossomed in their own time, became as if it had never existed as far as the Calvinists were concerned... In public worship, organs were silenced; and the singing was confined to rhymed paraphrases of the psalms, sung in unison " -Etherington, pg. 98
Lang confirms this picture in greater detail:
"John Calvin was not disposed towards music ... the great musical culture of the followers of Luther always stood in strange contrast to the sober and almost hostile attitude toward music of a part of England and Wales, Scotland , parts of Germany and parts of Switzerland. "-Lang pg. 320
" The cathedral organist of Zurich watched, with tears streaming down his cheeks, the destruction of his magnificent instrument; and the famous Bern organist, Hans Kotter, made homeless by his unwavering faith in Protestantism, saw himself reduced to the status of a schoolmaster when the very champions of his faith destroyed his instrument."-Lang, pg. 208
"Loys Bourgeois, the...composer of Geneva, was thrown into prison for having 'without leave' altered the tunes of some of the hymns."-Lang, pg. 258
The musical geography of Europe in 1685 , the year of Bach's birth, looks something like this: The wars of religion had wrecked the fabric of English music. Though Georg Friedrich Handel was conscripted to repair the damage, nothing could keep the nation from slipping into the status of a musical backwater after his death.
Zealots of every stripe had railed for two centuries against polyphonic music because of its propensity, ( to their way of thinking ), for arousing indecent and lascivious thoughts. The fading away of the great Netherlands school of polyphony was brought about largely through the internecine strife of the various Calvinist sects , though, paradoxically, organ playing flourished, as it does down to the present day. From then to now one hears very little about Dutch or Flemish masters.
In Scotland music was suffocated entirely, as in certain parts of Germany and much of Switzerland. French Protestant music went through many phases in the centuries until consideration, but some idea of the negative impact of religious zealotry is conveyed by the following quotation ( Editor's translation):
" J.S. Bach had at his disposal about 5000 choral melodies. The French Reformation in that time produced about 125 melodies for 150 Psalms, its evolution having been obstructed by the historical and psychological situation." -Weber, pg. 29
The eclipse of the vibrant Spanish school of the 16th century appears to have been a by-product of the Counter-Reformation. Italy remained, as ever, a fount of inexhaustible invention, although the incursions of the Counter-Reformation onto the vestiges of Renaissance humanism took its toll on individual composers and on certain musical styles. The efforts of Vincenzio Galilei and his Florentine coterie, the Camerata, died stillborn, causing few regrets among music-lovers, for its monotonous note-against syllable formality was quickly supplanted by the fiery vigor of Baroque opera. For quite apposite reasons, all interest in, or even understanding of, the music of the all-but-deified Palestrina, disappeared within 25 years of his death.
60 years before the birth of Bach, Central Europe had been reconverted to Catholicism by sword and stake. Original musical composition more or less died out in this highly musical part of Europe until the emergence of the movements of national identity of the 19th century.
The final word goes to Paul Henry Lang. Summarizing the 17th century he states:
" The humanists disappeared, and the great art and music that remained were drawn within the orbit of the new church spirit.... The greatest poet of the age, Tasso, mentally and morally crushed, humbled himself ceaselessly in his desire to redeem himself.... Scholasticism reigned in the universities....the cult of saints and belief in miracles reappeared strengthened....the most fervent peoples became victims of [ the baroque spirit's] consuming force and disappeared from the stage [musical] history for centuries: Spain, Poland, and what is now Belgium . "
For anyone lesser person such limitations would have been fatal. Working conditions for German musicians at that time were impossibly confining and included , among other things, prohibitions against seeking employment outside their cities of residence. All of the Saxon composers at Bach's level, Handel, Hasse, Telemann, Zelenka, bridled under this regime and, at least for a time, sought advancement in Italy, France or Austria. Bach alone stayed within Saxony's oppressive orbit. Not only did he manage to thrive, but soared over all his contemporaries to a pinnacle of timeless universality. How was he able to do this?
One can suggest his very isolation from the great metropolitan centers where the Baroque style was flourishing may have been a blessing in disguise . Being thus cut off Bach was impelled to reach back into the debris of two centuries of shipwreck, even as far back as the Middle Ages, to forge a synthesis of his own .
The process began with his years of apprenticeship at Luneberg ( 1700-1702) . Upon his arrival he discovered that
"The choral repertory of Luneberg was in complete disorderÉAichinger, DeMonte, Gabrieli , Gallus, Gastoldi , Grandi, Hammerschmidt, Ingegneri, Josquin, Krieger, Lassus, Marenzio, Merulo, Monteverdi, Palestrina, Praetorius, Schop, Selle, Senfl , Vecchi, Viadana É the accomplishments of not less than two centuries, from 1500 to 1700, were combined in the strangest mixture, without the slightest attempt to distinguish the different compositions by periods or countries".-Schrade, pg. 24
While other great composers like Vivaldi and Lully could bask comfortably within the tradition handed down to them, Bach was faced with the daunting challenge of having to re-invent the whole of musical art ! Yet, from his northern refuge his achievements so far eclipsed those of the mainstream musical world, that we now judge all the music written in his time in relation to him. Bach picked up the fragments of the rich musical heritage of Europe, now scattered, alienated and confused, here devastated by war, there rendered impotent through pious rebuke , to reunite them into a renascent wholesomeness in the crucible of his towering genius.
Through diligent study and ceaseless creative production, Bach reunited the scattered sources of European music on all sides of the religious and nationalist divides : to Sweelinck, the major contrapuntalist of Calvinist Holland; to Hasse and Zelenka , the prominent Catholic court composers in Dresden; to Vivaldi in Italy; to the school of north German organists, Buxtehude, Reinken and Bohm
. His contributions to abstract, theoretical and pedagogical music, including the Well Tempered Clavier , the Musical Offering and the Art of the Fugue, are the bedrock of all European art music of the last 3 centuries. The greatest composer of Lutheran church music, he also composes an important Catholic concert mass. Politically an opponent of Pietism , ( which was unfriendly to music) , he transmits the essence of Pietist spirituality in hundreds of compositions, not the least in the cantatas , the very form which the Pietists banned completely from their services because of its association with opera.
" The creation of the church cantata after the most secular of all secular models naturally aroused the opposition of the Pietists. The clamor against 'operatic' church music did not subside until the end of the baroque period. For the Pietists the cantata meant an abominable secularization , the ultimate desecration of sacred music."-Bukofzer, pg. 260
Lutheranism, Catholicism, Pietism, Humanism, even the science-oriented Enlightenment : all of the wayward currents of the fragmented European soul were assimilated by Bach in the immensity of his healing ocean.
It is our custom to arrange a handful of great composers into a vertical column rooted in the late Renaissance and rising in strict chronological order into modern times . Out of each period the public ear selects a paradigm figure that exemplifies its style. All others, ( save for those represented by a small number of compositions taken out of context ( Albinoni's "Adagio", Pachelbel's "Canon", etc. )) , are cast into oblivion. They " wrote music that sounds like that of the neighboring paradigm, although " not nearly as good" .
It's something of a game of leap-frog that we play, skipping along the gamut of Monteverdi - Schutz - Vivaldi - Bach and Handel - Haydn and Mozart - Beethoven - Schubert - Mendelssohn- Schumann - Chopin - Brahms - Wagner and Liszt - Debussy and Ravel Ð Mahler- Stravinsky- Schoenberg ...
By installing Johann Sebastian Bach in this vertical column, we lose sight of the true meaning of his work relative to his own time and to the history of music. We fail thereby the pay tribute to his restorative role in a spiritual universe shattered by centuries of ideological chaos . One must account it strange indeed that so many enthusiasts of classical music think that Telemann, Osiander, Graun, Kuhnau, Muffat, Lully, Vivaldi, Fux, Rameau, the Scarlattis, Handel, Hasse, Kaiser, Schein, Sweelinck, Buxtehude and so on, all " sound just like Bach" . They certainly don't sound like each other.
As with all cliches , this one contains a grain of truth. Totally out of touch with his real public, isolated in the cultural vacuum that would deprive the world of his finest work for almost a century, Bach created the universal musical language which we all speak and will continue to do so for some time to come . For this he is rightly honored. He, more than anyone else, is responsible for reuniting the spiritual sources of music that had been dispersed around the world under the impetus of one of the greatest intellectual catastrophes in history.