‘Matthew Passion’ Music
The first performance of the Matthew Passion music took place in Holy Week of 1729. In his efforts to improve the choir, he had asked the Council to allow nine of the scholarships to be allotted to boys with voices: and he hoped that the magnificent Passion music he had just composed and performed would show them the importance of providing better material; but all was in vain. They took no notice of his request, and showed a complete ignorance of the value of their cantor’s work.
About this time he became conductor of the Musical Union, which had been founded by Telemann, but even here troubles arose. The Union was expected to strengthen the choir at St Thomas’ Church. No money, however, being available to pay the students who took part, they naturally fell off. Yet when the church music deteriorated the Council were the first to blame the cantor.
Bach is admonished
They now began to observe, or imagine they observed, neglect of duty on his part, and addressed various warnings and admonitions to him. He became defiant and refused to explain, whereupon they said that he was incorrigible. The chief trouble arose over the teaching of Latin. We have already seen that the Council had originally offered to pay a deputy to do this part of the cantor’s work, but that Bach had undertaken the whole. Finding it too irksome, however, he had himself paid Pezold to act as his deputy, but the Council, considering Pezold incompetent, wished to employ one Krügel. Instead of settling the matter by insisting on Bach’s doing the work himself, they showed their petulance by bringing charges against him of not having behaved with propriety, of sending a member of the choir into the country without giving notice to the authorities, of going a journey without permission, of neglecting his singing classes, and, in short, of doing nothing properly. At first it was proposed to put him down to one of the lowest classes, next to refuse payment of his salary, and at the same time to admonish him. His doing “nothing” consisted in composing and conducting an enormous number of church cantatas, including the Matthew Passion.
But the Council merely required hack work of him, and no doubt as they paid him to do hack work (which could probably have been equally well done by an inferior musician) they had a right to demand it.
He had, it is true, given over half the singing practices to the choir prefect, but this was only in accordance with long established custom, and no one had previously complained. Moreover the Council themselves had refused Bach’s request for a more efficient choir, and it was only natural that he should not take much interest in the drudgery of teaching an unruly rabble, when he was occupied with work which was to prove so much more important to the world at large.
Vestry Squabbles
In the constant state of conflict between masters, boys, Council and Consistory, Bach chose to go his own way. With the Rector, Ernesti, who troubled himself little about the musical arrangements, he had been on excellent terms.
Several stories are told of the petty tyranny sought to be exercised over the great man by an ignorant and fussy vestry. Thus, Bach insisted, for sufficient reasons, on his right of choosing the hymns and ignoring those selected by Gaudlitz, the subdean of St Nicholas. Gaudlitz reported him to the Consistory, who sent him a notice that he must have the hymns sung which were chosen by the preacher. He therefore appealed to the Council, showing that it had been the custom for the cantor to select the hymns. This caused a squabble between the Council and the Consistory, but it is not known how the matter ended.