No member of the Bach family – neither Johann Sebastian nor any of his sons – ever went to Vienna. J. S. Bach entered the Habsburg Empire only twice, both times to visit the spa in the Bohemian town of Karlsbad. Nevertheless, musicologists have long been interested in the subject of ‘Bach and Vienna’ or ‘Bach and Austria’, and it remains fascinating to ask when and how the compositions of the Bach family (whose livelihood was, with the exception of Johann Christian, inextricably linked to the Lutheran church) circulated in Catholic Austria and whether they influenced Austrian music, not least so-called Viennese Classicism.
One decisive obstacle facing any studies of this topic thus far has often been our ignorance of the relevant musical sources. This has now been overcome: at the start of this conference Christine Blanken (Bach-Repertorium, Leipzig) presented her new catalogue in two volumes Die Bach-Quellen in Wien und Alt-Österreich, which will be published as part 10 of the series Leipziger Beiträge zur Bachforschung (Hildesheim: Olms) this coming autumn. It is the fruit of the ‘Bach-Repertorium’ research project, a collaboration between the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. More than eleven hundred musical sources are catalogued in these volumes, with detailed descriptions, similar to those in the existing catalogues produced by the Bach-Repertorium – the studies of the Brussels Bach sources and those of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, for example. The list of cities in which the Viennese and Austrian sources are currently held is long indeed, reaching even beyond the immense ancient Habsburg Empire to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (from the Fischhof and Fuchs collections) and to Hamburg, Paris, Cambridge Massachusetts, and Ann Arbor – in private hands as well as libraries and archives. The result of Blanken's research is impressive and surprising in its scope. As Blanken commented at her presentation, the subject of ‘Bach and Vienna’ is not over now, but rather can begin once more from a wider and deeper foundation. I can say already that this catalogue will be one of the most substantial contributions to Bach source studies and a future benchmark.
This book presentation was the peg on which to hang a one-and-a-half-day conference, organized by the Institut für Musikwissenschaft, Vienna, in collaboration with the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Bach-Archiv Leipzig and the Verein der Freunde of the Institut für Musikwissenschaft. The aim of the conference was to approach the topic ‘Bach and Vienna’ through eight case studies. These papers focused on issues as diverse as the contacts between the Bach family and musicians, music lovers and publishers living in Vienna or Austria, methods of musical transmission, the contents of important private libraries in Vienna and the broad cultural exchanges between Vienna and Dresden.
In his lecture ‘Mozart und Bach: Salzburg–Wien–Leipzig–Berlin’ Christoph Wolff (Bach-Archiv Leipzig and Harvard University) emphasized the continuity of the connection between Mozart and Bach, which had already begun in the life and work of Mozart's father. Wolff went on to demonstrate the problems of the term ‘Bach-Erlebnis’ in relation to Mozart and Gottfried van Swieten's circle – yet he accepted the new quality of Mozart's compositions after his first encounters with Bach's music in 1782, which began to incorporate a certain amount of polyphony. Mozart thus transformed tradition into innovation.
Both Otto Biba (Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna) and Michael Maul (Bach-Archiv Leipzig) elucidated biographical connections between J. S. Bach and various Austrian characters. Receipts from 1747 for Eugen Wenzel, Count von Wrbna, who paid Bach for keyboard lessons and the rental of an instrument, were the starting-point for Biba to investigate Wrbna's musical education and musical influence – potentially important, given the huge number of dedications that the Wrbna family received. All documents relating to von Wrbna's eventual insolvency were destroyed, leaving historians only able to speculate as to the contents of what was presumably a substantial music collection.
Meanwhile, Maul discussed Count von Questenberg and Count von Sporck – the latter having borrowed the parts of the Sanctus from the B minor Mass between 1724 and 1727, never to return them. Questenberg, whose acquaintance Bach might have made in Karlsbad in 1718, provides a possible connection between Bach and the ‘Caecilien-Congregation’ in Vienna – a music society of which Questenberg was secretary. Maul speculated that there might have been a plan to perform Bach's B minor Mass in the course of the celebrations of St Cecilia's Day (22 November) at the Stephansdom – a possibility that Maul has been investigating since 2007 (see his ‘Die große catholische Messe: Bach, Graf Questenberg und die Musicalische Congregation in Wien’, Bach-Jahrbuch 2009, 153–175). It remains to be seen if this hypothesis can be confirmed by any new documentation.
Alison Dunlop (The Queen's University of Belfast), in her paper ‘Gottlieb Muffat und die Überlieferung Bach'scher Musik für Tasteninstrumente in Wien’, criticized the oft-promoted thesis that the Viennese Court organist Gottlieb Muffat was one of the earliest transmitters of Bach's compositions for keyboard instruments in Vienna; she observed that this cannot be confirmed by existing documentation.
Ulrich Leisinger (Stiftung Mozarteum, Salzburg) demonstrated the cultural transfer from Vienna to Dresden of the genre of the piano divertimento, formed in Vienna around 1750, with examples appearing in Dresden later. The connection between the cities was based on the close familial relationships between the Habsburg and Saxon dynasties, especially in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Iulia Anda Mare (Bach-Archiv Leipzig) spoke about Carl Adolf von Braun, identifying him as the subscriber ‘Braun’ for the Mozart concerts in the Trattner-Saal, who had for a long time been misidentified in Mozart research. Von Braun was part of a small circle of Protestant Reichshofräte (court counsellors) at the Viennese court who had a decided interest in the music of the Bach Family, especially the music of C. P. E. Bach. This can be seen in the numerous advance payments made for prints of his music. Mare also showed that von Braun brought the music of the Bach family to Transylvania, where he had many contacts. The Transylvanian performances of music of the Bach family should be understood, Mare argued, as musical expressions of Protestant identity in a predominantly Catholic environment.
Christine Blanken speculatively reconstructed a portion of Baron van Swieten's music library – specifically that dedicated to music by members of the Bach family. In the course of her research in conjunction with the compilation of the Viennese Bach catalogue she had been able to show that several hitherto overlooked sources were part of van Swieten's music collection, and thus that his Bach collection was perhaps larger than has been previously thought.
Marko Motnik (Institut für Musikwissenschaft, Vienna) presented a paper about the collector Sigmund Austerlitz, a Hungarian banker notorious in Beethoven research: he began as a serious music collector, but later – as the sad consequence of mental illness – took to declaring every single manuscript to be a Beethoven autograph. Motnik none the less derived from Austerlitz much useful information about Albrechtsberger's Bach reception; Albrechtsberger possessed copies of The Musical Offering and both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier, copies that were later part of Austerlitz's collection.
The conference ended with a concert in Vienna's Lutheran Church entitled ‘Bach à deux’, especially put together for the occasion. It consisted of music by members of the Bach family, Mozart and Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy, presented on harpsichord and fortepiano. Sonja Leipold and Mario Aschauer (both Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Vienna) impressed the audience with their sensitive, well-balanced and articulate playing.
