Johann Adam Reinken, b. 1623, became Organist of St. Catherine's Church, Hamburg, in 1664, and held the post until his death in 1722.
His introduction to French music marked another step in Bach's progressive education. The reigning Duke of Celle (father-in-law of George I. of Great Britain and Ireland) had married a Frenchwoman. See Pirro, J. S. Bach, pp. 24-27.
He entered the Weimar service on April 8, 1703 (Pirro, p. 29).
Bach's engagement was in the private band of the younger brother of the Duke. He remained in his new post only a few months. He was engaged as a Violin player, and since his interests were towards the Organ and Clavier, it is clear that he accepted the engagement as a temporary means of livelihood.
He is, however, described in July 1703 as Court Organist (Pirro, p. 30). Bach was drawn to Arnstadt chiefly by the fact that the New Church recently had been equipped with a particularly fine Organ (specification in Spitta, i. 224), which existed until 1863. Bach inaugurated it on July 13, 1703, and entered on his duties as Organist of the church in the following month (Pirro, p. 30).
His earliest Church Cantata (No. 15) was composed here in 1704. To the Arnstadt period (1703-7) also must be attributed the Capriccio written on the departure of his brother, Johann Jakob (Peters bk. 208 p. 62), the Capriccio in honour of his Ohrdruf brother, Johann Christoph (Peters bk. 215, p. 34), the Sonata in D major (Peters bk. 215, p. 44), the Organ Prelude and Fugue in C minor (Novello bk. 2 p. 48), and the Organ Fugue in C minor (Novello bk. 12 p. 95).
In the Nekrolog C. P. E. Bach and Agricola remark of the Arnstadt period, that Bach then “really showed the first-fruits of his industry in the art of Organ-playing and composition, which he had in great measure learnt only from the study of the works of the most famous composers of the time, and from his own reflections on them” (quoted in Spitta, i. 235).
Bach's stipend at Arnstadt was not inconsiderable, and his duties engaged him only at stated hours on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays. He, therefore, had leisure and the means to employ it. In October 1705 he obtained four weeks' leave of absence and set off on foot to Lübeck, after leaving an efficient deputy behind him. He stayed away until February 1706. On his return the Consistory demanded an explanation of his absence, and took the opportunity to remonstrate with him on other matters. They charged him “with having been hitherto in the habit of making surprising variationes in the Chorals, and intermixing divers strange sounds, so that thereby the congregation were confounded.” They charged him with playing too long preludes, and after this was notified to him, of making them too short. They reproached him “with having gone to a wineshop last Sunday during sermon,” and cautioned him that, “for the future he must behave quite differently and much better than he has done hitherto” (see the whole charge in Spitta, i. 315 ff.). Bach also was on bad terms with the choir, whose members had got out of hand and discipline. Before his Lübeck visit he engaged in a street brawl with one of the scholars. Then, as later, he was a choleric gentleman. In November 1706 he got into further trouble for having “made music” in the church with a “stranger maiden,” presumably his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, then on a visit to Arnstadt; he married her a year later. Clearly the relations between the Consistory and the brilliant young Organist were becoming difficult, and Bach's migration to Mühlhausen no doubt was grateful to both. His resignation was made formally on June 29, 1707.
Bach was appointed on June 15, 1707, to succeed Johann Georg Able. Mühlhauson prided itself upon its musical traditions. Bach's Cantata, No. 71, written in February 1708 for the inauguration of the Mühlhausen Town Council, was engraved (the parts only), the only one of the 206 Cantatas which have come down to us which was printed during Bach's lifetime. He also composed Cantatas 131 and 196 at Muhlhausen, and perhaps three others. See infra, p. 188.
Bach's petition to the Mühlhausen Consistory for permission to resign his post is dated June 25, 1708, and is printed in full by Spitta, i. 373. Bach mentions the Weimar post as having been offered to him, but bases his desire to resign the organ of St. Blasius, partly on the ground that his income was inadequate, partly because, though he had succeeded in improving the organ and the conditions of music generally, he saw “not the slightest appearance that things will be altered” for the better. Mühlhausen, in fact, was a stronghold of Pietism and unsympathetic to Bach's musical ideals.