Bach's Letter

Synopsis

You almost feel sorry for the guy — after all, how would you like to go down in history as the fellow who tried to stiff J.S. Bach? That’s what happened to Herr Johannes Friedrich Eitelwein, a rich merchant of Leipzig who thought he could avoid paying the customary wedding fee apportioned to that city’s church musicians by getting married outside city limits.

Back then such fees provided a significant portion of their income, and so on today’s date in 1733, Bach and two other church musicians sent a letter to the Leipzig City Council complaining that, whether married inside or outside of the city, as a Leipzig resident, and a wealthy one to boot, Eitelwein should pay up.

Now in the 18th Century, such petitions required a delicate balance of formal flattery and firm persistence, so the letter begins: “Magnificent, most honorable gentlemen, our wise and learned councilors, distinguished Lords and Patrons: may it please you to condescend to hear how Herr Johannes Friedrich Eitelwein was married on the twelfth of August of the present year out of town, and therefore thinks himself entitled to withhold the fees due us in all such cases, and has made bold to disregard our many kind reminders.”

Bach’s letter survives, but not any records letting us know if Eitelwein ever paid up!

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Weichet Nur, from Wedding Cantata No. 202; Elly Ameling, soprano; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor; EMI Classics

On This Day

Births

• 1880 - Austrian operetta composer Robert Stoltz, in Graz;

• 1902 - German-born American composer Stefan Wolpe, in Berlin;

• 1918 - American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, in Lawrence, Mass.;

Deaths

• 1742 - Portuguese composer José Antonio Carlos de Seixas, age 38, in Lisbon;

• 1774 - Italian opera composer Niccolò Jommelli, age 59, in Naples;

Premieres

• 1830 - Auber: opera, La Muette de Portici (aka Masaniello), in Brussels, igniting political riots leading to expulsion of Dutch and the Belgian Revolution of 1830

• 1948 - Henze: Symphony No. 1 at Bad Pyrmont

• 1978 - Rorem: Sunday Morning at Saratoga Springs, New York, by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy

Others

• 1830 - Auber: opera, La Muette de Portici (aka Masaniello), in Brussels, igniting political riots leading to expulsion of Dutch and the Belgian Revolution of 1830

• 1870 - Richard Wagner marries Cosima Liszt von Bulow

• 1959 - On his 41st birthday, Leonard Bernstein conducts a tour performance by the New York Philharmonic in Moscow. The program includes Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Ives’ The Unanswered Question.