Bach and The Tuning of the World. Jens Johler
though he were seeing it through a veil. He was not here at all. He was dreaming. His stomach was upset. The hustle and bustle of the teeming crowd nauseated him. On the other hand, it amused him that Hamburgers used the word Zippel, instead of Zwiebel, for ‘onion’! What a funny word! He made up nonce-words in his mind – a zippel-organist, a zippel-oboist – and he was still secretly entertaining himself – a zippel bassoonist! – when they ascended the stairs to their living quarters a little later. Two rooms, rented for three days, in an apartment that belonged to a singer. Instead of the singer, an old hunchback neighbour opened the door for them. Madame Petersen was not home, she said; she was at rehearsals. The gentlemen were likely here at the recommendation of Mr Reincken?
‘That’s right,’ said Böhm.
‘Well then, let’s go,’ the old woman said in her Low-German dialect.
The next day, Reincken received them. He cut a commanding figure: tall, well-fed, clad in a red silk-lined kimono tied at the waist by a cord. Above his mighty nose, his dark eyes were serious, melancholy, perhaps even a little suspicious. He’s gone under many times but has not yet drowned, Bach reflected – a thoroughly inappropriate thought that had probably only occurred to him because the master was just playing his grand chorale fantasia By the Waters of Babylon. And how he played it! The entire man practically exploded with energy as he sat there at the organ, whirring over the four keyboards with his hands and dancing the bass sounds from the pedals with his feet! Yes, you could only call it a dance. Especially since Reincken used such an unusual technique with the pedal, not only with the toes of both feet but by alternating between the heel and toe in such a way that the left foot was limited to the lower octave of the pedal keyboard and the right foot to the higher octave. Bach had never seen anything like it, not in Eisenach nor in Ohrdruf, not even in Lüneburg with Böhm.
‘Now it’s your turn,’ Reincken said, after he’d played the final chord and let it linger awhile, somewhat lost in reverence.
‘No,’ said Bach, ‘I can’t. Not now.’
‘Do you want to embarrass me?’ Böhm asked sternly.
‘He only acts the shrinking violet,’ Reincken said, all the while keeping his eyes focused on Bach. ‘Just let him sit down on my bench, then he’ll show us.’
And that’s exactly what happened. No sooner had he pulled the registers for a toccata in G major and sat down on the organ bench than his shyness evaporated. As he played, he was even more thrilled by the organ than when he had previously merely been listening to it. The beauty and diversity of the sound these pipes produced were extraordinary. Never before had he experienced such fine and distinct responsiveness, right down to the deepest C – no, never, not even with Uncle Johann Christoph in Eisenach. And the trombone in the pedal! No wonder Reincken had such a desire to dance on it.
When, towards the end of his recital, he saw Böhm smile and detected a hint of surprise in Reincken’s eyes, he even dared to play his own improvisation on By the Waters of Babylon, not to outdo Reincken – which would anyway have been absolutely impossible – but to pay homage to him. He didn’t have to blab it out, did he, that he had already made a copy of Reincken’s chorale fantasia in Lüneburg, and had often improvised on it?
There was silence when he finished. Bach turned around, gazed into the faces of the two old masters, and his despondency returned. What did this silence mean? He looked across the room to Böhm.
Böhm nodded reassuringly. But why wasn’t Reincken saying anything?
Reincken cleared his throat twice, and then said quietly, as though to himself, ‘He has to go to Buxtehude.’
Why? Bach wanted to ask. But he was unable to utter a word. Buxtehude was the greatest of all the organists and composers in northern Germany; a legend. Why did he have to go to him? What did Reincken mean?
But since Bach did not ask him, he didn’t get an answer.
‘What do you think of opera?’ Reincken asked instead.
‘Don’t know,’ Bach said hesitantly. He’d never been to the opera. There was no such thing in Eisenach. Nor in Ohrdruf, for that matter. Not even in Lüneburg. He knew from Böhm that Reincken sat on the Board of Directors of the Hamburg Opera.
‘You’ll get to know it tonight,’ said Reincken. ‘There’s room in my box.’
8. ‘That False Serpent, Opera’
What an enormous theatre! Two thousand people could fit into the auditorium, and what seemed the population of a small town had crammed themselves in there this afternoon. Bach was mightily glad that he had a seat in Reincken’s box, and didn’t have to sit in the stalls among all the pushing and jostling, the laughter and chattering. The ladies and gentlemen in the boxes were festively attired in precious linen and silk, and lavish wigs. They drank wine and liqueur, and the ladies fanned themselves with well-practised movements. It was hot and stuffy in the auditorium, which was lit by a thousand candles and oil lamps. It smelled of a mixture of perfume, powder, burning wax and body odour; very few of those seated down in the stalls were dressed as finely as those in the boxes. If it had only been a matter of a choice of clothing, Bach would have belonged in the stalls. People exchanged raucous greetings across the rows. The gentlemen attempted to outdo one another with bons mots and jokes. The ladies rewarded their efforts with laughter and shrieks. Bach was glad when the lights in the hall finally went down, the noise subsided to a tolerable level, and someone backstage knocked on the floor three times with a staff or hammer.
The orchestra played a toccata, the auditorium settled, and Bach could hardly sit still from excitement and anticipation. The curtain went up, and now a landscape of forests and meadows appeared, beautifully illuminated, painted on numerous backdrops, a landscape of infinite expanse, where nymphs and shepherds gracefully reclined, chatted, and danced back and forth. No sooner had the general ooh-ing and ahh-ing abated than it started again when, on a throne decorated with flowers, a queen came gliding down from heaven, and this heavenly queen was none other than Lady Musica, who now began singing her aria.
It was the tragedy of Orpheus, the singer who stirred the emotions of people, animals, plants, even the very stones and rocks, with his singing. It was the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
The music and dramatic action cast an immediate spell on Bach. He shared Orpheus’s happiness over his forthcoming wedding with Eurydice; he was painfully torn when he learned Eurydice had been bitten by a snake and died; his own hopes and fears went out to the singer, who descended and entered Hades to fetch Eurydice back; and he yielded to despair when Eurydice had to return to the Underworld because Orpheus had turned around to catch a glimpse of her.
Again and again, he shook his head in awe and amazement at how the audience’s imagination had been captured here with all the means of the many arts. The painted scenes, the stage machinery – Orpheus and Eurydice seemed to float up from the deceptively realistic cave and only used their feet when they had left the cave – the poetry, the music, and the acting all worked together here in harmony, in a perfect imitation of nature. The cornets, trombones, and the reed-organ represented the Underworld, and could always be heard when Evil and Death were dramatized on stage; the strings, flutes, and, above all, the harp represented the Upper World, and when Orpheus commanded the stage, the sound of the violins tugged at one’s very heart.
But most of all, Bach was moved by Eurydice. She sparked such a fierce longing in him that his chest tightened. Why do I feel this way? he thought. What’s happening to me? Is it Eurydice for whom I yearn? Is it the fact that I can’t accept her death that makes me burn for her? Do I feel with Orpheus because he, like me, is a musician? Or is it not Eurydice at all who’s creating such a painful desire in me, but rather the singer? I only know one thing: That I will never forget her, ever. I almost long to die so I’ll get to where she is already. Why did this Orpheus fellow have to turn around to look at her? Doesn’t he know that she’s following him? Doesn’t he have any trust? Oh!
After