The German original reads, “Du bist mein gutes Jüngelchen”. The writer was, according to a 7th-generation descendant, Johann Sebastian Bach, and they were addressed to his firstborn son, Wilhelm Friedemann, born in Weimar in 1714.
One is not used to words of such tenderness from the formidable Thomaskantor. I have been pondering them since coming across one of the last-minute final entries (Section I, Documents in Bach’s Hand) in Vol. V (2007) of the series of Bach Dokumente, edited by another redoubtable resident of Leipzig, Prof. Dr. phil. Hans-Joachim Schulze. That Bach scholar of unparalleled diligence, assiduity and rigor is still with us at the time of writing, aged 89.
The music book on which those touching words were written is lost. It passed from Wilhelm Friedemann to his adventurous daughter, Friederica Sophia, who had two illegitimate children (one of them while Friedemann and his wife were still alive in Berlin) by two different men, before settling down in Silesia with a textile manufacturer. In 1892 a third-generation descendant of Sophia’s emigrated to Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he led church music with great skill. A sixth-generation descendant of Sophia named Lydia Paul duChateau got in touch with Christoph Wolff at Harvard. She told him that the family’s descent from Sebastian Bach was a source of embarrassment because of the irregularities involved, but that she felt it was time to reveal it.
Genealogical research was enough to convince Wolff that Lydia’s tale was accurate. In an article giving the details,* he writes that he enjoyed correspondence and phone conversations with Lydia, and regretted not have met her before she died in North Carolina.
Ms. duChateau told Wolff that she had inherited a small wooden trunk containing items that came directly from Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. It was lost on a move to Highland Park, Illinois, north of Chicago. If it was stolen, there is still hope that it might turn up again someday.
Lydia remembered the following contents:
– A pastel portrait of Friedemann (by one of the Meiningen Bachs?).
– A music “manuscript” with square notes, probably a copy of one of two early cantatas by Sebastian printed with square notes.
– A collection of medals presented to W. F. Bach.
– A fragment of a diary by Friedemann’s daughter Sophia which described her father as a sad and deeply religious man.
– Most importantly, a music notebook bearing the inscription, “drei mal / Du bist ein (or mein) gutes Jüngelchen”. It must have preceded Sebastian’s autograph Clavierbüchlein for Friedemann, dated 22 January 1720, which I held in my hands at Yale back in 1970. It too was nearly lost in a hotel fire in New York, where its possessor was staying while trying to sell the treasure. “Drei mal” – three times – could be a handwriting assignment.
One cannot be sure that the writer was the lad’s father. We only have the recollection of Lydia duChateau to go on, and she was obviously no handwriting expert. And yet, Wollf assumes it was Sebastian. It could just as well have been Friedemann’s mother, who died when Friedl was 10 while her husband way away with his master in Karlsbad; or possibly Johann Caspar Vogler, who was a student in the Bach household until Friedemann was five years old.
(But let us follow Wolff for once, and assume it was Papa.)
February 1, 2024
* “Bach Perspectives”, Vol. 5, “Bach in America” (Urbana, 2002). The volume includes another article by H.-J. Schulze regarding a large North American family descended from a different branch of the Bach family. Music-making was a fixture among them. I was recently regaled by Schulze’s introductory remarks at the conference held in Leipzig in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary J. S. Bach’s death. He rips the late-20th-century’s legacy of hasty Bach performance and “reconstructions” to shreds. (“Bach in Leipzig”, Leipziger Beiträge zur Bach-Forschung Band 5, Leipzig, 2002)
|