Jens Johler - Bach and The Tuning of the World

Bach wondered if he should get up and say something in the Cantor’s defence. Although he could understand that we all had eager ears, and even eyes, for the opera, there was a difference – wasn’t there? – between playing serious and godly music, and the merely pleasing entertainment that music can offer people. He would have liked to say a couple of words publicly on this difference. Maybe he could mediate between the parties, such as to restore harmony to the noisy group. He got up, wanted to call out with a clear voice, ‘ Gentlemen! Gentlemen, just a word ,’ but when he wanted to open his mouth, all he felt was his head turning bright red.

‘Gentlemen, a word, if you please!’

From the tangle of voices came the clear, bright, and radiant voice of a young man who had stood up at the same time.

Bach took advantage of the moment to quickly sit down again. Nobody seemed to have noticed him, not even Böhm and Reincken. Everybody looked at the young man. He was scarcely older than Bach, with a broad face, a straight nose, and a nicely curved mouth that constantly seemed on the verge of smiling. His head was framed by a billowing white wig, with curls and ringlets, and he wore an elegant silk scarf around his neck à la française .

Bach didn’t understand everything the young man said. The subject of his speech was odd to him. What did it mean that music had to be ‘gallant’? Gallant? That was something for the sons of noblemen visiting the Knights’ Academy, surely? Their ideal was, as he knew from Erdmann, the galant-homme , learned, of good taste, and well-versed in all gentlemanly arts. But what could this word possibly mean in a free town of citizens such as Hamburg?

The young man was not thinking about courtly gallantry, however, when he used the word. Instead he demanded a new understanding of a gallant way of life and of gallant music, he said. Gallant , as he defined it, meant educated and prudent, open and understanding, capable – truthful, even. Gallant , he said, was everything it means to be in tune with nature.

‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled subtly. ‘It is truly gallant when the inward and the outward match.’

‘Especially when it comes to women!’ some joker shouted out.

Unperturbed, the young man continued. ‘And that is how music ought to be. It’s not enough to get the melody and the harmony right. There must be a third element, a certain indefinable something, the je ne sais quoi , and that is what I mean when I say that music should be gallant!’

There was quite a bit of applause at this little speech – not solely because of its content, perhaps, but also due to the fact the young man had mastered the rules of rhetoric so well.

Bach, by contrast, felt stricken. The je ne sais quoi – was it that quality that Böhm had said his playing lacked? He stole a glance at his teacher, who sipped his drink, his face impassively unimpressed. No, he thought, this je ne sais quoi was something different from the harmony of the world that was so important to Böhm. That gallant something – the expression shot through his mind – belonged only to this world .

The applause was still rippling on when the Johanneum Cantor again stood up and thundered a terrible ‘No!’ over the assembled heads. ‘No, Mattheson!’ he repeated, slightly more quietly. ‘The third element is not the je ne sais quoi , but our necessary reverence before God, our Lord, and His creation! Remember it when the bell tolls for thee! Remember it when the Devil comes to get thy soul!’

And with this, his whole body shaking, he left the coffeehouse.

The following afternoon, after he had played on the grand organ with the four keyboards, Bach walked over to the Zippelhaus, and the living quarters that Adam Reincken had procured for them. Exhausted but happy, he climbed up the stairs and rapped on the door with the knocker – a cast-iron snake’s head.

After a little while, the door was opened, and Bach froze.

He saw grey-blue eyes and a slightly opened mouth. He saw her blonde, curly hair, and the strands that fell over her temples. He saw her lean figure in a tight linen dress, over which she wore a turquoise shawl. He saw the expectant expression on her face. He wanted to say something – but what? If he could only just manage to be gallant for a moment … for one single moment!

‘Oh – yes ?’ a gentle, exceedingly enchanting voice asked.

‘B-beg your pardon,’ he finally stammered.

‘What for, my dear?’

He had no idea for what. Or, in fact, he had too many ideas. He sensed the harp, the strings, and flutes of the Upper World, yet also the cornets, trombones, and the reedorgan of the Underworld. He sensed an entire universe full of music; and if he had had the courage at this very moment, he would at the very least gallantly … sing. And yet he remained silent.

‘Y-yes?’ she asked again.

How was it possible that a human being was able to put so much expression, so much melody, in two small syllables? He would have to remember. He would try to dissolve the words into music, too. He would work on it, all the days of his life.

‘Why are you so silent?’

‘I’m with Böhm,’ he finally stammered out. ‘Reincken … the small room … the dormitory over there.’

‘And your name?’

He told her. She told him hers. But for him, she already had quite another.

As he stepped over the threshold, his paralysis eased a little. He even managed to answer her questions. Yes, he was from Lüneburg. Yes, he was a student of Böhm. Yes, he was at the opera yesterday. Oh, yes, he had seen and heard her …

‘I beg your pardon? On the clavichord? Yes, of course, should you so wish it … Right now?’

She led him into a large, sparsely furnished room: a four-poster bed surrounded by red patterned drapery, a painted chest, an oriental rug, an oval table, two chairs, a music stand; leaning against the wall was a lute, a framed silhouette hanging above it, and – over there, the clavichord!

He only needed to sit down on the stool and bring his hands close to the keys to be transformed.

She gave him the music. He sight-read, which wasn’t hard, and she sang to it. And how she sang! Who knows what life is like in Paradise, but it couldn’t be so different to this. He saw this ethereal creature – he heard her gentle soprano voice, the same voice that had filled him with such longing the day before – and now he could have sung his heart out with happiness that he was allowed to sit here and accompany this voice.

‘Enough,’ she suddenly said.

No , he thought, never enough .

‘You’re a valiant fellow,’ she said.

And me? What should I say now?

‘My dress is too tight,’ she said. ‘Would you mind helping me unbutton it?’

She turned her back to him, casting him a glance from her blue-grey eyes over her left shoulder.

He rose from the stool, and his knees began to shake. He walked up to her, smelled the scent – what was it? Violets? Lilac? Roses? Forget-me-nots? – and fumbled with her buttons. He had never done anything like that before. He wondered if it was a sin. But what if the dress was too tight for her?

‘Oh yes,’ she said, after he at last managed to free the first button. ‘Now I can breathe more easily.’

‘Is that enough?’ he asked, and took a step back.

‘No … no,’ she said quickly. ‘Please go on.’

He went on. And while her dress fell to the ground, he felt that his own clothes were growing too tight for him. Autumn was drawing in, the summer was over, but here, in this apartment, the heat was intense.