JS Bach is put in prison by his disgruntled employer
What is it about JS Bach’s 1748 portrait that somehow looks a little di erent from other composers of his generation? While Handel, Scarlatti, Telemann and others rest an arm on their harpsichords – a nod to their immense skill – Bach simply holds out the manuscript for a six-voice perpetual canon. ‘Look what I can do in my head,’ he seems to say, with a gaze that somehow manages to be both stern and ever so slightly cheeky.
It’s an expression that hints at a person with not a just a serious intellect, but also a strong awareness of his own genius – characteristics that wouldn’t have made the German composer an easy employee to satisfy. And, indeed, he seemed constantly dissatisfied with his lot throughout his career. This had a particularly dramatic result in the autumn of 1717, when a bid to move jobs actually landed him in prison.
The Weimar court secretary’s minutes concerning Bach’s time in jail state that ‘On 6 November 1717 Bach, till now Konzertmeister and Hoforganist, was put under arrest in [the] justice room for obstinately demanding his instant dismissal. He was released on
2 December with a grudging permission to retire from the Duke’s [Duke
Wilhelm Ernst’s] service.’ Harsh treatment indeed, but what sensible employer would want to lose Bach as their personal composer and organist?
Very little is known about what
Bach’s prison actually looked like. In reality, the ‘justice room’ in which he was held probably looked more like a comfortable debtors’ prison than a full-on cell. He certainly won’t have been without means of communication and he may perhaps have used the time to compose some of The Welltempered Clavier. The musician EL Gerber, whose father had been a Bach pupil in the 1720s, believed that parts of The Well-tempered Clavier had been written when Bach was ‘bored, depressed and without an instrument’. The idea that he could construct even the most complex counterpoint simply in his head has become one of the most intriguing sides of Bach both as a person and as a composer.
For all his brilliance, however, the status Bach holds today is a far cry from 1717, when it was Georg Philipp Telemann who was sweeping up all the job o ers. The ducal chapel at Gotha had made overtures to Telemann earlier that year, hoping he would accept the post of Kapellmeister, and then Duke Wilhelm Ernst himself also tried secure Telemann’s services for the same position at the Weimar court – a job that Bach himself coveted. As it happened, Telemann turned down both these jobs in favour of his longterm position in Frankfurt. But Bach’s disappointment at the Duke passing him over for promotion in favour of an external appointment must have been intense.
Happily, by August Bach had secured a job as Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold in Cöthen. His current employer, however, evidently wanted to have his cake and eat it – having previously snubbed Bach for the role of Kapellmeister, the
Duke was nonetheless damned if he was going to let him go to find a similar job elsewhere. The subsequent confrontation led to Bach’s arrest and imprisonment, setting something of a dramatic precedent in Weimar. When, several years later, Duke Wilhelm Ernst’s successor August Ernst had to deal with a troublesome horn player’s resignation, the unfortunate musician was sentenced to 100 lashes and prison. When caught escaping prison, the poor man was hanged.
Bach’s brief time inside ended more peacefully, of course. On his release, he settled into his new role in Cöthen, where he would write some of his most famous instrumental music including the suites for solo cello, sonatas and partitas for solo violin, the Brandenburg concertos and the English Suites. But just four years later he was starting to look elsewhere again. Dissatisfied with life in Cöthen, Bach’s hunt for a new job eventually took him to Leipzig in 1723 as music director and cantor of St Thomas Church in Leipzig. And there he remained for the rest of his life.
Bach may have used the time to compose some of The Well-tempered Clavier