No, not really, but some of his music may have been written by one, namely, his second wife Anna Magdalena. Plenty of evidence has been put forward by forensic handwriting experts starting that some of the scores that are allocated to J. S. Bach are not in his own handwriting. In fact, there are multiple persons implicated in this evidence, as the handwriting is by more than two individuals, which then implies that maybe some of the music that was in the possession of the composer was not his own, but rather music by either some other members of his family or those that were students of Bach.
Now, is this so hard to believe? I mean, some people are of the persuasion that men can have babies and women can be men if they wear trousers. Is there some sort of switch that is pulled inside the heads of some music lovers that immediately makes their knees jerk in an erratic way, causing them to spit and fume at the very idea?
Let’s have a little think about this idea, shall we. Bach has exactly 1080 pieces of music attributed to him, read that again, 1080. Now, we know that Bach left his musical estate to his sons, Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann and that one of them, Wilhelm, sold of the music he had inherited to the highest bidder.
If we now add the missing music written by Bach to his acknowledged output, the current estimates of which are as follows:
2 Passions, comparable to the Matthew, John and Mark.
Approximately 30 secular cantatas, of the 50 known, but it is likely to be a far higher number of those not documented.
120 church cantatas.
Orchestral and chamber music from the Library of the Kapelle at Köthen estimated at around 200.
Orchestral and chamber music from Weimar period estimated at around 200 also.
Dozens of pieces, 30 – 40, start and then end abruptly, cut off after a number of bars.
That makes around 500 – 600 missing pieces, which when added to the previous total, makes around 1600 – 1700 pieces of music. That’s a lot of time. Think about this for a moment. Lots of single pieces of music by the master is hours long, thousands of bars of music, and yet it is assigned just one number in the BWV cataloguing system. The St. Matthew Passion is around 3 hours alone, whilst the Art of Fugue is 18 movements lasting around 70 minutes but still only classed as one piece out of 1600 -1700 pieces.
Others, such as the sonatas and partitas for violin, cello or flute as well as suites for lute are multiple movements long, and so are his concerti which last approximately 20 - 30 minutes each.
So, to try and fathom if a single human being could create such a voluminous output, lets see when his writing years began, with a quote from an online source:
Johann Sebastian Bach's first published piece of music was “Gott ist mein König” (God Is My King), a festive cantata composed in 1708 for the inauguration of the new council in Mühlhausen. It was published at the council’s expense. This piece marked the beginning of Bach’s career as a composer and was an important milestone in his development as a musician.
That gives us 1708 as the start of his writing career. Bach died in 1750, so 42 years is the length of time that he wrote all of this music in, although admittedly he may have written music before this time but it is highly unlikely he would have preserved it as it was when he was still learning his craft and as such would have been sub-standard compared to his later works. 1600 works in 42 years = an average of 38 works per year. Every year, that is almost one a week.
Now I know that the view that Bach was a superhuman figure whose genius is unparalleled in the musical world is common, but taking into account illness, holidays, family bereavements, official engagements and other intellectual pursuits that a man of such an intellect must have pursued, is it not likely, even fathomable, that some of the music that was in his possession was by students, or his wife that he himself could and would have taught music composition to. I mean, after all, what drew Bach to Anna was the fact that she was a gifted musician, and for someone like Bach to say that, she would be seriously gifted in our view today.
Also, music such as the Passions, concerti, or the Mass in B minor are vast in scale. I mean like a Beethoven symphony vast, and when you think how long something like that would take to write, months at least, is it not likely that he would delegate the writing of some lesser important work, such as a weekly performed church sonata, or a series of movements for a solo instrument, such as cello or flute, to one of his family members or even a student. Remember, these are seriously good musicians, not country yokels, that he had surrounded himself with. No grade 1 piano students for Bach, even members of his own family that he taught added up to 14. Yes, he taught 14 family members how to play, improvise and compose, so the spreading of the musical load was probably routine and so would the spreading of earnings, keeping it in the family. Then there are the students that are not family members, lots would have been well regarded by Bach and his family as there are records of them actually living in the Bach family household. In 1700’s Germany, you didn’t pop over to Weimar for a piano lesson, you moved in, paid you fees and learned as much as you could from the master before leaving weeks, months or even years later. And to do that, you either had to be independently wealthy or you could earn money from your skill, probably as a musician, considering that that was what you were studying and devoting your life to.
So, all in all, I think that the evidence put forward by Martin Jarvis in his book Written by Mrs Bach, when placed alongside the logical evaluation of the workload attributed to Bach, points to a highly likely collaboration between J. S. Bach, his wife and family members and possibly more than one student. Sounds more plausible than a man having babies, anyway.
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