Bach Perspectives

Bach and the Counterpoint of Religion

Robin A. Leaver

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780252050718
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Johann Sebastian Bach was a Lutheran and much of his music was for Lutheran liturgical worship. As these insightful essays in the twelfth volume of Bach Perspectives demonstrate, he was also influenced by--and in turn influenced--different expressions of religious belief. The vocal music, especially the Christmas Oratorio, owes much to medieval Catholic mysticism, and the evolution of the B minor Mass has strong Catholic connections. In Leipzig, Catholic and Lutheran congregations sang many of the same vernacular hymns. Internal squabbles were rarely missing within Lutheranism, for example Pietists' dislike of concerted church music, especially if it employed specific dance forms. Also investigated here are broader issues such as the close affinity between Bach's cantata libretti and the hymns of Charles Wesley; and Bach's music in the context of the Jewish Enlightenment as shaped by Protestant Rationalism in Berlin. Contributors: Rebecca Cypess, Joyce L. Irwin, Robin A. Leaver, Mark Noll, Markus Rathey, Derek Stauff, and Janice B. Stockigt.

A Catholic Hymnal for Use in Lutheran Leipzig

Catholisches Gesang-Buch (Leipzig, 1724)

Robin A. Leaver

Theological differences ran wide and deep between Lutherans and Catholics in Germany in the early eighteenth century, a continuation of the conflict of earlier centuries. But in terms of liturgical practice, especially liturgical music, the two confessions had much in common, more than perhaps they were willing to admit. For example, in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, it is impossible to be absolutely certain what is Lutheran and what is Catholic church music, since churches on both sides of the divide could be found to be using the same music, and Catholic musicians were servicing Lutheran churches and vice versa.¹ In the seventeenth century, German Lutheran composers were enamored with Italian music, and a good many traveled to Italy to discover for themselves the music of Catholic churches. Thus, for example, Hans Leo Hassler, Heinrich Schütz, and Johann Rosenmüller, among others, experienced the music of St. Mark's, Venice, and early in the eighteenth century, Handel, for a time based in Rome, visited various Catholic churches in Florence, Naples, and Venice.² On the other hand, throughout the seventeenth century, a succession of Italian musicians were active in Lutheran churches, notably, the succession of Kapellmeister at the Saxon court in Dresden—Marco Giuseppe Peranda, Vincenzo Albrici, Carlo Pallavicino, and Giovanni Andrea Bontempi—who, with other Italian musicians, mostly retained their Catholicism while serving the Lutheran court chapel.³

In Leipzig during Bach's time, Latin motets on biblical texts by Catholic composers were heard on many Sundays in the two principal Lutheran churches, since the choirs sang from the printed part-books of Bodenschatz's Florilegium Portense (Leipzig, 1618–21), which included compositions by both Catholic and Lutheran composers. However, it is likely that few in the Lutheran congregations recognized the “Catholic” origins of this music. It is also a moot point regarding how many of them were aware of the few Catholic families that lived in the town or that they had their own place of worship within the town walls, since most of the yearbooks and other such literature that offered information on the life of the town and its citizens, businesses, organizations, and churches do not acknowledge Catholics’ existence until late in the eighteenth century.⁴ But there was a Catholic chapel in Leipzig in Bach's day that had a small regular congregation that was much expanded during the three annual fairs at New Year, after Easter, and at Michaelmas, when many visitors from all over Europe were present in the town. After outlining the background to the founding of the chapel,⁵ this chapter examines the specific hymnal that was published for use by the congregation worshiping in the Catholic chapel, draws parallels between its Latin and German contents with the practice of the Leipzig Lutheran churches, and then examines the possibility of how familiar Bach might have been with the worship of this Catholic chapel.

Leipzig's Royal Catholic Chapel

Catholic theology and liturgy were replaced by Lutheran theology and practice at Pentecost 1539, when Martin Luther himself preached sermons in Leipzig churches. The university resisted the “new religion” for a few months, but by the August of the same year it too fell into line with the religious changes that had been brought about by the recent accession of Henry IV, duke of Albertine Saxony (1473–1541). Ernestine Saxony had been the cradle of the Lutheran Reformation since 1517, with its courts in Torgau and Altenberg and its university in Wittenberg, where Luther was the leading Reformer. After 1547 Albertine Saxony, with its primary court in Dresden and university in Leipzig, effectively became the political center of gravity for the whole of Saxony, since its duke served as elector of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany.⁶ Thereafter all religious affairs of the Lutheran Church in Saxony were administered under the authority of the Saxon elector, who was based in Dresden. Although one controversy or another was never far away, Lutheranism in Saxony was thought to be secure, although Johann Georg II (1613–80), elector from 1656, had significant Catholic leanings that raised fears that he might convert, though he never did.⁷

That fear became a reality in 1697, when Friedrich August I, “the Strong” (1670–1733), elector from 1694, converted to Catholicism in order to assume the Polish crown (as August II). However, his claim to the Polish throne was contested. He was deposed in 1706 but was eventually reconfirmed as king in 1709. However, the Polish king continued as the Saxon elector, and that meant that while his personal faith was Roman Catholic, he remained the head of the Lutheran Church and was therefore, paradoxically, responsible as elector for issuing directives for the Lutheran Church he personally disavowed. In consequence, there had to be two governments in Dresden, one for August as elector, which was Lutheran, and the other for August as the Polish king, which was Catholic.⁸ Of course, there were sensitivities and anomalies of this arrangement that were uncomfortable to one side or the other of the confessional divide. For example, all the arrangements of how the bicentenary of the beginning of Luther's Reformation in 1717 were to be observed in electoral Saxony were promulgated under the authority of “Augustus Rex,” something that must have been hard to swallow for the Catholic king/elector, especially for the sermons that were forthcoming at that time that portrayed Catholicism as darkness and error and Luther's protest as light and truth.⁹ On the other hand, when August the Strong died and his son, who had converted to Catholicism in 1712, succeeded him as Saxon elector in 1733 (and later as the Polish king), a “General Church Prayer” for the new elector and his family was published and ordered to be read from pulpits after the sermon at most services in all the Lutheran churches of electoral Saxony, something that must have engendered mixed feelings among Lutherans.¹⁰ While Saxon Lutherans in general seemed to have tolerated Friedrich August as the Saxon elector who was also the Catholic king of Poland, they loved his wife, Christiane Eberhardine (1671–1727), because she refused to convert and had separated from her Catholic husband. She was accorded the title “Sachsens Betsäule” (Saxon Pillar of Prayer) and at her death in 1727 was honored for her Lutheran loyalty in churches throughout Saxony, not least Leipzig's university church of St. Paul in a memorial ceremony that included Bach's Trauerode (BWV 198), specially composed for the occasion.

In 1708 Friedrich August reconstructed the court theater in his Dresden palace as the Catholic church for his family and the Catholic courtiers.¹¹ The following year, 1709, when he was reconfirmed as the Polish king, he published Ordinanciones Regis, regulations for Catholic worship in Saxony, which were based on an earlier incomplete and undated draft by the king's father confessor, the Jesuit priest Carl Moritz Vota.¹² In 1710 Vota was closely involved in the foundation of the royal Catholic chapel in Leipzig, which, like the Dresden court chapel, came under the administration of the Jesuit province of Bohemia.¹³

Later in 1710, Father Vota SJ reported on the founding of the chapel to Pope Clement XI in Rome in an undated letter written toward the end of the year:

Most Holy Father…. The King has, with regal generosity, assigned 1,200 scudi a year to two missionaries and to the ornamentation of the church in Leipzig. He has also spent a considerable sum of money on a building suitable for the church, and on the altars…. The town of Leipzig has very few Catholic families, fewer than ten, but during the three fairs which are held there every year and which are among the largest and most famous in Europe, Catholics and outsiders arrive in thousands. In these periods the church fills with a great crowd attending sermons, masses, confessions, and communions. Divine offices are celebrated in the morning and in the afternoon, with Vespers and the Benediction, etc., to great edifi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Historical Proximity: John Wesley Visits Leipzig in 1738
• Dancing in Bach's Time: Sin or Permissible Pleasure?
• A Catholic Hymnal for Use in Lutheran Leipzig: Catholisches Gesang-Buch (Leipzig, 1724)
• Liturgical Music for a New Elector: Origins of Bach's 1733 Missa Revisited
• Bach's Christmas Oratorio and the Mystical Theology of Bernard of Clairvaux
• The Church under Persecution: Bach's Cantatas for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
• Music Historicism: Sara Levy and the Jewish Enlightenment
• Contributors
• General Index
• Index of Bach's Works