Bach and The Tuning of the World. Jens Johler
Bach made some more protesting gestures and remarks but he already felt that he liked the subject matter well enough. His beloved Sophie Agneta Petersen would sing the part of Circe. And he would put himself in the shoes of Ulysses while composing the opera. The man who, tied to his ship’s mast, had heard the singing of the Sirens!
‘Well,’ Erdmann began, ‘it all starts with Ulysses and his companions arriving on the island of Aeaea.’
‘Ah … yeah?’
‘Yes. – In other words, it begins with a seamen’s chorus.’
‘It begins with the overture,’ said Bach, and he began to improvise a melody that was just morphing into a second one when Erdmann cut him short with an emphatic hand gesture
‘Forgive me,’ said Bach.
‘All right,’ said Erdmann, ‘first the overture, then the seamen’s chorus. The ship is pulled on shore, and then Ulysses sings, tenor or bass …’
‘Tenor,’ said Bach.
‘I’d appreciate not being interrupted all the time,’ Erdmann said. ‘So: Ulysses laments that he still hasn’t reached his home in Ithaca, where his wife Penelope and son Telemachus are waiting for him. While the chorus sings again, Ulysses climbs up a mountain. In the distance, he sees smoke rising. Shortly thereafter, he picks some of his crew to explore the island.’
‘If I remember rightly,’ said Bach, ‘they drew lots.’
‘Such subtleties will get worked out later,’ said Erdmann. ‘Anyway, the companions hit the road, discover a stone house and hear an enchanting voice.’
‘An aria,’ said Bach. ‘Circe! I like that.’
‘While the men listened enraptured,’ Erdmann went on, ‘mountain wolves and lions come up to them, completely amicable and peace-loving. The island seems to be a true paradise. And indeed, Paradise on earth is this, here thou’lt dwell in perfect bliss, sings Circe, serving the men delicious food into which she has mixed her magic herbs. As soon as the men have eaten the food, the beautiful nymph touches them with her staff and transforms them into pigs.’
‘I knew it,’ said Bach, disgusted. ‘Couldn’t they at least be turned into wolves or mountain lions?’
‘No,’ Erdmann said categorically, ‘we stick to Homer. By the way, one of the men, Eurylochos, is not transformed because he’s smart and doesn’t enter the house together with the others. He sneaks back to Ulysses and brings him the terrible news. Curtain: end of Act One.’
‘Fantastic!’ Bach exclaimed. ‘Go on! What happens next?
‘Well …’ Erdmann said evasively, who had yet to think out the second and third acts in greater detail. One thing was certain, though. With the help of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, Ulysses would succeed in freeing his friends, himself enchanting Circe the enchantress …
Working on the opera fired up Bach’s creativity enormously. Motifs and melodies kept rushing through his head. He could hardly concentrate in the classroom. He constantly scribbled drafts on scraps of paper he’d collected and kept. At night he dreamed of his work being celebrated by a rapt audience.
There was no doubt about it: his future lay as a composer of opera! How they would envy him his freedom and fame – all those Bachs scraping together a living in Saxony and Thuringia as lowly town musicians or organists in the poorly paid service of the Church!
He longed to go back to Hamburg in order to clasp his future Circe in his arms. He would have loved to talk to her every day, but how? He didn’t even have her picture, in miniature or silhouette. He had nothing but his memories.
And he had lots to do. The Latin School demanded his time, and so did the choir. Nor could he neglect his organ study with his teacher, Böhm; and he increasingly had to step in when the students at the Knights’ School practised courtly dances and the Dancing Master again required a harpsichordist. Furthermore, Erdmann failed to deliver as promised. He apologized over and over again for not having yet written the arias, recitatives and chorus parts. Bach attempted to write a couple of scenes himself, but all his attempts died on the page. He could write the notes, but not the words.
At least he could afford to travel to Hamburg that summer by carriage in order to – so he had roared into the Principal’s ear – visit his cousin Johann Ernst from Arnstadt, who had gone to Hamburg for six months ‘in order to excel better on the organ’, as his cousin had written. Bach stayed with him in his student digs in the Baumhaus quarter. The very next morning he hurried to Dovenfleet in order to see his beloved.
There was a smell of fried fish in the stairwell. Bach climbed the stairs. He saw the neighbour’s door open and immediately close again. He inhaled deeply a few times to get his excitement under control before rapping the door knocker. If she opened now, would she fly into his arms? Would she perhaps let him undo the buttons of her dress again?
He heard steps made by bare feet. Then the door opened a crack, and Bach heard somebody gasp for air, startled. The door opened wider, and now he saw her: Her hair was loose, her face slightly flushed. She wore a white dress, more of a slip in fact. And yes, her feet were naked. She gave him a cursory kiss on the cheek, looked around furtively, and breathlessly whispered something along the lines of ‘You mustn’t be seen here, You must go, go, You will get me into huge trouble,’ and then again: ‘You must go!’
No sooner had she uttered these words when he heard an ugly baritone voice in the background shouting, ‘Sophie?’ and, ‘Where are you?’ and, ‘Who’s there?’ to which she answered, ‘Nobody,’ and slammed the door in Bach’s face.
Bach was stunned.
The neighbour opened her door and started to whisper something. He didn’t understand her dialect and didn’t want to hear anything anyway. He ran down the stairs and fled the house.
As if trapped in an evil dream, he staggered past the Zippelhaus and St Catherine’s Church and turned into a street with the name ‘Grimm’. Conflicting thoughts raced through his head. Who was that man? Her father? An uncle? A beau? Was she one of those opera wenches you read about in novels? And why had she called him ‘Nobody’? Of all possible things, she had called him ‘Nobody’, just as the cunning Ulysses had called himself when asked his name by Polyphemus the Cyclops. Was it a hidden signal? A coded message? But of course she didn’t yet know that he was writing an opera!
That evening, as he sat in the tavern with Johann Ernst drinking red wine, surrounded by noisy students with their feather hats, lace collars and embroidered jackets, he had a hard time concealing his confusion and keeping his secret.
‘Why are you so depressed?’ Johann Ernst asked again and again. ‘Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?’
‘No,’ said Bach. ‘I didn’t.’
The next morning he climbed into the stagecoach and went back to Lüneburg.
11. ‘It’s the Affections that Matter’
He tried to forget Hamburg, the opera, and Sophie Agneta Petersen, but couldn’t. On the contrary. The more he tried not to think about her, the more he thought about her. But as hard as the mortification was to bear, it also inspired him enormously. The disappointment turned into a mania for work, and since he was in the right mood for it, he composed the aria Ulysses sings when he learns from Eurylochos how Circe has turned his companions into pigs. Ulysses is furious at Circe – but in the end succeeds in winning her over! Hermes helps him – Hermes, messenger of the gods –with the sword that he gives him. Bach’s Hermes was Georg Erdmann, and his own sword was music. He was determined to transform the defeat into a triumph! This opera, his first great work, would astonish the world. And he would still win Sophie Agneta Petersen in the end!
He went to Hamburg a few more times this year, but made no attempt