Bach and The Tuning of the World. Jens Johler
twenty-first of March,’ said Bach. ‘I’m fifteen now. Although …’ In truth, he wasn’t completely certain if he was actually fifteen now. To be precise, he was eleven days short, ever since the calendar had been converted, at the beginning of the year, from the Julian to the Gregorian system, which had been in use in Catholic countries for a hundred years at this point – but the adjustment had made it necessary to drop eleven days from the year. So the eighteenth of February was not followed by the nineteenth, but by the first of March. Eleven days rubbed out, just like that, perdu!
‘It’s really a matter of debate,’ he said, ‘as to whether I’m fifteen today or only on the first of April.
‘Then what we ought to do is celebrate it twice,’ said Erdmann.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ said Bach.
There were some tables free at the ‘Zur Linde’ inn. They picked a table in the rear of the room that was lit by candles and oil lamps. Bach ordered roast rabbit and wine. After the second glass, he told his friend about the manuscripts his brother had stuck into his knapsack. These were copies of keyboard pieces that his brother had kept in a locked cabinet. Sheet music by Pachelbel, Böhm, Buxtehude, and even some by Italian composers. Bach had made clandestine copies of them by moonlight, and when his brother had found this out, he had confiscated the pages and locked them up again in the cabinet.
‘Why’s that?’ Erdmann asked.
‘Why’s what?’
‘Why did he confiscate them?’
‘Because he told me not to,’ Bach said.
‘And why did he do that?’
‘Because they’re precious. He paid a lot of money for copies like that. And the more there are of them, the lower their price.’
‘Got you,’ said Erdmann. ‘But after all, you are his brother …’
‘Certainly am,’ said Bach. ‘That’s why he gave them back to me.’
The innkeeper had meanwhile stepped up to their table, and put two more glasses of wine down.
‘With all respect, Mr Innkeeper,’ said Erdmann, ‘we didn’t order this.’
‘They come courtesy of the cloth merchant over there,’ the innkeeper said, nodding his head in the direction of a well-dressed patron. ‘He asks whether you gentlemen might play a little music. A song on the lute … accompanied by the fiddle? Maybe also a little singing? A song?’
Well, after all, why not? They had had a good meal and drunk a bit – but not so much that they wouldn’t be able to play music anymore. And who knows, maybe the innkeeper might let them stay overnight for free if their music made the patrons consume more wine.
They unpacked their instruments and set themselves up in the centre of the room.
‘The fancy took me,’ Erdmann sang, ‘to ride to the woods, where the air is filled with the song of birds …’
Bach sang the second voice part and fiddled melodious figures around it.
There was somewhat restrained applause.
Erdmann didn’t take too long before playing the second song: ‘You’re the goldsmith’s daughter, and I’m the farmer’s son …’
The applause grew stronger. Some of the patrons had sung along to a couple of lines, and the mood lifted perceptibly; it became more cheerful, and soon people wouldn’t let them stop. New requests for songs were shouted out to them, so many all at once – and Erdmann knew them all: ‘Winter is gone’ or ‘A monk went to the Upper Country, and got to know a nun –’, which was a pretty lewd song. Bach felt pretty ashamed as he heard: ‘He led her to the altar, where he read her a Psalter –’, followed by ‘He led her to the bell-pull rope, where he dinged her five hours in scope …’
No, that definitely went too far, and the more so as the guests were now hooting and bellowing their own obscene additions. Bach struck up a gypsy dance he had picked up at a peasants’ wedding near Ohrdruf, with breathtakingly quick runs and swiftly changing staccato and legato passages, stamping on the wooden floorboards with his feet. As soon as they had started, one of the guests grabbed the waitress and started cavorting with her in a circle so wildly you feared they would get dizzy and fall to the ground; but they didn’t fall, they just flung their arms around each other’s necks when it ended, and laughed, and the other guests were happy with them and clapped their hands; and in the general ruckus, the cloth merchant shouted: ‘Encore! Encore! The next round is on me!’
‘Board and lodging are free,’ said the landlord the next morning as he served them breakfast; and should they ever come to his neck of the woods again, and would like to play dance music again, they would always be welcome.
The cloth merchant came to their table and offered to take them in his carriage. He was going to Wernigerode.
Erdmann glanced at his list and said they would gladly accept his offer.
After sitting across from one another silently for a time, still tired from last night’s wine, the cloth merchant started a conversation about the execution of a witch that was to take place in Wernigerode tomorrow. He really wanted to be there. The witch who was to be burned had confessed her guilt to all four charges, namely: association with the Devil, liaison with the Devil, participation in a witches’ sabbath, and malevolent magic. Her confession would be publicly proclaimed tomorrow. The confession wasn’t actually required, since the witch had flaming red hair, which was already suspicious enough. In addition, she had a wart in her left armpit that neither bled nor hurt when it was pricked with a pin – an unmistakable sign.
‘So whom has the witch harmed?’ Erdmann asked.
‘That’s irrelevant,’ the merchant said. ‘The territorial law code expressly states that a person who forms an alliance with the Devil will be punished and put to death by fire, even if the person in question hasn’t harmed anybody with their black magic …’ But since the young gentleman had asked, he went on, the witch had cast a spell on the cattle, so they’d got sick, and some cows had even died.
Erdmann wanted to know whether the witch had confessed from the very onset or only after torture.
‘Well,’ said the cloth merchant, ‘at first, a bailiff in Wernigerode made enquiries, and brought the case to court, and the court decided that charges should be preferred. The decision was signed by the Count. So the witch was arrested, thrown into the tower, stripped bare, depilated, and questioned – at first in a friendly manner. She denied everything, vehemently and stubbornly, of course, so they showed her the instruments – the thumbscrews, the rack, the Spanish boot, and so on, but all to no avail. Finally, the Council for Judgment made a decision for use of torture; and soon after came the confession, and that confession will be read aloud publicly tomorrow.’ He certainly didn’t want to miss that – especially all the things the witch had confessed to, in terms of her liaison with the Devil. ‘You might learn a thing or two,’ he added, without noticing that Erdmann had made a face. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘I’m also very anxious to learn about the shenanigans of the witches during their witches’ sabbath on the top of the Blocksberg Mountain, and, of course, how they ever managed to ride through the air on a broomstick. Flying, he said, is an old dream of mankind.
Would the young gentlemen be interested in attending the trial?
Bach looked at Erdmann questioningly. Erdmann shook his head.
‘But why?’ exclaimed the merchant, uncomprehending. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss a thing like that. Didn’t even Martin Luther preach that sorceresses must not be allowed to live? That they steal milk, butter and everything else from a house and can create mysterious diseases in the human knee that gradually consume the whole body? That they minister potions and incantations so as to summon hatred, love, storms, all sorts of havoc in the house and on the fields and they are able to make people limp with their magic arrows