Right, so which of the alphabet-soup Bachs is this?
The last, and possibly the saddest: Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst. A grandson of Johann Sebastian, he was the final male descendant of the greatest member of the most important musical family in history. Precarious female lines continue to this day in places like Oklahoma, but the patriarchy still insists that Wilhelm was “the last Bach”. This goes to show that siring 20 children in the 18th century didn’t necessarily guarantee the continuation of one’s gene pool.
I knew Wilhelm had appeared at the 1843 unveiling of the little monument to his grandfather which was initiated by Mendelssohn and which still stands outside St. Thomas in Leipzig, but how he had been invited I knew not. Then I came across an article in the Bach Jahrbuch for 2015* which explained the strange circumstances. I was so gripped by the story that I felt it should be made available to the vast audience of this homepage, in a more universally comprehensible idiom.
Born 1759 in idyllic Bückeburg / Westphalia to the most easy-going of Sebastian’s sons, Johann Christoph Friedrich, W. F. E. continued in the same light vein. In 1779 he went to London with his father to visit their brother/uncle Johann Christian, and began what looked like a promising career there. He appeared in the Bach-Abel concerts as “William Bach” with his own compositions and taught British royalty. In 1780 he published six keyboard trios. That all came to a sudden end when uncle J.C. died in 1782, leaving a mountain of debt, and all of “William’s” possessions were confiscated by the duns. He eventually wound up in Berlin as teacher to Prussian princesses and composer of unsuccessful light music theater. After receiving some terrible reviews he withdrew into private life.
Here is Robert Schumann’s report of the 1843 event in Leipzig:
“The most celebrated person of the day was, besides Bach, his only surviving grandson, a still-vigorous old man of 84 years with snow-white hair and an animated face, who with his wife and two daughters had come to the ceremony from Berlin. Nobody knew about his existence, not even Mendelssohn, who had lived so long in Berlin, and who had certainly been diligent in seeking out anything pertaining to Bach – and yet this man had been living more than 40 years in Berlin. We were not able to ascertain anything about his circumstances except that he had been Capellmeister to the wife of King Frederick [Wilhelm] II, and later received a pension which assured him a life free of care. Honor upon the venerable head that bears such a sacred name!”
The old man had read about the upcoming unveiling and wrote a florid letter to Mendelssohn in Leipzig requesting more information. The latter was astounded to hear of old Bach’s existence, and immediately wrote to his brother Paul in Berlin, asking him to find out all he could about this Bach, whether he was too ill or weak to come to the ceremony, and whether he had any music by his grandfather or knew where anything relating to him was to be found, “etc. etc. etc.” Thus it happened that Sebastian Bach’s last surviving grandson was invited to the unveiling, and took the railroad to Leipzig on a line which had been opened two years previously – a circumstance his sainted grandfather could no more have dreamt of than the internet or space travel. Wilhelm was guest of honor at the banquet which followed the outdoor formalities.
As the author of the above-mentioned article writes, “From today’s point of view it seems incomprehensible that the existence of a surviving grandson of Johann Sebastian Bach could remain unknown even in Berlin, where his music was being performed quite often.” She goes on to mention the activities of the Sing Akademie, which since its founding in 1791 had performed the motets, and where Mendelssohn himself organized the celebrated revival of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829, an event that got a major press buildup. It was followed by the St. John Passion (1833) and the B-minor Mass (1834). The thought of the composer’s Freemason grandson sitting anonymously in the audience at one of these events is enough to make a person weep. And I can empathize with one who, finding himself shunted aside after brilliant beginnings, sought shelter in anonymity.
The same author cites a passage from E. T. A. Hoffman’s first published book** which, she opines, could be applied to W. F. E.’s life. Ritter Gluck / Eine Erinnerung aus dem Jahre 1809 *** is a ghost story. A Berlin music lover repeatedly encounters an elderly fellow listening to performances of works by C. W. Gluck, who had been dead for 22 years, from outside the theater or concert hall. He conducts and sings along, criticizing and praising the performances in an uncannily expert manner. The Berliner is eventually invited to the old man’s shabby rooms for tea, where he finds a complete collection of autograph manuscript scores of Gluck’s works, and hears the following:
“To my torment I am doomed here in Berlin to wander like a departed spirit through bleak spaces. Yes, it is desolate all around me, for no congenial spirit ever approaches. I stand alone.”
The last line of the tale is a confession which confirms the reader’s growing suspicions: “Ich bin der Ritter Gluck! ”
I not only agree with Ms. Huber regarding the parallels between the fates of “Ritter Gluck” and “William” Bach; I would go so far as to suggest that the man of letters Hoffmann (1776-1822), who was a sometime conductor and composer, knew W. F. E. Bach during his time in Berlin as court clerk, and conflated an undead version of the most famous composer of the author’s recent past with the living descendant of the man he most revered: J. S. Bach. “Ritter Gluck” bitterly criticizes the vapidity of the composers around him in Berlin.
Ms. Huber also cites Hoffmann’s physical description of “Ritter Gluck”, which she says is remarkably similar to the recently-discovered portrait of W. F. E. Bach (see below) which is the main subject of her essay. It is now kept in the Bach Museum, Leipzig. In 1845 Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach was buried in one of Berlin’s oldest surviving cemeteries, St. Sophia II. His grave with its iron cross survives (see below). Some 1000 others had to be moved or destroyed when the Berlin Wall sliced through part of the grounds. That section of the “Anti-Fascist Protective Wall”, as the East German regime cynically called their biggest prison, is now a commemorative park.
This theory that Gluck = Bach is, of course, merest speculation...but Wilhelm’s situation would have been an inspiration to Hoffmann’s weird imagination. The modest, embittered Bach grandson would surely not have liked being named outright — aside from the fact that his presence would spoil a good ghost story.
Elsewhere Hoffmann writes this:
“Verily, no other art is as subject to such damnable misuse as glorious, holy Musica, whose fragile essence is so easily defiled!...What a toweringly wonderful thing music really is, and how little is mankind able to fathom her deep secrets!”
Music’s deep secrets seem now quite sunk beneath the waves, where they are safe from misuse, whether damnable or simply stupid. “He is well out of it,” Secretary of War Stanton said of Lincoln when the President finally breathed his last after a long night’s vigil across the street from Ford’s Theater. So is Musica. Now she belongs to the ages.
*Brigitte Huber, “Ehre dem würdigen Haupt, das einen so geweihten Namen trägt!” Zur Wiederentdeckung des Porträts von Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach (1759–1845).
**Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier (1814). These “fantasy pieces in the manner of Callot” include the first set of Kreisleriana, Hoffmann’s famous ramblings on music, allegedly from the hand of the eccentric Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler. A brief foreword explains Hoffmann’s odd choice of the great French engraver Jacques Callot (1592-1635) as his inspiration. The central sentence reads, “And thus Callot’s grotesque figures, created from animals and humans, reveal to the serious, more deeply inquiring gaze, all the secret hints that lie hidden under the veil of the bizarre.” The bizarre was Hoffmann’s stock in trade.
*** First published (1809) in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in Leipzig. In the Fantasiestücke, Ritter Gluck comes as a separate work in second place after the foreword. Ritter refers to the Papal knighthood conferred on the composer in 1759. Since then he was entitled to call himself “Ritter von Gluck”. The 14-year-old Mozart was inducted into the same order of the Golden Spur in 1770, but never called himself “Ritter von Mozart”. He did sign himself “Ritter von Sauschwanz” (knight of the pig’s tail) in bawdy letters.
November 30, 2023
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