At Ohrdruf he sang in the church choir and thereby gained his first experience in choral music. When at the end of five years he had to begin to earn his own livelihood, it was as a choir boy he went to St. Michael’s school in Lüneburg in the north of Germany. That he had already unusual skill as a musician is proved by the fact that after his voice broke he was still paid to remain at St. Michael’s, probably a prefect of the choir. The year at Lüneburg brought him into contact with much fine music. At the church of St. John in the same town George Böhm was organist, one of the most remarkable organists of his day. He was a pupil of the venerable Jan Adams Reinken, one of the disciples of Peter Sweelinck, founder of the brilliant school of North German organists. Reinken himself was still playing at the church of St. Catharine in Hamburg, near by, and Bach went often on foot to Hamburg to hear the great man. About the time Bach left Lüneburg, Handel came to Hamburg to play the violin and the harpsichord in the orchestra at the opera house. The two men never came nearer meeting.
The circumstances under which Bach left Lüneburg are not known. In 1703 he was for three months in the service of Prince Johann Ernst at Weimar. In August of that year he received the appointment of organist at the New Church in the neighboring town of Arnstadt. With this appointment his student days may be said to end; he now steps before the world as a skilled musician. In his new position he had not only to play the organ but to train the choir as well, and also to train a sort of musical society which furnished a large choir for other churches in the town. Hence he had ample opportunity to advance himself still further in the art of playing the organ, and to train his abilities to the composition of choral music. Only a few works can be definitely assigned to this period. A cantata showing signs of youthful endeavor is among them. The complaint of the church consistory that he accompanied the congregational singing in such an elaborate and complex way as to bewilder the singers seems to prove that he was busy at this time in studying some of the various arrangements of chorales and accompaniments which have come down to us in the mass of his manuscripts. Probably the congregation sang the melody in unison. It was customary for the organist to fill up the pauses at the end of each line with a few flourishes of his own. Doubtless these were oftenest improvised, yet Bach made a special study of the art of accompanying, and wrote down many samples of his own method for the benefit of his pupils. His ardent, independent young spirit must have led him into every kind of experiment during these early years at Arnstadt.
By far the most interesting of his compositions of this time is the little Capriccio written on the departure of his brother, Johann Jacob, to the wars. It consists of six little movements somewhat in the style of the Biblical narratives published but a few years before by Kuhnau in Leipzig. To each is prefixed a title or a program, such as the account of various accidents which may befall the brother, the attempts of friends to dissuade him from his journey, their lament when they see that their tears are of no avail, and, at last, the merry song of the postilion, and a fugue on the call of his horn. The workmanship is perfect and the piece breathes the warm, intimate feeling which is peculiar of all Bach’s work. It has an added interest in that it is the only piece of program music Bach ever wrote.
In October, 1705, he obtained a leave of absence and went on foot fifty miles to Lübeck to hear the famous Abendmusik which was given on certain Sundays in Advent at the church of St. Mary, where the great Dietrich Buxtehude was organist. No detailed record of his experiences in Lübeck has been preserved; but that he stayed there three months over the leave he obtained from Arnstadt proves how much he found there to interest him deeply. On his return he was taken to task by the authorities of the church in a council, the records of which have been preserved. To their reproof for having so long overstayed his leave he had only to reply that he had left his work in the hands of a competent substitute who he had hoped would give satisfaction. At the same meeting he was reprimanded for accompanying the congregational singing too elaborately. They complained that he had made his preludes too long, and, when spoken to in that regard, had promptly made them too short, that he neglected choir practice altogether, and that he went to a wine shop during the sermon. To all this Bach replied laconically, that he would try to do better. He agreed to submit an explanation of his general conduct in writing. All through the report one feels the independent, often angry, young spirit held in restraint behind the brief replies. The promised explanation was not forthcoming and in November, 1706, he was again taken to task. This time complaint was added that he had admitted a young maiden to the organ loft, and allowed her to make music there. The young maiden was probably his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, to whom he was shortly after betrothed.
Conditions at Arnstadt soon became irksome to him, and on June 15, 1707, we find him installed as organist of the church of St. Blasius in Mühlhausen. Here his salary was a little less than fifty dollars a year, to which were added ‘some measures of corn, two cords of firewood, some brushwood, and three pounds of fish.’ Scanty as it seems, it was evidently enough for him to marry on, and, accordingly, he took his cousin to wife on October 17, 1707. They were married in the village church of Dornheim, near Arnstadt, by an old friend of the Bach family.
Two important records of his stay in Mühlhausen have come down to us, his recommendation for repairs on the church organ, in which he shows a most thorough understanding of the mechanical part of the organ even to the smallest detail, and his first important composition the Rathswechsel cantata composed in honor of the yearly change in municipal authorities, the only one of his choral works which was engraved and printed during his lifetime. It was performed on February 4, 1708.
Bach did not remain a year at Mühlhausen. He received an invitation from Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar to be court organist and chamber musician at a much better salary. The letter by which he notified the council at Mühlhausen of his desire to accept the new post has been preserved.
The nine years Bach spent at Weimar must have been happy and prosperous. The character of the reigning duke influenced his composition. There was no opera at the court and, though there was a band of twenty or more players, in which Bach played both harpsichord and violin, and of which he later became leader, the duke’s chief interest was in music for the church, and Bach’s most important works during his stay at Weimar were for the organ and for the church choir.
Meanwhile his fame was spreading over Germany. It seems probable that every year he journeyed from Weimar to one or another of the big German cities, on what might be regarded as concert tours. One of them has become specially famous on account of an anecdote which has always been associated with it. In 1717 he was in Dresden at the same time J. L. Marchand, one of the most famous French clavicinists, was there. In some way, quite in keeping with the customs of the day, Bach’s friends arranged a contest of skill on the harpsichord between him and Marchand. The outcome is well known. Bach was ready at the appointed spot and hour. Marchand failed to appear. Whether or not Marchand fled because he feared to be worsted in a contest with Bach is hardly of great importance, but the anecdote is extremely important in that it points to the fact that Bach was already one of the great masters of the harpsichord.
His fame as an organist brought many pupils to study with him, among whom were J. M. Schubart, who may have studied with him in Arnstadt; Caspar Vogler, J. T. Krebs, and J. G. Ziegler. In 1715 he took the son of his brother Christoph into his house, young Bernard Bach, to whose industry we owe the greater part of the valuable manuscript copy of Sebastian Bach’s compositions, which passed later into the hands of Andreas Bach. His own family, too, was growing. Both Wilhelm Friedemann, his favorite and most gifted son, and Carl Philipp Emanuel, who became the most distinguished musician of the next generation, were born in Weimar.