The Bach House in
Eisenach
Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...
,
Thuringia
Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Erfurt is the capital and lar ...
, Germany, is a museum dedicated to the composer
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
who was born in the city. On its 600 m
2 it displays around 250 original exhibits, among them a Bach music autograph. The core of the building complex is a half-timbered house, ca. 550 years old, which was mistakenly identified as Bach's birth house in the middle of the 19th century. In 1905, the
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
-based
Neue Bachgesellschaft
The Neue Bachgesellschaft, or New Bach Society, is an organisation based in Leipzig, Germany, devoted to the music of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. It was founded in 1900 as the successor to the Bach Gesellschaft, which between 1850 and 1900 ...
acquired the building. In 1907, it was opened as the first Bach museum.
History
![8 Bachhaus Eisenach Garten](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/8_Bachhaus_Eisenach_Garten.jpg)
The
Bach family
The Bach family refers to several notable composers of the baroque and classical periods of music, the best-known of whom was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). A family genealogy was drawn up by Johann Sebastian Bach himself in 1735 when he ...
was a widespread musical family, with members working in musical professions throughout
Thuringia
Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Erfurt is the capital and lar ...
since the first half of the 16th century until the end of the 18th century. Already in 1665,
Johann Christoph Bach
Johann Christoph Bach (baptised – 31 March 1703) was a German composer and organist of the Baroque period. He was born at Arnstadt, the son of Heinrich Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach's first cousin once removed and the first cousin of J.S. B ...
was appointed organist at St. George's in
Eisenach
Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...
.
Bach's father
Johann Ambrosius Bach
Johann Ambrosius Bach (22 February 1645 – ) was a German musician, father to Johann Sebastian Bach.
Life
Johann Ambrosius Bach was born in Erfurt, Germany, the son of musician Christoph Bach (1613–1661). He was the twin brother of Joh ...
accepted a position as the Eisenach council's ''Haußmann'' (city music director) in 1671. The family first rented rooms in a half-timbered house in the Rittergasse 11 (directly south of today's museum garden), and owned at the time by the city's forests administrator Balthasar Schneider. Since only property owners could claim citizenship, in 1674 Johann Ambrosius Bach bought a house in the ''Fleischgass'' (probably Lutherstraße 35), its location was 100 metres to the north of today's museum. The original house in the ''Fleischgass'' is no longer standing, it was replaced twice over in the 18th and 19th centuries.
[Martin Petzoldt: Bachstätten, p. 68.] Identifying today the exact location of Bach's birth is almost hopeless in view of the fact that people wishing to become citizens did not always move into the places they acquired for that purpose, and instead rented them out. Based on the location of Ambrosius Bach's first rooms at the building in the Rittergasse and his ownership of the property in the Lutherstraße, one may conjecture that Bach's family lived in this area of the city and so at least very close to the location of the present-day museum.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
was born on 21 March 1685 in Eisenach and baptized two days later in St. George's Church. He spent the first 10 years of his life at Eisenach. The family's musical tradition brought him into close contact with music and the musical profession. His father early taught him to play string and wind instruments. At St. George's, Bach could witness his cousin
Johann Christoph Bach
Johann Christoph Bach (baptised – 31 March 1703) was a German composer and organist of the Baroque period. He was born at Arnstadt, the son of Heinrich Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach's first cousin once removed and the first cousin of J.S. B ...
playing the organ, later his favourite instrument. From 1692 until 1695, Johann Sebastian Bach attended the Latin school at Eisenach and joined its ''chorus musicus''; for its members music lessons were included in the school's timetable on four days of the week. On 1 May 1694, Bach's mother
Elisabeth Bach died, on 20 February 1695 also Bach's father Ambrosius died. In July 1695, Johann Sebastian and his brother
Johann Jacob left Eisenach to live with the family of their older brother
Johann Christoph in
Ohrdruf
Ohrdruf () is a small town in the district of Gotha in the German state of Thuringia. It lies some 30 km southwest of Erfurt at the foot of the northern slope of the Thuringian Forest. The former municipalities Crawinkel, Gräfenhain an ...
.
1456 to 1800
The historical Bach House is one of the oldest residential buildings in Eisenach. It originally consisted of two buildings, of which the eastern part was built in 1456 and the western part in 1458. At around 1611, both were joined. As was normal with the ''Ackerbürgerhäuser'' (burghers' houses) of that time, the ground floor was used for agricultural purposes: today's instrument hall may have been used as a barn, and the rooms next to the stairs for cattle and horses. In the museum, a cowbell from 1688 found in the Bach House garden reminds of this past. In the first floor of the building, a
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
glass window frame and the timber panelling of the living room now decorated as ''Composing Studio'' still bear witness of the citizen status of the house's former occupants. At the time of Bach's birth it was owned by Heinrich Börstelmann, headmaster of the Latin School. In 1746, the family of Caroline Amalie Rausch née Bach moved into the building and lived there until 1779. Caroline Amalie was the daughter of Bach's second cousin and friend
Johann Bernhard Bach
Johann Bernhard Bach (23 May 1676 – 11 June 1749) was a German composer, and second cousin of J. S. Bach.Smith, Timothy A"Johann Bernhard Bach 1676-1749" Northern Arizona University. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
Life
Johann Bernhard Bach was bo ...
and sister to
Johann Ernst Bach, a student of Bach at Leipzig and then court music director at Eisenach.
19th century
In the wake of the 19th century's
Bach renaissance instigated by
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and
Robert Schumann, among others, devotees went on a search for memorabilia and also for the birthplace of the composer. In 1857, the Bach biographer
Karl Hermann Bitter
Karl Hermann Bitter (27 February 1813 – 12 September 1885) was a Prussian statesman and writer on music.
Biography
He was born at Schwedt, Province of Brandenburg, and studied law and cameralistics at Berlin and Bonn. He served as the plenipot ...
interviewed the still living descendants of
Johann Bernhard Bach
Johann Bernhard Bach (23 May 1676 – 11 June 1749) was a German composer, and second cousin of J. S. Bach.Smith, Timothy A"Johann Bernhard Bach 1676-1749" Northern Arizona University. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
Life
Johann Bernhard Bach was bo ...
and determined that Bach was born at the house Frauenplan 21, subsequently called ''Bachhaus'' (Bach House). In 1868, the local music society dedicated the memorial plate above the front entrance, thus publicly marking the place as Bach's birthplace. Since then, however, no further evidence in support of this claim has surfaced. An error in the local oral tradition which Bitter encountered can perhaps be attributed to the fact that members of the Bach family did indeed live in this house once, but only at a time long after Bach's birth.
20th century
When the Leipzig-based
Bach-Gesellschaft
The German Bach-Gesellschaft (Bach Society) was a society formed in 1850 for the express purpose of publishing the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach without editorial additions. The collected works are known as the Bach-Gesellschaft-Ausga ...
, founded by
Robert Schumann and others in 1850 for the sole purpose of editing all of Bach's works, had completed this task in 1900, its members decided it should be reconstituted as ''
Neue Bachgesellschaft
The Neue Bachgesellschaft, or New Bach Society, is an organisation based in Leipzig, Germany, devoted to the music of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. It was founded in 1900 as the successor to the Bach Gesellschaft, which between 1850 and 1900 ...
'' (New Bach Society) to now further the popularity and practice of Bach's music. Three 'eternal' projects were approved: the annual edition of a ''
Bach-Jahrbuch
The ''Bach-Jahrbuch'' ("Bach yearbook" or according to the publication's website "Bach Annals") is an annual publication related to the composer Bach.
It is published in German by the Neue Bachgesellschaft in Leipzig. It is the most respected publ ...
'' (Bach yearbook), biannual (today: annual) ''Bachfeste'' (Bach festivals), and finally the founding of a Bach museum. As the desired location of the society's museum the
School of St. Thomas at Leipzig was chosen, where Bach had lived with his family and served as cantor and music teacher for 27 years. However, the magistrate of Leipzig decided to demolish the building in 1902, thus thwarting the society's plans. Among other relics, the entrance door to Bach's rooms in the school was saved from destruction by its then music teacher
Bernhard Friedrich Richter
Bernhard Friedrich Richter (1 August 1850 – 16 April 1931) was a German church musician in Leipzig, holding the position of Thomaskantor interim in 1892–93. He was also a Bach scholar.
Leben
Richter was born in Leipzig, the son of the music ...
, son of the former
Thomaskantor
(Cantor at St. Thomas) is the common name for the musical director of the , now an internationally known boys' choir founded in Leipzig in 1212. The official historic title of the Thomaskantor in Latin, ', describes the two functions of cantor a ...
Ernst Friedrich Richter, and was later dedicated to the Bach House. Today, this door prominently marks the start of the exhibition within the museum.
When news reached the society's members that Bach's (still undisputed) birth house at Eisenach was also under threat by demolition plans, the New Bach Society decided to acquire the building on May 15, 1905, and to open the world's first Bach museum at this site. Among the supporters of this project were the
Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (german: Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach) was a historical German state, created as a duchy in 1809 by the merger of the Ernestine duchies of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach, which had been in personal union since 1741. It was rais ...
, the composer and violinist
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim (28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of t ...
, the Cantor of St Thomas
Gustav Schreck, the director of the
Sing-Akademie zu Berlin
The Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, also known as the Berliner Singakademie, is a musical (originally choral) society founded in Berlin in 1791 by Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, harpsichordist to the court of Prussia, on the model of the 18th-century ...
Georg Schumann, and the Leipzig music publishers
Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf.
The catalogue currently contains over 1,000 composers, 8,000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on ...
and
C.F. Peters. The Bach House was formally opened on 27 May 1907. The
choir of St. Thomas, Leipzig under
Cantor of St. Thomas,
Gustav Schreck, and the Weimar Hofkapelle conducted by
Georg Schumann, sang and played.
In 1928, when the Eisenach hobby historian Fritz Rollberg undertook a research into the city's tax records and discovered that
Johann Ambrosius Bach
Johann Ambrosius Bach (22 February 1645 – ) was a German musician, father to Johann Sebastian Bach.
Life
Johann Ambrosius Bach was born in Erfurt, Germany, the son of musician Christoph Bach (1613–1661). He was the twin brother of Joh ...
had paid taxes from 1674 until his death in 1695 for a different building in Eisenach, the ''Bach House'' was long established as a Bach memorial site throughout the world. When the house underwent complete restoration in 1972–1973, the memorial plate from 1868 was taken down and went into storage. Since visitors kept believing to be visiting Bach's birthplace even without the plate, it was decided in 2007 to restore it as an essential part of the building's history. Today, the historical error is explained in the museum, where one of the tax files discovered by Rollberg is on display.
An air raid on 23 November 1944 and artillery fire by the approaching U.S. troops in the night of 5 April 1945 caused substantial damage to the roof of the Bach House in particular. On 29 April 1945, the U.S. commander of the city, Lt. Col. Knut Hansston, ordered the museum to be repaired immediately, and one year later, on 22 June 1946, the
Soviet Military Administration ordered the Johann Sebastian Bach museums in
Arnstadt and Eisenach to be re-opened and confirmed the appointment of Bach House Director Conrad Freyse to the post in which he had been working since 1923.
Already in 1911, the museum had expanded into the adjacent building Frauenplan 19. In 1973, the buildings underwent a complete restoration and the exhibition was newly designed with financial aid by the
East German
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
(GDR) government. The museum now also included the building Frauenplan 21a to the west of the Bach House. Since the museum's owner was still the
New Bach Society, now an international society with over 3,000 members in both parts of politically divided Germany (and throughout West and East Europe, and also in the U.S.), the Bach House – unlike the Leipzig
Bach-Archiv – was never incorporated into the GDR's national combine ''Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten Johann Sebastian Bach der DDR''. Rising visitor numbers (over 130,000 in some years) and the imminent Bach year of 1985 led to a further expansion of the museum into the building Frauenplan 23 further west of the Bach House in 1980.
21st century
From 2005 to 2007, the buildings to the west of the Bach House were replaced by a new museum building, the historical building again underwent restoration, and the exhibition was completely modernized. The project was financed by the
Free State of Thuringia
Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Erfurt is the capital and larg ...
, the government of the
Federal Republic of Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between ...
and the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
, with a grant totalling 4.3 mio. Euros. Earlier, the New Bach Society had purchased the properties Frauenplan 21a and 23 (which before had only been rented) with donations by its members. A new, smaller building to the back of the Bach House garden had already been put up in 2001, it contains a study hall for school classes and a library. The demolition of the 19th century buildings to the west of the Bach House in 2000 and 2001 was subject of heavy debate among the Eisenach citizens. The same is true for the finally realized new museum building with its modern
organic design by architect Prof. Berthold Penkhues from
Kassel, Germany, a former student of
Frank O. Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions.
His works are considered ...
. Penkhues' design had won first prize among twelve submissions in an architectural design contest to which the New Bach Society had invited in 2002. The new exhibition was designed by Prof. Uwe Brückner,
Stuttgart, Germany.
On 17 May 2007, the museum was re-opened at the start of a festival period lasting until 27 May, the day of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Bach House. At the day of the re-opening, the
choir of St. Thomas, Leipzig, inaugurated the new museum building with a concert under
Georg Christoph Biller
Georg Christoph Biller (20 September 1955 – 27 January 2022) was a German choral conductor. He conducted the Thomanerchor as the sixteenth Thomaskantor since Johann Sebastian Bach from 1992 to 2015. He was also a baritone, an academic teacher, ...
, the
Cantor of St. Thomas at the time.
Exhibits, expositions and collections
![19a Bachhaus Eisenach Clavecin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/19a_Bachhaus_Eisenach_Clavecin.jpg)
Since 2004, there have been the following special expositions at the Bach House:
*2004: ''Ich habe fleißig seyn müssen ...'' – Johann Sebastian Bach and his Eisenach childhood
*2005: ''Johann Sebastian Bach – Ansichtssache''
*2007: ''The Man in the Golden Waistcoat'' (on
Johann Christian Bach)
*2008: ''Bach through the Mirror of Medicine''
*2009: ''Blood and Spirit – Bach, Mendelssohn and their music in the Third Reich''
*2010: ''Bach's Passions – Between Lutheran tradition and Italian opera''
*2011: ''Memories of
Wanda Landowska
Wanda Aleksandra Landowska (5 July 1879 – 16 August 1959) was a Polish harpsichordist and pianist whose performances, teaching, writings and especially her many recordings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in ...
''
*2012: ''Luther and
ach'sMusic''
* 2013: ''Bach & Friends''
* 2014: ''"B+A+C+H = 14": Bach and numbers''
* 2015: ''Bach in Berlin''
* 2016: ''Luther, Bach – and the Jews''
* 2017: ''Text: Luther & Music: Bach''
* 2018: ''Women and Bach's Music''
* 2019: ''Picture Puzzles – on Bach Iconography''
Since 2013 the Bach House has been showing its exhibitions also at
Berlin Cathedral
The Berlin Cathedral (german: link=yes, Berliner Dom), also known as the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, is a monumental German Evangelical church and dynastic tomb ( House of Hohenzollern) on the Museum Island in centra ...
.
Exhibition rooms in the historical Bach House
The collection of baroque musical instruments started with a gift of four instruments by the Dutch collector
Paul de Wit in 1907, and a gift of 164 instruments by the heirs of musicologist and conductor
Aloys Obrist who had killed both himself and his former lover, the opera singer
Anna Sutter, in 1910. String instruments of the collection include a
viola da gamba
The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch ...
with seven strings, built by Bach's Leipzig friend and collaborator Johann Christian Hoffmann in 1725, a
violoncello piccolo
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, ...
with five strings (northern Bohemia, ca. 1750) which Bach demanded for nine cantatas and (according to some views) the
cello suite BWV 1012, and a
viola d'amore
The viola d'amore (; Italian for "viol of love") is a 7- or 6- stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin.
Structure and sound
The vio ...
with six 6 gut playing strings and 6 metal resonating strings an octave higher (Vienna, around 1700).
Since 1973, five baroque keyboard instruments are demonstrated in a music performance every hour. These include two
chamber organs (Switzerland, ca. 1750, and Thuringia, ca. 1650), a fretted
clavichord
The clavichord is a stringed rectangular keyboard instrument that was used largely in the Late Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras.
Historically, it was mostly used as a practice instrument and as an aid to compositi ...
(around 1770), and a
spinet
A spinet is a smaller type of harpsichord or other keyboard instrument, such as a piano or organ.
Harpsichords
When the term ''spinet'' is used to designate a harpsichord, typically what is meant is the ''bentside spinet'', described in this ...
built 1765 in
Strasbourg by Johann Heinrich Silbermann, a nephew of
Gottfried Silbermann
Gottfried Silbermann (January 14, 1683 – August 4, 1753) was a German builder of keyboard instruments. He built harpsichords, clavichords, organs, and fortepianos; his modern reputation rests mainly on the latter two.
Life
Very little is kn ...
whose instruments Bach helped sell in Leipzig. The Thuringian
positive organ
A positive organ (also positiv organ, positif organ, portable organ, chair organ, or simply positive, positiv, positif, or chair) (from the Latin verb ''ponere'', "to place") is a small, usually one-manual, pipe organ that is built to be more o ...
's history and Bach's biography overlap: from 1714 on, it served as a church organ in
Kleinschwabhausen, about 15 km from
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
where Bach was court organist at the time. Bach's protégée and family friend, the court organ maker Heinrich Nicolaus Trebs, repaired the organ in 1724 and 1740, and
Johann Caspar Vogler
Johann Caspar Vogler (23 May 1696 – 3 June 1763) was a German organist and composer taught by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Biography
He was born in Hausen, near Arnstadt; from 1706 he studied with Johann Sebastian Bach, who was organist there betwe ...
, Bach's student and successor as court organist, tested the organ in 1738, 1740 and 1744. Since inspecting the dukedom's organs belonged to the court organist's duties, the museum conjectures that Bach must have known and played this instrument, even though there is no record of it.
The exhibits include the so-called ''Bach spectacles'' long believed to have been worn by Bach, and the ''Bach Goblet''. It is still an unsolved riddle who may have been the donor of the goblet, and on what occasion Bach received it. Bach's second, much younger wife
Anna Magdalena is remembered with an always fresh bouquet of yellow carnations – she was a ''große Liebhaberin von der Gärtnerey'' (a great lover of gardening) and these were her favorite flowers. Three rooms in the upper floor of the historical Bach House present historical living quarters (bedroom, living room, kitchen). Their furnishing is virtually unchanged since the rooms were first decorated by the Weimar Court Antiquary in 1906 with local items from around 1700 (including door handles and fittings).
Since 2017 a room in between the historical living quarters and cladded in black hosts the exhibition space ''Bach's inner world''. Presented here is a reconstruction of Bach's theological library, facilitated by the written estate which lists 52 theological book titles bound in 81 volumes as having been privately owned by Bach.
Exhibition in the modern building
A 2004 painting by
Johannes Heisig depicts Bach performing a cantata in the
Leipzig Church of St. Thomas with his
choir
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which sp ...
. The history of Bach iconography is treated on the northern wall of the modern building, starting with contemporary paintings, among them the painting of Johann Jacob Ihle which purportedly depicts Bach at around 1720, and a pastel painting which
Charles Sanford Terry Charles Sanford Terry may refer to:
* Charles Sanford Terry (historian) (1864-1936), English historian and authority on Johann Sebastian Bach
* Charles Sanford Terry (translator) (1926–1982), American translator of Japanese literature identified in 1936 as the Bach portrait formerly owned by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach but whose authenticity has since been doubted. Also on display is the early Bach portrait by ''Gebel'' which was used for the title page of the first volume of the ''
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
The ''Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung'' (''General music newspaper'') was a German-language periodical published in the 19th century. Comini (2008) has called it "the foremost German-language musical periodical of its time". It reviewed musical e ...
'' in 1798/99. Finally there is a 1910 copy of the undoubtedly authentic painting by
Elias Gottlob Haussmann, the original can be found in the old town hall in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
. Thirty-nine original prints, arranged in 'families', depict how our picture of Bach has changed through the centuries.
An original Bach autograph, giving the history from its first discovery to its inclusion in the
Neue Bach-Ausgabe
The New Bach Edition (NBE) (german: Neue Bach-Ausgabe; NBA), is the second complete edition of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, published by Bärenreiter. The name is short for Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): New Edition of the Complete W ...
, is on display. The autograph is the
continuo part of the cantata
''Alles nur nach Gottes Willen'', BWV 72. It is, like most hand-written instrumental parts for Bach's cycles of cantatas, a collaborative work: the right hand side of the sheet on display (chorus, recitative) was written by Bach's student and nephew Johann Heinrich Bach (the son of Bach's older brother
Johann Christoph Bach
Johann Christoph Bach (baptised – 31 March 1703) was a German composer and organist of the Baroque period. He was born at Arnstadt, the son of Heinrich Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach's first cousin once removed and the first cousin of J.S. B ...
from Ohrdruf), the upper left hand side (air) was written by Bach's wife
Anna Magdalena Bach, and the music of the final chorale, along with all titles, subtitles, and some corrections up to the word ''Fine'', are in the hand of
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
. Another exhibit is the ''Clavecin Royal'' (Johann Gottlob Wagner, Dresden 1788).
Library and collections
To the museum belongs a library which is open to the public during general opening hours. It has about 5,500 volumes, mostly on Bach and his contemporaries, musical instruments, and on musical history in general. Books can be searched by an
OPAC
The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with ''library catalog'', is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries. Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card catalogs previously ...
.
As the first and – for a long time – only Bach museum, the museum's mandate by the
New Bach Society was to "collect everything that concerns Johann Sebastian Bach, his life and works, and his reception." However, when the museum was founded in 1907, this mandate was already quite impossible to fulfill. Eighty percent of all known Bach autographs were (and still are) in the possession of the
Berlin State Library
The Berlin State Library (german: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; officially abbreviated as ''SBB'', colloquially ''Stabi'') is a universal library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It is one of the ...
, and already at the time, private collectors willing to part with what was left were demanding prices far exceeding the means of a private society. Still, in its early years the following autographs were acquired by the Bach House:
Subsequently, the collection grew by donations, notably those of Oskar von Hase and the Leipzig music publishers
C.F. Peters and
Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf.
The catalogue currently contains over 1,000 composers, 8,000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on ...
, and by inheritances, like those from
Philipp Spitta
Julius August Philipp Spitta (27 December 1841 – 13 April 1894) was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Life
He was born in , near Hoya, and his father, also called Phil ...
,
Wilhelm Rust
Wilhelm Rust (August 15, 1822 – May 2, 1892) was a German musicologist and composer. He is most noted today for his substantial contributions to the Bach Gesellschaft edition of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Born in Dessau, Rust studied ...
, Paul Graf Waldersee, Aloys Obrist,
Wilhelm His, and Christoph Trautmann. Apart from the items on display, the following are particularly noteworthy: a Thuringian Harpsichord from 1715, a harpsichord by Jacob Hartmann (ca. 1765), a second spinet by Johann Heinrich Silbermann (1765), and a
pedal clavichord (ca. 1815). Additionally three school notebooks by
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (22 November 17101 July 1784), the second child and eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, was a German composer and performer. Despite his acknowledged genius as an organist, improviser and compose ...
, a first edition of
The Musical Offering
''The Musical Offering'' (German: or ), Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, BWV 1079, is a collection of keyboard canon (music), canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, all based on a single musical Subject (music), theme given ...
(part A) from 1747, the source C of Bach's lost ''Genealogie der musicalisch-Bachischen Familie'' (genealogy of the musical Bach family), the only known libretto of the lost Bach wedding cantata ''Sein Segen fließt daher, wie ein Strom'' (BWV Anh. 14, Immanuel Tietze, Leipzig 1725), a collection of silhouettes of the
Ohrdruf
Ohrdruf () is a small town in the district of Gotha in the German state of Thuringia. It lies some 30 km southwest of Erfurt at the foot of the northern slope of the Thuringian Forest. The former municipalities Crawinkel, Gräfenhain an ...
Bach family, letters of 19th century Bach researchers like
Karl Hermann Bitter
Karl Hermann Bitter (27 February 1813 – 12 September 1885) was a Prussian statesman and writer on music.
Biography
He was born at Schwedt, Province of Brandenburg, and studied law and cameralistics at Berlin and Bonn. He served as the plenipot ...
, and documents, measurements and casts relating to the excavation of the (supposed) Bach bones by Wilhelm His and Carl Seffner (including casts of the cranium in plaster and bronze). In 2013, the Bach House acquired 62 of what originally probably had been 152 hand-written choir parts, which the choir sang from when
Felix Mendelssohn performed Bach's
St Matthew Passion in the
Berliner Singakademie on 11 March 1829 for the first time after Bach's death.
Ownership, finances, ''Blaubuch'', museum directors
All real property and the collections are owned by the
New Bach Society. Since 5 July 2001, the museum is managed by the ''Bachhaus Eisenach gemeinnützige GmbH'', a registered charitable company, with the New Bach Society as its sole associate. The supervisory board includes representatives of the New Bach Society, the City of
Eisenach
Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...
, the
Lutheran Church, and the government of the
Free State of Thuringia
Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Erfurt is the capital and larg ...
. The funding of the museum is subject of a contract between the New Bach Society, the City of Eisenach, and the Free State of Thuringia. The majority of public funds comes from the Thuringian government. Own proceeds from ticket sales, the shop and the café cover two thirds of the museum's annual expenses. Donations go into restorations and acquisitions for the museum's collection.
Since the opening of the Bach House in 1907 there have been the following museum directors:
*Dr. Georg Bornemann, 1907–1918 (assistant: Dr. Albrecht Göhler, brother of composer and conductor Georg Göhler, 1912–1914)
*Ernst Fleischer, 1918–1923
*Conrad Freyse, 1923–1964
*Günther Kraft, 1964–1971
*Ilse Domizlaff, 1971–1990
*Dr. Claus Oefner, 1990–2001
*Dr. Franziska Nentwig, 2002–2005
*Dr. Jörg Hansen, since 2006
Visitor numbers, tourism
There are about 60,000 visitors to the Bach House per year, making it one of Germany's most frequented music museums and second to the
Beethoven House in Bonn.
Bach monument
The Bach statue in front of the Bach House was the second monument for Johann Sebastian Bach. It was the first to show the composer figuratively in the form of a full statue. It was sculpted by
Adolf von Donndorf
Adolf von Donndorf (16 February 1835 – 20 December 1916) was a German sculptor.
Life
Adolf Donndorf was born in Weimar, the son of a cabinet-maker. Starting in 1853 he was a student of Ernst Rietschel in Dresden. After Rietschel's death in ...
and cast by
Hermann Heinrich Howaldt
Hermann Heinrich Howaldt (5 January 1841, Braunschweig - 2 December 1891, Braunschweig) was a German sculptor, metal caster and repoussé artist.
Life
He was the fifth child of sculptor, metal caster and Professor Georg Ferdinand Howaldt an ...
in Brunswick, Germany. The monument was commissioned in 1878 by the ''Denkmal-Committee'' (monument committee) founded by culture loving citizens of Eisenach, among them the city's cantor Carl Müller-Hartung and the writer
Fritz Reuter
Fritz Reuter (7 November 1810 – 12 July 1874; born as ''Heinrich Ludwig Christian Friedrich Reuter'') was a novelist from Northern Germany who was a prominent contributor to Low German literature.
Early life
Fritz Reuter was born at Stavenha ...
.
Clara Schumann
Clara Josephine Schumann (; née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over the course of a ...
,
Hans von Bülow
Freiherr Hans Guido von Bülow (8 January 1830 – 12 February 1894) was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. As one of the most distinguished conductors of the 19th century, his activity was critical for es ...
,
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim (28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of t ...
and
Franz Liszt helped raise the monies by giving beneficial concerts, and the project was also supported by
Johannes Brahms. It was unveiled on 28 September 1884 after a concert of Bach's
Mass in B minor conducted by
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim (28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of t ...
in St. George's Church. Its first location was on the market place in front of the portal of St. George's. The monument was moved to its present location in front of the Bach House when the Frauenplan was redecorated in 1938. The composer is shown standing, holding a feather quill in his right hand, and leaning with his left on a stack of sheet music carried by an angel. The monument's base was substantially shortened when it was moved. A relief plate depicting
Saint Cecilia, the patron of church music, which was originally attached to the base, can now be seen on the stone wall behind the monument.
Light art
Ingo Bracke, a
light art
Light art or The Art of Light is generally referring to a visual art form in which (physical) light is the main, if not sole medium of creation. Uses of the term differ drastically in incongruence; definitions, if existing, vary in several asp ...
ist from
Saarbrücken and with his wife Mary-Anne Kyriakou collaborator in the
i Light Marina Bay festival in Singapore, created the installation ''IN VERSUS F: A Score of Light – An Architectural Tune'' for the Bach House. It was first shown on 13 December 2008, and has been permanently installed since 21 March 2011. Starting at sunset and ending at 11 p.m., it is on display on all Saturday evenings and evenings before public holidays.
Awards
The exhibition designers Atelier Brückner were awarded a bronze ADC award by the Art Directors Club on 12 April 2008 for the innovative new design of the Bach House permanent exhibit. Marc Tamschick, the director of the multimedia installation ''walkable composition'' was awarded a Finalist Diploma at the World Media Festival in Hamburg on 14 May 2008. For the new design of the Bach House permanent exhibition, Atelier Brückner was also awarded a special prize for outstanding scenography by the Association of German Interior Architects ''BDIA'' on 24 October 2008.
Atelier Brueckner erhält Deutschen Innenarchitekturpreis
News service www.museumsreport.de, 11 November 2008. Accessed 16 November 2011.
See also
* List of music museums
This worldwide list of music museums encompasses past and present museums that focus on musicians, musical instruments or other musical subjects.
Argentina
* – Mina Clavero
* Academia Nacional del Tango de la República Argentina – Buenos ...
References
Further reading
* Christoph Wolff
Christoph Wolff (born 24 May 1940) is a German musicologist. He is best known for his works on the music, life, and period of Johann Sebastian Bach. Christoph Wolff is an emeritus professor of Harvard University, and was part of the faculty sinc ...
: ''Johann Sebastian Bach – The Learned Musician''.W.W. Norton, New York, 2000 (2. Aufl.).
* Martin Petzoldt
Martin Petzoldt (13 April 1946 – 13 March 2015) was a German Lutheran theologian, Bach scholar and academic teacher. He was a professor at the University of Leipzig and president of the .
Career
Petzoldt was born in Rabenstein. He was a mem ...
: ''Bachstätten. Ein Reiseführer zu Johann Sebastian Bach''. Insel, Frankfurt, 2000.
* Hartmut Ellrich: ''Bach in Thüringen''. Sutton, Erfurt, 2011 (2nd ed.).
* Ilse Domizlaff: ''Das Bachhaus Eisenach: Fakten und Dokumente''. Bachhaus, Eisenach 1984.
* Conrad Freyse: ''Fünfzig Jahre Bachhaus''. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt
The Evangelische Verlagsanstalt (EVA) is a denominational media company founded in Berlin in 1946. Its shareholders are the and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony. The managing director is Sebastian Knöfel.
Book publisher
The range inc ...
, Berlin 1958.
* Wolfgang Heyde: ''Historische Musikinstrumente im Bachhaus Eisenach'', Bachhaus, Eisenach, 1976.
* Jörg Hansen: ''Bachhaus Eisenach'' (English). Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg, 2011 (5th ed.).
* Jörg Hansen: ''100 Jahre Bachhaus Eisenach. Neubau, Altbausanierung, Neugestaltung der ständigen Ausstellung und feierliche Eröffnung am 17. Mai 2007.'' In: ''Thüringer Museumshefte.'' 16, 2007, 1, pp. 101–112.
* Jörg Hansen: ''10 Jahre Bachhaus Eisenach gGmbH. Ein Erfahrungsbericht''. In: ''Thüringer Museumshefte.'' 20, 2011, 1, pp. 48–61.
* Jörg Hansen, Gerald Vogt: ''Blood and Spirit – Bach, Mendelssohn and their music in the Third Reich'' (exhibition catalogue). Bachhaus, Eisenach 2009. .
External links
Website of the Bach House museum
Website of the New Bach Society
{{Authority control
Johann Sebastian Bach
Biographical museums in Germany
Music museums in Germany
Musical instrument museums in Germany
Museums in Thuringia
Buildings and structures in Eisenach