Bach and The Tuning of the World E-Book

Jens Johler

• Herausgeber: Alexander Verlag Berlin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 502

Beschreibung

Everyone has heard of Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier – but hardly anybody knows anything about his journey to F sharp major. In March of 1700, shortly before his fifteenth birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach set off on his journey. His destination: to create perfect music, music that unites heaven and earth in harmony. His search finally brought him to Lübeck, where he became acquainted with Andreas Werckmeister and the well-tempered tuning. In this tempering – and that is new! – you can play everything, all keys, in major and minor. But perfection has its price: All notes are "tempered" a bit, which means falsified; the music has a touch of artificiality from now on. And not only the notes and pitches – nature and people are also being tempered. Gardens are laid out with geometric precision, rivers are canalized, cities redesigned. Night becomes day thanks to street lighting, the pocket watch makes it possible to take along the time with you, the tuning fork enables choral pitch. The journey into an artificial world has begun. When Bach completed the Well-Tempered Clavier, he was overcome with profound doubt: Is not his work "only of this world" – perfect, artificial, profane? "For us, Bach's life consists primarily of biographical gaps. We know some things; but we don't know much. These gaps offer a novelist his chance. The facts were my fetters but they were also my source of inspiration. I did not invent anything 'freely' in the meaning of arbitrarily, though." Jens Johler "Jens Johler by no means turns the historical facts around.... Instead, he is writing a great of development novel in which private motifs and the course of time intertwine like fugue themes. " Harald Asel, rbb Inforadio

Leseprobe

Jens JohlerMarc Svetov

BACHandTHE TUNINGOF THE WORLD

Novel

Based on an idea byJohler & Burow

Celestial Monochord,Robert Fludd 1618

© for this edition by Alexander Verlag Berlin 2020, original copyright 2013

Alexander Wewerka, Fredericiastr. 8, 14050 Berlin, Germany

All rights reserved, in particular the right to public presentation, radio and television broadcasting as well as translation. This also applies to individual sections.

Drawings of the circles of fifths: Norbert W. Hinterberger inspired by an illustration in: Ross W. Duffin, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care), W. W. Norton & Company, New York City, 2008

Typesetting and page layout: Antje Wewerka

ISBN 978-3-89581-540-9 (eBook)

Contents

March 1722

1.Departure

2.Wicked Witchcraft

3.The Philosopher

4.Latin School

5.The Lion of Eisenach

6.The Three Musics

7.Adam Reincken

8.‘That False Serpent, Opera’

9.The Muse

10.Circe

11.‘It’s the Affections that Matter’

12.‘I Will Give my Heart to Thee’

13.Lackey

14.The Journey to F Sharp Major

15.Going South!

16.Evening Concerts

17.Angela

18.Mare Balticum

19.Dorothea Catrin

20.The New Tempering

21.‘Strange Tones’

22.The Loft

23.The Consistory

24.The Wedding

25.Curious Variations

26.The Ratswechsel Cantata

27.Weimar

28.Exult! Rejoice!

29.The Hunting Cantata

30.Black Birds

31.The Contest

32.Senesino

33.The Manuscript

34.The Loyal Subject

35.Landrichterstube

36.The Lord Chamberlain

37.Köthen

38.Handel

39.The Masterpiece

40.The Arrow

41.‘Why Did You Leave Me?’

42.Praise from the Master

43.The Well-Tempered Clavier

44.Channelled Notes

45.The Night

46.H-C-A-B

47.Father and Son

48.The St Matthew Passion

Fact and Fiction

If circumstances had brought him to a major Catholic court or into an independent civic position – and he would surely have welcomed such a development – he would without a doubt have become the greatest opera composer of his time.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

What Newton was to natural philosophy, Sebastian Bach was to music.

Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart

March 1722

He opened his eyes and stared at the beams on the ceiling. The moon threw a pale, bluish light through the window.

He wanted to get up, get out of bed, go to his study, make a little music, play something – anything to drive away the ghosts that had haunted him in his dream; but he found he couldn’t move. His legs didn’t obey him, nor did his arms, not even a single finger.

What’s wrong with me?

He still felt pressure on his chest. Somebody had set their booted foot on it in his dream and pressed down. It felt like the boot were still pressing down; his chest was constricted; he struggled for breath.

I can’t breathe.

He listened to her breath. It was calm and even. When she exhaled, she made a soft whistling sound, a high G sharp. He wanted to wake her and ask her to help him get up; he opened his mouth to say, ‘Please help me, I can’t move, I can’t breathe,’ but no sound came. He couldn’t do a thing; not a thing. All he could do was lie there, staring at the beams on the ceiling.

Dear God, please don’t let me be paralysed.

He closed his eyes and tried to put himself back into the dream. Who was it who had put his boot on his chest? And how did it come about? He felt that something must have happened in the dream to cause his paralysis. He had a notion that he must get himself back into the dream so it would take a different course, with a different outcome.

Only to this world.

Erdmann had not said as much, but he had meant it.

Your work belongs only to this world.

He had to go back.

Images from his dream arose in him. The carriage. The street. The canal. Now he remembered the horror that had seized him when the carriage began to go under, further and further, deeper and deeper, until he was submerged in the water. But the water did not penetrate the carriage; it continued on its way, unfettered, under the surface of the water. It was as though he were sitting in the belly of a fish, like Jonah in the belly of the whale.

I went in the wrong direction, he thought, and opened his eyes. No revelation of heaven on Earth. No Jacob’s ladder reaching upwards. Only earthly music – that’s all it is. No. It’s worse than that.

The pressure on his chest increased. A dark figure suddenly stood at the foot of his bed, ramrod straight, his right hand pointing to the heavens. A prophet. A messiah. A ruler over the tuning of the world. The others surrounding him looked up to him in terror, at his fiery eyes and the arm stretched high into the heavens.

Only she didn’t look up.

Bach followed her gaze, his eyes wandering down from the prophet’s black coat to his equally black trousers and leather boots. But no … only his right foot wore a boot. Bach stared, with incredulous horror, at his left foot.

1. Departure

On 15 March 1700, shortly before sunrise, Bach set off.

Johann Christoph accompanied him to the town gate and, since the morning light still refused to break, part of the way beyond it. When they stopped on top of the mountain, they saw the sun sending its first rays across the edge of the forest.

‘Will you be all right on your own?’

Bach didn’t answer. Robbers and gypsies made their homes in the woodlands, waiting to grab his knapsack and violin. As soon as Johann Christoph left him, they’d pounce.

‘You’re shivering. Are you cold?’

He wasn’t cold, he was just shivering. He would immediately break into a run after his brother was gone.

‘Well, then, young ’un, God bless you.’

Bach returned his brother’s embrace and set off at a gallop.

‘Wait!’

Johann Christoph pulled a rolled-up bundle of paper from his waistcoat. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘Here, it’s yours now. Take it.’

Bach took a step back, staring at the bundle.

‘You want me to put it in your knapsack?’

While Johann Christoph untied his brother’s knapsack and stowed away the roll of paper, Bach furtively wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.

‘And work hard, always work hard, you hear?’

He nodded.

‘Why don’t you say something?’ And then, before finally setting off on his way back to Ohrdruf, Johann Christoph said in passing, more in a murmur than out loud: ‘Beware of pride, young ’un. There will come a time when you’ll surpass us all.’

Astonished, Bach watched his brother walk away. For five long years Johann Christoph had been his teacher, a strict teacher who uttered nary a word of praise for him. And now this? And what was it his brother had said? Was it a prophecy, a wish, a mission, or an order?

Just as Johann Christoph disappeared between the trees, the incandescent ball of fire rose on the horizon. Inwardly, a radiantly pure C-major chord resounded, soon dissolving into individual notes as if played on a harp. As he started on his way again, Bach whistled the arpeggio softly to himself. All of a sudden, his fear was gone. He thought of Lüneburg, of the Latin School, and of the famous Georg Böhm who played the organ there; he thought about the musical manuscript in his knapsack, and about his brother’s words. And while tears sprang once again to his eyes, he increased his pace, hurrying along so as to arrive in Gotha on time, where Georg Erdmann, his fellow pupil, was eagerly awaiting him.

Erdmann was sitting on a rock in front of the town hall and jumped up when he saw Bach. He was two years older than Bach, thinner and taller by a head. He, too, carried a knapsack on his back and instead of a violin, he had a lute slung over his shoulder.

He had been reading a lot in the last few weeks, said Erdmann as they left the city walls behind them, and had found his calling. He would become a philosopher, the greatest who ever lived. He would acquire all the knowledge of his time. Natural philosophy, moral philosophy, philosophy of law, everything! He had just read about an Englishman by the name of New-Tone.

Bach pricked up his ears. He liked the name.

‘This New-Tone, or Newton,’ Erdmann went on to explain, ‘is quite an eminent philosopher – some say, even more eminent than Leibniz, but that was for posterity to decide. Anyway, one day this Englishman was lying under an apple tree and fell asleep. And while he was peacefully dreaming away, he was rudely and suddenly awakened – by an apple, which fell bang on his head. He was angry and annoyed, and, naturally, he wanted to vent his anger at someone. But at whom? There wasn’t a soul in sight. After reflecting upon this for some time, the Englishman had a sudden inspiration on how all this was connected: the falling of the apple to the ground, the movement of the Earth around the sun, the movement of the moon around the Earth – and indeed all other movements that are not the direct result of an external impact. So there is a force inherent to all physical bodies, or at work in mysterious ways between them, without the bodies directly touching. And Newton called this magical force “gravity”.’

Bach was fascinated. Softly he said the word to himself: gravity; gra-vi-ty. The word fascinated him. The thought fascinated him that everything – the near and the far, the heavens and the Earth, the moon and the apple – was connected by a mysterious force. Gra-vi-ty: he tested various intonations of the word to get nearer to its meaning; he elongated the syllables, stretching them; he varied melody and rhythm; and the more lavishly he did so, the more he got caught up into the word; he stamped his feet, clapped his hands, snapped his fingers … until he noticed that Erdmann was looking at him with irritation.

‘Gravity,’ he said one final time, in an austere voice, with a gesture of apology.

Erdmann interpreted this as an encouragement, and began talking about Johannes Kepler, an astronomer who had postulated certain laws about the movement of the planets.

While listening to his friend with one ear, Bach heard the distant call of a cuckoo, and asked himself what it meant that it first sang a minor, then a major third. It sounded like farewell and loss.

Shortly before dusk, they arrived in Langensalza. A little boy, barefoot, in ragged clothes, followed on their heels. He showed them the high tower of the market church, and proudly explained to them that the stagecoaches, which had only recently started to stop here, went from Moscow straight through to Amsterdam. When they got to the house of Erdmann’s uncle, they gave the boy a pfennig, and he immediately scampered away, as though he wanted to get the money to safety.

The uncle’s house looked grey and bleak. Built of wooden beams and clay bricks, it had small crooked windows and a roof made of grey shingles. A cobbled courtyard could be seen through a high archway next to the house, and beyond it the smithy.

Erdmann’s uncle was the town’s blacksmith. He was a strong man with a powerful head and sad eyes. Reluctantly he showed Bach and Erdmann a place for them to sleep, and summoned them into the kitchen for the evening meal.

They ate the bread soup and the cabbage with millet gruel in silence. The house seemed to be ruled by some form of black magic that muted all words, all sounds, all thoughts. Bach could only feel a tormenting numbness in his head. Erdmann obviously felt the same. The uncle, however, thawed a little after a glass of brandy, without offering them any. ‘Who is your father?’ he asked Bach.

‘Ambrosius Bach, the town musician in Eisenach,’ he replied, but his father was no longer alive. He died five years ago, he said. First his mother, then his father.

His own wife had died too, the uncle said. Six months ago.

Bach nodded. He knew this already from Erdmann. The uncle had no children. He was all alone now.

When he hit the red-hot iron with his hammer in the morning, the uncle said, he sometimes didn’t know who or what he was hitting … May God forgive him.

Bach remembered how his mother had died. He stood next to the bed where she was laid out and imagined she was moving slightly, that she was breathing. ‘Wake up,’ he whispered, ‘wake up.’ He couldn’t believe it wasn’t in her power to do so. He was nine years old then. His father died a couple of months later. Still, he had had the good fortune not to be placed in an orphanage. His brother, who was the organist in Ohrdruf even then, took him in.

The uncle asked why hadn’t both continued at school in Ohrdruf.

‘They stopped the free meals for us,’ Erdmann explained. In Lüneburg, they would get everything for free. Accommodations, meals, classes. For that, they had to sing in the matins choir.

‘What nonsense all this is,’ said the uncle, and it wasn’t clear whether he meant the cancellation of the subsidized meals in Ohrdruf or singing in the matins choir in Lüneburg.

They slept on straw sacks in a room adjoining the kitchen. As he was falling asleep, Bach thought back on his time in Eisenach. What a joy it had been to hear his father play the little fanfares on the trumpet from the balcony of the town hall, or play at St George’s Church under the direction of the Cantor. What a joy it was to walk up with him to the Wartburg, where Luther had once found sanctuary, and to listen to him talking about how all creatures had their own melody – human beings, animals, even the plants. What a joy it was to play music together, along with all the apprentices and journeymen, who were always willing to show him what they could do on the violin, the lute, the trumpet, the clavichord. And what a joy it was to hear Uncle Christoph play the great organ – he who had mastered the laws of the fugue so perfectly that he could play five different voices concurrently without any difficulty at all. To be able one day to play as his uncle could – that had been Bach’s greatest wish from the very beginning.

Powerful hammer blows shook the house in the morning. Still half asleep, Bach imagined his own head to be lying on the anvil, and that the next blow was poised to split his head open. He leaped from the straw sack, slipped into his trousers and waistcoat, buckled on the knapsack, threw the violin over his shoulder and hurried outside.

Erdmann was ready to depart, waiting for him in front of the house.

‘Pythagoras,’ he said.

Bach threw him a questioning look.

‘Forging hammers,’ Erdmann said. ‘That’s how Pythagoras hit upon the secret of harmony.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Bach said. ‘I’ve heard about that.’

The further they walked into the countryside, the more people they met on the road. Farmers riding to their fields on donkeys or pulling sluggish farm horses by the reins. Children in ragged clothes, of whom it was hard to tell whether they were tramping to work in the fields, or else orphans seeking their fortune in the world before being picked up and imprisoned in the workhouse. Journeymen on the road, clad in their traditional garb. And time and again, beggars and thieves, distinguishable by their one amputated hand, or even their amputated hand and foot. On one occasion they overtook a lame man and a blind man, the blind man supporting his lame companion, who himself led his blind friend. Bach would have liked to give them alms, but he hardly had anything himself. Grand carriages rushed past them every now and again, and they had to protect themselves against any passing coachman who took it into his head to snap his whip on their backs just for fun. Individual riders also tore by them at full gallop, expecting that they would jump aside in time. Dodgy characters sometimes crossed their way, throwing covetous glances at their instruments – Bach’s violin and Erdmann’s lute. When asked for directions – which happened more than once – they had to confess they didn’t know their own way around there either. But at least Erdmann had written a list of the places they had to pass through on their way to Lüneburg. It was a pretty long list, and a pretty long journey.

2. Wicked Witchcraft

At around noon on Saturday, they arrived at the border of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. They showed their passports and accompanying letters from Cantor Elias Herda and the invitation from St Michael’s Monastery in Lüneburg. They were allowed to pass. Carriages stood idle on both sides of the barrier, and couldn’t go on. The width of the roads – two bare and parallel cobbled ribbons – was different in the two countries. So the coachmen had their hands full, replacing axles, and adjusting their carriages to the track width. The latter depended on where they came from and where they wanted to go. Meanwhile, the passengers stood by the wayside, offering unsolicited advice.

Erdmann and Bach joined them, and Erdmann began to reflect out loud upon the fragmentation of Germany into so many tiny principalities. Each of them with a little Sun King! Each with its very own track width! But wait and see! Towards the end of this saeculum, Germany will be just as unified as England or France! Then this nonsense will stop. Then new roads will be built that are uniform for the entire country, in straight lines, at right angles to one another, constructed according to the Laws of Reason. He would bet his life on it!

The passengers around them turned, looking at both wayfarers suspiciously. Who were they? What were they doing here? How dare they deliver such inflammatory speeches here?

Bach seized Erdmann by the sleeve of his rust-coloured jacket and pulled him vigorously away.

The next night, exactly a week after they had first set off, Bach suggested, just for a change, going into an inn and eating as much as they could, at his expense, to mark the occasion. It would be his treat.

‘It’s your birthday?’ Erdmann asked.

‘The twenty-first of March,’ said Bach. ‘I’m fifteen now. Although …’ In truth, he wasn’t completely certain if he was actually fifteen now. To be precise, he was eleven days short, ever since the calendar had been converted, at the beginning of the year, from the Julian to the Gregorian system, which had been in use in Catholic countries for a hundred years at this point – but the adjustment had made it necessary to drop eleven days from the year. So the eighteenth of February was not followed by the nineteenth, but by the first of March. Eleven days rubbed out, just like that, perdu!

‘It’s really a matter of debate,’ he said, ‘as to whether I’m fifteen today or only on the first of April.

‘Then what we ought to do is celebrate it twice,’ said Erdmann.

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ said Bach.

There were some tables free at the ‘Zur Linde’ inn. They picked a table in the rear of the room that was lit by candles and oil lamps. Bach ordered roast rabbit and wine. After the second glass, he told his friend about the manuscripts his brother had stuck into his knapsack. These were copies of keyboard pieces that his brother had kept in a locked cabinet. Sheet music by Pachelbel, Böhm, Buxtehude, and even some by Italian composers. Bach had made clandestine copies of them by moonlight, and when his brother had found this out, he had confiscated the pages and locked them up again in the cabinet.

‘Why’s that?’ Erdmann asked.

‘Why’s what?’

‘Why did he confiscate them?’

‘Because he told me not to,’ Bach said.

‘And why did he do that?’

‘Because they’re precious. He paid a lot of money for copies like that. And the more there are of them, the lower their price.’

‘Got you,’ said Erdmann. ‘But after all, you are his brother …’

‘Certainly am,’ said Bach. ‘That’s why he gave them back to me.’

The innkeeper had meanwhile stepped up to their table, and put two more glasses of wine down.

‘With all respect, Mr Innkeeper,’ said Erdmann, ‘we didn’t order this.’

‘They come courtesy of the cloth merchant over there,’ the innkeeper said, nodding his head in the direction of a well-dressed patron. ‘He asks whether you gentlemen might play a little music. A song on the lute … accompanied by the fiddle? Maybe also a little singing? A song?’

Well, after all, why not? They had had a good meal and drunk a bit – but not so much that they wouldn’t be able to play music anymore. And who knows, maybe the innkeeper might let them stay overnight for free if their music made the patrons consume more wine.

They unpacked their instruments and set themselves up in the centre of the room.

‘The fancy took me,’ Erdmann sang, ‘to ride to the woods, where the air is filled with the song of birds …’

Bach sang the second voice part and fiddled melodious figures around it.

There was somewhat restrained applause.

Erdmann didn’t take too long before playing the second song: ‘You’re the goldsmith’s daughter, and I’m the farmer’s son …’

The applause grew stronger. Some of the patrons had sung along to a couple of lines, and the mood lifted perceptibly; it became more cheerful, and soon people wouldn’t let them stop. New requests for songs were shouted out to them, so many all at once – and Erdmann knew them all: ‘Winter is gone’ or ‘A monk went to the Upper Country, and got to know a nun –’, which was a pretty lewd song. Bach felt pretty ashamed as he heard: ‘He led her to the altar, where he read her a Psalter –’, followed by ‘He led her to the bell-pull rope, where he dinged her five hours in scope …’

No, that definitely went too far, and the more so as the guests were now hooting and bellowing their own obscene additions. Bach struck up a gypsy dance he had picked up at a peasants’ wedding near Ohrdruf, with breathtakingly quick runs and swiftly changing staccato and legato passages, stamping on the wooden floorboards with his feet. As soon as they had started, one of the guests grabbed the waitress and started cavorting with her in a circle so wildly you feared they would get dizzy and fall to the ground; but they didn’t fall, they just flung their arms around each other’s necks when it ended, and laughed, and the other guests were happy with them and clapped their hands; and in the general ruckus, the cloth merchant shouted: ‘Encore! Encore! The next round is on me!’

‘Board and lodging are free,’ said the landlord the next morning as he served them breakfast; and should they ever come to his neck of the woods again, and would like to play dance music again, they would always be welcome.

The cloth merchant came to their table and offered to take them in his carriage. He was going to Wernigerode.

Erdmann glanced at his list and said they would gladly accept his offer.

After sitting across from one another silently for a time, still tired from last night’s wine, the cloth merchant started a conversation about the execution of a witch that was to take place in Wernigerode tomorrow. He really wanted to be there. The witch who was to be burned had confessed her guilt to all four charges, namely: association with the Devil, liaison with the Devil, participation in a witches’ sabbath, and malevolent magic. Her confession would be publicly proclaimed tomorrow. The confession wasn’t actually required, since the witch had flaming red hair, which was already suspicious enough. In addition, she had a wart in her left armpit that neither bled nor hurt when it was pricked with a pin – an unmistakable sign.

‘So whom has the witch harmed?’ Erdmann asked.

‘That’s irrelevant,’ the merchant said. ‘The territorial law code expressly states that a person who forms an alliance with the Devil will be punished and put to death by fire, even if the person in question hasn’t harmed anybody with their black magic …’ But since the young gentleman had asked, he went on, the witch had cast a spell on the cattle, so they’d got sick, and some cows had even died.

Erdmann wanted to know whether the witch had confessed from the very onset or only after torture.

‘Well,’ said the cloth merchant, ‘at first, a bailiff in Wernigerode made enquiries, and brought the case to court, and the court decided that charges should be preferred. The decision was signed by the Count. So the witch was arrested, thrown into the tower, stripped bare, depilated, and questioned – at first in a friendly manner. She denied everything, vehemently and stubbornly, of course, so they showed her the instruments – the thumbscrews, the rack, the Spanish boot, and so on, but all to no avail. Finally, the Council for Judgment made a decision for use of torture; and soon after came the confession, and that confession will be read aloud publicly tomorrow.’ He certainly didn’t want to miss that – especially all the things the witch had confessed to, in terms of her liaison with the Devil. ‘You might learn a thing or two,’ he added, without noticing that Erdmann had made a face. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘I’m also very anxious to learn about the shenanigans of the witches during their witches’ sabbath on the top of the Blocksberg Mountain, and, of course, how they ever managed to ride through the air on a broomstick. Flying, he said, is an old dream of mankind.

Would the young gentlemen be interested in attending the trial?

Bach looked at Erdmann questioningly. Erdmann shook his head.

‘But why?’ exclaimed the merchant, uncomprehending. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss a thing like that. Didn’t even Martin Luther preach that sorceresses must not be allowed to live? That they steal milk, butter and everything else from a house and can create mysterious diseases in the human knee that gradually consume the whole body? That they minister potions and incantations so as to summon hatred, love, storms, all sorts of havoc in the house and on the fields and they are able to make people limp with their magic arrows even from a distance of a mile or more, while nobody could heal the lame victim?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Erdmann. ‘Luther or no Luther, this whole witch-burning business is a nothing but insufferable nonsense. I have a very low opinion about it, truly. I’m not even sure that such a thing as witches ever existed. Nothing but figments of the imagination! For example:

They accused the mother of Johannes Kepler of being a witch only because people thought they recognized her in his novel about a trip to the moon. So this great man spent many years in his life defending his mother. Finally, they released her, but by then she was in miserable shape. And a year later, she died of exhaustion. Imagine that! Johannes Kepler’s mother!

The merchant said he didn’t know any Kepler.

Then he presumably didn’t know Christian Thomasius either?

‘I know a Christian Sartorius,’ said the merchant, ‘but you probably don’t mean him?’

‘No,’ said Erdmann, ‘I am talking about Master Thomasius at the University in Halle. Thomasius has given irrefutable proof that any kind of interrogation by torture is not only inhumane but useless. A person being tortured would confess to anything his torturers had put to him; truth never comes to light this way. Thus it happened not long ago that seven men were hanged for holding up a stagecoach; on the rack, all seven confessed, although it turned out later that only four robbers had been involved in that particular hold-up. But it was not merely three too many who were hanged, but seven. Because they caught red-handed the four who were actually responsible when they committed another robbery. And naturally, they too were hanged. So now, the total was eleven.’

‘Oh well,’ the cloth merchant said indifferently, ‘the others probably also had it coming.

In Wernigerode, the preparations for the spectacle were in full swing. Merchants from near and far had set up their stands. A wooden platform had been boarded together for the councillors and local notables who had come to town for the occasion. The stake had already been erected, although the burning was scheduled for the following day.

The cloth merchant could hardly hide his feverish anticipation. Even Bach was tempted to go along with the mood for a moment. Erdmann wanted to get out of Wernigerode as quickly as possible. He said he had an appointment in Wolfenbüttel.

‘An appointment? With whom?’

‘Well,’ said Erdmann evasively. ‘With an individual of some rank.’

‘Upon my soul,’ said Bach. ‘Not with the Prince, is it?’

‘With a Prince of the mind, yes,’ said Erdmann at last. ‘With Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the philosopher.’

‘Oh, I can hardly wait,’ said Bach.

3. The Philosopher

Simply to walk through the dam-gate and cross the huge castle square, the aspect of the mighty castle itself towering over all other houses on the square, filled them with awe. And the no less impressive figure of the philosopher now received them in the library! He was wearing a flowing wig with a plethora of black curls, a magnificent coat cut in the French style, silk stockings and silver buckles on his shoes. Erdmann froze in awe. Bach felt uneasy. He was tempted to bow and scrape in front of the distinguished gentleman and was only just able to hold himself back.

As the philosopher showed them through the rooms of the famous library, Bach was flabbergasted. So many books, thousands of them! And each and every one of them identically bound in expensive light brown calf leather with gilt engravings. The shelves reached right up to the room’s awesomely high ceiling, crammed with works of natural philosophy, moral philosophy and theology.

He was in the process of converting the library to a new system, the philosopher said. Up to now, the books were catalogued according to their more or less arbitrary location on the shelves. Now he wanted to establish a new principle of arrangement, in alphabetical order by the name of the author, from A for Aristotle to Z for Zwingli. It’s more practical. You’ll find the books more quickly and save time. Indeed, the era in which they lived was an era of reorganization and cataclysmic inventions. Had they heard of the calculating machine?

Erdmann nodded.

Bach shook his head.

‘Here,’ said the philosopher, and turned to a table on which an oblong object was hidden under a cloth. With a swift movement, he pulled away the cloth and revealed a golden sparkling machine that sported confusing details: on the top side of the apparatus, Bach recognized the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. They were arranged in a circle around an adjustable pointer in the centre. Eight such circles of numbers adorned the top side. They were connected to eight perpendicular number discs that apparently could be set in motion by a large crank.

‘The turnspit,’ the philosopher joked, and turned the crank. Le Tournebroche.

Confused and fascinated, Bach and Erdmann looked at the enigmatic apparatus.

The philosopher could hardly hide his satisfaction. ‘This,’ he said proudly, ‘is an invention that will change the world. No more stupid calculating. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division – no longer a problem. Ten times as fast as when you do it with your head alone.’

‘And how,’ Bach asked doubtfully, ‘does it work?’

‘Take a look here,’ said the philosopher, and motioned for the two to come closer. ‘The most important thing is the graduated roller. The teeth have different lengths and are slidable. All the digits of the summand can thus be translated to the results mechanism.’

Bach scratched his head.

Leibniz laughed, amused. ‘With this machine, gentlemen,’ he exclaimed, ‘we’ll be able in the near future to calculate everything and represent it in formulas.’

‘Everything?’ Bach asked in astonishment. ‘With this machine?’

‘Of course not with this still very imperfect specimen,’ the philosopher said, ‘but with the principles on which it is based. Incidentally,’ he added, ‘I’m in the process of inventing a completely different type of calculating machine. Maybe the honourable gentlemen can guess what type of a machine I mean?’

Erdmann expressed his bewilderment in a sigh that was difficult to interpret.

‘Well,’ said the philosopher in a confidential tone, ‘it will be a calculating machine for words.’ Yes, they had heard correctly, for words and sentences, for discourse! To do so, however, the words, sentences and the relationship between them must be brought into a calculable form. ‘I call it the universal characteristic. As all budding young scholars very well know, all words can be built with the twenty-four elements of the alphabet. Right?’

Erdmann nodded.

Bach refrained from commenting.

So, Leibniz continued, in just the same way as words can be traced back to twenty-four simple elements, he would be able to trace back all thoughts to their basic ideas. He would designate each of these basic ideas with a symbol or number – and before you know it, we’d be able to express all our thoughts this way. Our language would then be as accurate and infallible as mathematics.

‘Fascinating!’ Bach had not wanted to say it, but it had escaped him. He had an idea but didn’t dare to speak it aloud. It had to do with the fact that the number 24 played a role in music as well. There were twelve notes and thus twelve keys, and if you kept major and minor apart, you got to twenty-four.

‘Yes, fascinating, isn’t it?’ said the philosopher. ‘When we argue about something in the future, we will no longer get lost in endless discussions, probably settling them with our fists. Instead, we’ll simply say: Calculemus! Let’s calculate!’

But, Bach said, having found the courage after all, couldn’t such a machine be built for music as well? For example, a machine for counterpoint: You enter a theme, and the rest will simply be calculated. Counterpoint, dual counterpoint, triple counterpoint, quadruple counterpoint, whole notes against whole notes, whole notes against half-notes, whole notes against quarter-notes and so forth?

His mouth open, the philosopher looked from Bach to Erdmann, from Erdmann to Bach. ‘But that is …’ he began.

Bach raised his hands apologetically. Probably he had said something very stupid, and he wanted to …

‘No, no!’ the philosopher exclaimed. ‘That’s a fantastic idea! I’ll suggest it to Leibniz immediately—’ He coughed and cleared his throat, pulled a lace handkerchief from the wide sleeves of his jacket and held it in front of his mouth. ‘I, Leibniz, will suggest it immediately –’ he began the sentence again in a slightly different order – ‘to the Society of Science in Berlin as soon as we have established it. It will finally take place in July. Maybe we’ll even advertise a prize question: Proposals for the construction of a machine that calculates every possible counterpoint variation for any given theme! – Excellent! What was your name again?’

‘Bach.’

‘Excellent, Bach! Especially since it’s not for nothing that we call music the calculating of the soul. It fits! Upon my soul! It fits perfectly!’

Bach should have been happy but was ashamed of the praise. He made an apologetic gesture to Erdmann, who nodded to him approvingly.

Unfortunately, explained the Privy Counsellor of Justice with an regretful expression, pulling out an object from which he seemed to be able to tell the time, his time was limited. He would now accompany the two gentlemen to the exit and then: God be with you both.

As they stepped into the open air, they had to shield their eyes from the blinding light. Only once they had got used to it a little did they see, against the light, a gentleman dressed in gold brocade ascending the flight of stairs. Was it the Prince? Bach noticed that the philosopher turned away, alarmed, and made a move to steal away.

‘Reinerding!’ the Prince shouted after him. ‘Reinerding?’ The man so addressed stopped in his tracks.

He had dressed himself up so much like Leibniz, the Prince said with a laugh, that he’d almost been fooled into taking him for the great man.

The other man now suddenly blushed violently and stammered something incomprehensible about a mistake in the calendar, and that Leibniz did not want to disappoint the students and had asked him to represent him, and so forth; and while he was still stuttering his explanations, he disappeared, side by side with the Prince, into the depths of the library.

4. Latin School

‘Why are you always going on about Böhm?’ Erdmann asked, as they made their way from Bienenbüttel to Lüneburg.

‘You mean like you always going on about Leibniz,’ said Bach, ‘before he played that trick on us with his secretary?’

‘Are you trying to say he’s the greatest musician of our time?’

‘The greatest?’ said Bach, shaking his head in thought. ‘Who knows? My brother has some of his pieces in his cabinet. Dance suites in the French manner, preludes, overtures.’

‘Well? Are they so special?’

‘They have such an extraordinary …’

‘An extraordinary what?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps there’s no word for it. But look – that must be it.’

They beheld in the distance the town wall and three church spires, then quickened their pace, and were soon showing their papers at the town gate of Lüneburg.

They were already expected. Barely had they entered the cobbled yard of St Michael’s Monastery than a student took them under his wing – another scholarship student, as they correctly assumed. He had fiery red hair, freckles, a snub nose and protuberant lips. His name was Waldemar, he announced. And they, he took it, would be the new students from Thuringia?

Yes, that’s who they were.

In that case he would take them to meet the Rector. And if they allowed him to offer some advice, he would suggest they speak loudly and clearly, since Mr Büsche was already sixty and quite hard of hearing. ‘He doesn’t want to admit it, though,’ Waldemar said, ‘and always thinks you’re deliberately muttering when he can’t hear what you’re saying. Then he immediately starts slapping you.’

The Rector was sitting behind a huge desk; his face was red and somewhat bloated; his black coat had a greasy sheen, and his powdered wig looked as if it hadn’t been combed for many years. Where had they been all this time, he asked roughly.

‘It was a long trip!’ Erdmann bellowed.

‘Why are you shouting?’ asked the Rector. ‘It’s not as if I’m deaf.’

‘I do beg your pardon,’ Erdmann said in a more normal tone of voice.

‘What?’ the Rector said, rather threateningly.

Erdmann lowered his head.

‘We’ve been travelling, on foot, for the best part of two weeks,’ said Bach, at a volume he hoped was exactly right. They conveyed the respects, he added, of Elias Herda, their cantor in Ohrdruf.

‘Ah, yes, Elias,’ the said the Rector. ‘Thank you for telling me. And now, this young man here, namely our Waldemarius, will introduce you both to Cantor Braun, who, incidentally, is the Quartus of our school, both our number four and also the gentleman responsible for teaching the quarta. But this need not yet concern you, since you will both be attending the prima in accordance with your previous instruction.’ Waldemarius, whom he delegated to act as their cicerone forthwith, would show them the dormitories, refectory and classrooms. ‘And tomorrow, if it would please you, the town as well – Sandviertel, Sülzviertel, Marktviertel and Wasserviertel. I assume you have already seen the limestone cliff?’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Bach.

‘What’s that?’ the Rector asked, raising his arm as if to threaten them with blows. But he only put his hand behind his ear.

‘We have seen the limestone cliff,’ said Bach in a clear voice. ‘It was certainly very impressive.’

Cantor August Braun was a gaunt man of around fifty. His wig was on the table next to him when they entered; he didn’t bother putting it on. A crown of thin grey hair adorned his pointed head. He had Erdmann sing something, then Bach, and he was pleased, nodding after listening to Bach’s boy soprano. He asked them a couple of questions about their instruments and gave them the music score for the choir practice next day. He said they might do a little practising beforehand. Regrettably, they had missed Annunciation Day, he said reproachfully, but next Sunday was Judica, and they would be singing in the matins choir. And he had scheduled them for the Saturday before Palm Sunday to sing in the large choir, as well as for the Passion on Good Friday. Did they have any questions?

Bach and Erdmann shook their heads.

‘Well then, let’s get going. Our Waldemar here, whom you seem to have already made friends with, will show you the rest. By the way, he’s also a good singer, despite the fact he’s not from Thuringia.’

Waldemar winked at them conspiratorially in a way that seemed to say he couldn’t really sing and was just pretending. Before showing them the dormitories, he warned them in a hushed voice about the young gentlemen from the Collegium Illustre, who also had their dormitories in the inner courtyard. A bagarre with them would occur every once in a while.

‘What’s that?’ asked Bach.

‘A brawl.’

‘No, I mean the Collegium Illustre.’

‘Oh that,’ said Waldemar with a dismissive gesture.

‘Well?’

‘The Knights’ School. Some also call it the Knights’ Academy, but it’s a Latin school just like ours, only for the nobility, so the great lords can mingle among themselves. They learn all sorts of things there, things us mere mortals don’t need. Heraldry, courtly dances, carving, making compliments, bowing and scraping and such-like. The young gentlemen pride themselves hugely over the whole thing.’

‘How many of them are there?’ Bach asked.

‘Fifteen.’

‘And how many are on scholarships?’

‘The same number.’

‘Then, one of these days, we should organize a contest,’ said Bach. ‘Not in bowing and scraping, of course, but perhaps …’

‘In philosophizing,’ Erdmann suggested.

‘Or in singing,’ said Bach. ‘We can certainly do that much better than they do.

A singing contest never came about, though, and would anyway have been meaningless. They often sang together with the knightly students, and there was nobody who could deny that the choir students were more musical. The aristocratic gentlemen didn’t much care. They looked down on the scholarship students like they would on poor chirping birds who were born to warble, who had to do so out of necessity. The only one among them to whom they looked with something approaching respect after a while was Erdmann, because he spoke so well and got a kick out of styling his language to courtly etiquette.

‘I’ve thought it all over,’ he said after some time had passed. ‘I don’t want to become a philosopher after all, but a diplomat.’

This surprised Bach. Not so much because Erdmann all of a sudden wanted something different than what he’d wanted only a couple weeks ago but, rather because he had actually made such a decision. For him, Bach, the question didn’t exist. It had been clear from the onset he would be a musician. He came from a family of musicians, so what was there to think about? At most, the question was: What kind of musician? Town musician like his father? Organist like his uncle and his brother? Cantor like Elias Herda? Or kapellmeister at one court or another? And there was another question he asked himself sometimes before he fell asleep: With whom would he vie in the future? With the greatest musicians of his craft, with Reincken and Buxtehude, Corelli and Lully?

The discipline at the school was very strict. Every little thing was planned, and any deviation from the rules was strictly punished – when you were a scholarship student anyway.

But while Erdmann clandestinely rebelled against the unnaturalness of the unyielding rules, Bach acquiesced to the strictly disciplined system.

Along with the others, he got up at five in the morning, washed, combed his hair, dressed and, right where he was, got down on his knees for their first prayer, whether on a stone floor or scrubbed floorboards, as soon as the first quarter struck. During meals, he heard the chapter of the Bible that was read to them, refraining from speaking or any mischief, exactly as prescribed by the school’s set of rules. He kept his clothes, shoes, stockings and underwear clean; he swept the rooms when his turn came. During classes, he was attentive, made notes and memorized as much as he could, which required little effort since his memory had always been excellent.

The curriculum consisted of Latin and Greek, Religion and Logic, History and Geography, Mathematics, Physics and German Literature.

Bach had already found a special knack for mathematics when he went to school in Eisenach and Ohrdruf and so in this subject he could shine. During the first week, he had the chance to prove the theorem of Pythagoras and, when the teacher asked him what else he knew about Pythagoras, he answered that Pythagoras was one of the great sages of antiquity. Not least, he explained, Pythagoras was famous for finding the mathematical proportions of the harmony. The teacher asked whether he also knew how Pythagoras came to his discovery.

‘Certainly,’ Bach replied, stealing a quick look at Erdmann. ‘Lost in thought, Pythagoras was walking by a smithy, where several journeymen were hammering the iron on an anvil and suddenly he noticed how they created harmonic sounds; to wit, the fourth, the fifth and the octave. Astonished, he walked into the smithy to look for the cause of this array of sounds and ultimately discovered that the harmonic proportions of the notes have whole number ratios. He then demonstrated it on the monochord, which the Greeks called the kanón.’

‘How would you describe a monochord?’ the teacher asked, doing so because some of the students looked puzzled.

‘Well,’ said Bach, ‘it’s a board or, rather, a sound box over which a single string is stretched, let’s say with a length of four cubits. When strumming this string, you hear a note you could call the tonic. If the string is divided up into two equal halves by positioning it over a wooden bridge and the half-string is hit, the octave will sound. Hence the proportion: whole string to half string, or 2:1. If you now divide off two-thirds of the string and strum the longer part, you get the fifth. So the fifth has the ratio: three-thirds to two-thirds, i.e. 3:2. The fourth, in turn, is ruled by the ratio of 4:3, the major third by the ratio 5:4, and so forth. And, as mentioned before: all harmonic intervals are governed by whole number ratios.’

‘Excellent,’ said the teacher. ‘Then you also probably know what the Pythagorean Comma is?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Bach said eagerly, without noticing how the others’ eyes by now were turned on him with envy.

‘Well?’ asked the teacher.

‘A comma,’ said Bach, ‘if you translate it literally from Greek, is nothing but a section, and in this case – well, it’s not so easy to explain. Do I have permission to go to the blackboard and draw a sketch?’

‘Please do so,’ said the teacher.

Bach got up from his desk and walked to the blackboard. ‘Here is how it is,’ he said, turning to the class. ‘If you tune perfect fifths on an instrument, namely exactly in a ratio of 3:2, and go up higher from fifth to fifth, from C to G, from G to D, from D to A and so forth, you’ll return to the C after exactly twelve steps, only seven octaves higher. It’s called the circle of fifths.’

He turned his back to the class and drew the circle of fifths on the blackboard:

There you could see it. It began with C and ended with C, only seven octaves higher. It was simple.

‘And where is the Pythagorean Comma?’ enquired the teacher.

‘Yes,’ Bach said, ‘that’s the real problem. If you tune perfect octaves, namely from C to C’ and so forth, you’ll have a different note than by tuning to perfect fifths.’

‘Why?’ the teacher asked. ‘Why is that?’

‘Well,’ said Bach. ‘It’s a problem that hitherto no science has been able to resolve. The fact is, twelve perfect fifths result in a different note than seven perfectly tuned octaves.’ Bach turned to the blackboard again, wiping away a section of the chalk circle at the upper C and added a small spike. Then he drew an arrow pointing straight to the spike and said: ‘There. Here you can see it. The circle of fifths doesn’t close. The beginning and the end do not match. God has presented us with a riddle here.’

‘Thank you, Bach,’ said the teacher, ‘that was an excellent lecture.’

Bach put down the piece of chalk and strode back to his place.

‘But,’ queried an apothecary’s son after the teacher had allowed him to speak, ‘what does all this actually mean?’

‘What it means,’ said Bach, ‘is that you cannot play in all keys on the organ or the clavichord. If the instrument has been tuned in C, you can get barely to E major, and after that the wolf howls.

The howling of the wolf was an expression musicians used to describe a fifth that was so far out of tune that it only sounded miserable. It was called the wolf fifth.

‘All right,’ said the apothecary’s son, ‘but what does it all signify?’

‘It primarily signifies,’ Erdmann interjected, in the arrogant tone he had learned from listening to the aristocratic students, ‘that the order of the world is highly imperfect.’

‘Imperfect?’ asked the teacher, crossing his arms.

‘Well,’ said Erdmann, rising from his seat, ‘after all, the world is indeed anything but perfect! At least it’s in dire need of improvement – all progressive scholars are agreed on that.’

‘So God has created the world in an imperfect manner?’ enquired the teacher. ‘That’s how His Lordship meant it – right, Erdmann? So God created the world – well, what now, Erdmann? Give me a hand here. Did He do so sloppily? In a slipshod manner?’

‘Well …’

Bach saw beads of perspiration on Erdmann’s upper lip.

‘But we just heard it from Bach,’ Erdmann said hesitantly. ‘Everything doesn’t fit together quite right here. It’s not as it ought to be. If you tune to perfect octaves, you get to a different note than you do when with tuning to perfect fifths. Such a difference would not exist in a perfect world. In a perfect world, the circle of fifths would be closed.’

He folded his arms across his chest now, so they stood facing each other, the teacher and the student, both with crossed arms.

‘So Your Highness intends to improve upon God’s creation?’ the teacher said ironically, unfolding his arms. ‘It’s not good enough for His Lordship: His Lordship knows better, and His Lordship will show us. His Lordship will show GOD, am I right? Answer me!’

Bach would have liked to help Erdmann, but how? Erdmann was his friend. He admired his courage. He admired his brilliance. But was it permitted to set oneself up as a judge of Creation?

All the colour had drained from Erdmann’s face. Beads of cold sweat covered his forehead.

‘Just at the moment, I can’t answer that,’ said Erdmann evasively. ‘I have to think it over first.’

‘Well,’ the teacher said, smiling, ‘get on with it, Erdmann. So now His Lordship has three days to think over how he wants to improve God’s work. Three days in detention – get out!’

Upright, with hunched shoulders, striding stiffly, his eyes fixed in front of him, Erdmann stalked to the door and set out for the detention room.

5. The Lion of Eisenach

The thing Bach missed most of all was playing the organ. The organ of the St Michael’s Church was in miserable condition. What good does it do to have thirty-two registers if only twenty-five of them work? There was another, smaller organ, but it was badly out of tune. It hurt his ears to listen to it during service, especially when he stood in for the organist, which was frequently the case. If the classroom and choir practice left him enough time for it, he made a pilgrimage to the other end of the town, where, at St John’s Church on Market Square, the great Georg Böhm played the organ. He had never heard a master like him. In terms of virtuosity and expressiveness, Böhm outmatched even Uncle Christoph in Eisenach.

For days and weeks, Bach had only dreamed of being a pupil of this master organist but, since he adored him so much, he could not bring himself to ask. Once, after Böhm had played his last chord, Bach walked up to him, his heart pounding in his throat, determined to speak to him; but when the pastor came and spoke a few words with the organist, his courage abandoned him once more. With a flushed face, he crept out of the church, crossed the Market Square and fled through Sandviertel back to the school.

Instead of going to Böhm, he went to see the Lion: Johann Jacob Löwe – self-styled ‘Lion of Eisenach’ – played the organ at St Nicholas’s. Bach waited for him after the service and watched him descend, rather uncertainly, from the gallery, supported by the bellows treader, who preceded him down the steep stairs. He wore a black jacket, black trousers and had a shaggy wig on his head. His ancient features appeared as though carved from wood; the eyes were colourless, covered by a milky mist. Was he blind?

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked after the bellows treader had said goodbye.

‘The low A,’ Bach said, and was immediately angry with himself. He had wanted to say anything but that.

‘I know, I know,’ the Lion growled. ‘The E isn’t faring much better. And the G is also too low.’

‘And the F in the third octave,’ Bach added.

‘Can’t do anything about it,’ the Lion said.

‘Maybe a little sand could fill up the pipes,’ Bach suggested in a respectful tone. ‘With due care and attention, of course.’

‘No,’ said the Lion. ‘That would mess up the entire structure. It’s better that everything is a little off than having some absolutely pure notes. They would just be all the more conspicuous. So, if that was all, then God be with you.’

Bach was silent, but stood his ground.

‘What else?’ the Lion asked with a hint of curiosity. ‘Out with it! I must go, my meal’s waiting. The housekeeper will tear my head off if I’m late.’

‘Most humbly, I ask …’

‘Well?’

‘… for lessons.’

‘With whom?’

‘With the Lion of Eisenach.’

‘With me? Why?’

Because I didn’t have the courage to ask Böhm.

‘Because I have the desire to perfect my playing,’ he said aloud and added: ‘For the glory of God.’

The Lion looked at him searchingly. ‘No longer giving lessons,’ he finally said. ‘Too old. Can’t stand any more of this bungling.’

‘I’m not a bungler,’ said Bach. ‘I could prove it if the bellows treader were still here.’

That was the great weakness of the organ. Without the air that the bellows treader pumped into it with his feet, it remained silent. ‘By the way …’ Bach added, ‘I’m from Eisenach.’

‘From Eisenach?’

‘I was born there.’

‘I wasn’t born there,’ the Lion said, with regret in his voice. ‘My father was, not me. – What’s the name?’

Now I’ve got him, thought Bach. His family had a good name, way beyond Thuringia.

‘Johann Sebastian Bach,’ he spluttered, ‘son of Ambrosius Bach, town musician in Eisenach, nephew of Johann Christoph Bach, organist in Eisenach, brother of Johann Christoph Bach, organist in Ohrdruf, brother of Johann Jakob Bach …’ He didn’t get any further. He saw how the Lion steadied himself by grabbing with his hand one of the pillars that supported the nave; saw how, with his other hand, he tore open his shirt and massaged his heart and heard how he panted for air, making a deep noise that was accompanied by high harmonics. He wondered if he should go to him and help but, for some reason, he held himself back.

‘Bach?’ whispered the Lion in a barely audible voice. ‘Bach?’

Bach nodded. ‘Yes. Bach.’

‘Bach?’ the Lion asked again, weakly. And then, all of a sudden, a jolt went through the black-clad figure. Johann Jacob Löwe let go of the pillar that supported him and the church, shook his bony hands towards heaven, and shouted: ‘Bach! Bach! Bach! Everywhere in Saxony – everywhere in Thuringia – everywhere you look! Town Musician Johann and Cantor Johann, Kapellmeister Johann and Organist Johann, Johann this and Johann that – all positions are taken, all filled by Bach, Bach, Bach! And you have the audacity to visit me, the Lion of Eisenach, here in my church, and ask for lessons?! Away with you! Out! And the Devil be with you, Johann whatever Bach!’

The Devil be with you. There was something peculiar about such curses. Whether or not you believed the person issuing the curse to have magical powers, it left you quite unsettled. Bach railed against his fate like never before in his life. But when Erdmann asked him what the matter was with him, he said, Oh, nothing, or, I don’t know. Probably just a case of black bile. He endured it for three weeks, then he couldn’t stand it any longer and began to talk.

Erdmann, whom the three days’ detention had taught a lesson in humility, listened patiently and refrained from any ridicule when Bach finally spoke. He doesn’t believe in the power of the curse, he said, he doesn’t even believe in the Devil. He would not entirely disavow the existence of God, but the Devil he believes to be a mythical creature. God – should He exist – has completed His work and now only acts through the laws of His creation – gravity, for example. Ergo: Bach should be glad that the Lion of Eisenach did not become his teacher. Somebody who thinks and acts like that can’t be a role model, right?

Basically Bach agreed.

Why doesn’t he go to Böhm and ask him for lessons?

No, said Bach. That was impossible. He didn’t have the courage before; more so than ever now that even the Lion has rejected him.

Why?

He couldn’t explain, said Bach. It’s just how it was.