This conference continued a series of meetings (biennial since 1994) dedicated to Telemann scholarship and held in Magdeburg, city of the composer's birth and home of the Zentrum für Telemann-Pflege und -Forschung. The theme of the conference linked it to a host of international events dedicated to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach on the occasion of his three hundredth birthday. The close relationship of Telemann to the second oldest Bach son (Telemann was his godfather) provided ample reason to bring together leading authorities on these two composers and their musical cultures. Twenty-five presentations across two days reflected what has already been written about Emanuel Bach and Telemann, what is currently being learned and what topics might fruitfully be explored in future.
As the conference's title implies, a generation separates Telemann from this Bach, but their creative worlds nevertheless shared significant common ground – arguably much more than Emanuel shared with his father. The correspondence of their artistic concerns and, ultimately, geography (in 1768, Bach took over his godfather's position in Hamburg) meant that nearly every conference paper was in some way dependent upon knowledge generated by four main entities: the Telemann-Zentrum (Magdeburg), the Bach-Repertorium project and Bach-Archiv (Leipzig), the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works edition (Packard Humanities Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and the archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie.
Following the usual official welcomes, theologian Albrecht Beutel (Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster) kicked off the conference with a paper that admonished, enlightened and somehow still entertained. Beutel reminded his audience that significant changes in religious thought, practice and social culture took place in German-speaking lands during the eighteenth century, and that these changes directly affected the working lives of church musicians such as Telemann and Emanuel Bach. Holger Böning (Universität Bremen) spoke next, offering an overview of Hamburg's thriving public print culture. Jürgen Heidrich (Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster) then brought the themes of the first two papers together with an engaging presentation on judgments about Bach's and Telemann's church music in the contemporary press.
Session two began with a paper by Steven Zohn (Temple University) that kept discussion focused on the topic of publishing. Zohn made the case that Telemann's Getreue Music-Meister (Hamburg, 1728–1729) can be understood as a musical manifestation of the kinds of moral-instruction periodicals that achieved popularity in the eighteenth century, especially among women. He argued further that Telemann's idea directly influenced composers such as his godson and successor, Emanuel Bach, who seemed to be targeting a similar demographic with his Musikalisches Vielerley (Hamburg, 1770). My paper (Ellen Exner, University of South Carolina) re-examined the matter of Telemann's godparental relationship to Emanuel Bach by integrating new research from social history concerning what baptism meant generally within eighteenth-century Lutheran culture, and what it seems to have meant for Telemann and Bach in particular. Peter Wollny (Bach-Archiv Leipzig) rounded off the session with an expert appraisal of the significance of the Telemann holdings within Emanuel Bach's personal music library. The three papers together suggested specific, close connections between Bach's career and his godfather's example.
The third session was dedicated to reading the influence of Enlightenment thought on musical content, with papers by Andreas Waczkat (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), Kathrin Kirsch (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel) and Sarah-Denise Fabian (Universität Heidelberg). Waczkat considered the ways in which Enlightenment understanding of the human condition and music's privileged status as natural utterance might have informed the compositional thinking of Telemann and Bach. To demonstrate his point, Waczkat presented compelling analyses of two works: Telemann's Die Tageszeiten (tvwv20:39) and Bach's setting of Klopstocks Morgengesang am Schöpfungsfeste (Wq239). Bach's Klopstock setting was also central to Kirsch's paper. In this work and Telemann's much earlier Donnerode, Kirsch identified precursors of the romantic sublime (das Erhabene): both works contemplate human vulnerability before unchallengeable powers (God's rather than Nature’s, at this stage of the Enlightenment), though each work exhibits different modes of musical representation. Fabian's presentation, too, considered an aspect of the human condition – melancholy – as depicted by Telemann and then Bach after him. Fabian traced evidence of an evolving public perception of melancholy within instrumental pieces on the subject.
The fourth and fifth sessions were dedicated to discussions of textual sources for the vocal music of our two composers. Hans-Günter Ottenberg (Technische Universität Dresden) carefully considered Emanuel Bach's lieder against the background of the new musico-poetic aesthetic that emerged just before mid-century. A paper by Katharina Hottmann (Universität Hamburg) provided a direct complement to Ottenberg's by focusing on poetic continuities and discontinuities in secular songs published in Hamburg between 1730 and 1780. Markus Rathey (Yale University) carried the literary theme into the realms of sacred and occasional music by comparing works produced by Telemann and Bach in collaboration with the same librettist, Christian Wilhelm Alers. The juxtaposition illuminated specific ways in which composers of different generations approached texts by the same living author.
Dorothea Schröder (Universität Hamburg) opened the second day of the conference with a definitive exploration of eighteenth-century Hamburg's concert spaces. Her presentation offered corrections to a number of long-standing misperceptions and also provided contemporary images of the actual physical spaces in which the music of Bach and Telemann would have been performed. Ulrich Leisinger (Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg) examined Hamburg performance traditions as well, this time with regard to the ‘Einführungsmusik’ (installation music) for the city's clerics in the time of the two composers. Leisinger's work brought to light a previously overlooked document that suggests a strong continuity between what was expected of Telemann and his successor Bach with regard to these occasional works. The thread of generational continuity extended to an exploration by Clemens Harasim (Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig) of the relationship of Bach's Magnificat (Wq215) to other works in the genre, including Telemann’s.
Continuity was also the theme of the second session of the day, which consisted of three papers on the significant presence of Telemann's music in Bach's Passion pasticcios. Wolfgang Hirschmann (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) described the intense dependence of Bach's 1772 Johannespassion (Wq deest; h785) on Telemann's 1745 Johannespassion (tvwv5:30), in search of what Bach chose to do differently and what might have motivated him. Kota Sato (Tokyo/Halle) examined the multilayered performance history of Telemann's 1760 Lukaspassion, tvwv5:45. Using materials in part derived from Bach's reuses of Telemann's music, Sato attempted a reconstruction of the original version of the 1760 Passion. Ralph-Jürgen Reipsch (Telemann-Zentrum, Magdeburg) brought the session to a close with a detailed look at Bach's first few years in Hamburg. From 1768 to 1771 we have only an impression of what repertory Bach performed and when, an impression based almost entirely on information contained in Bach's correspondence with Telemann's grandson Georg Michael Telemann. Georg Michael generously shared manuscripts of his grandfather's music with Bach, who was then new to the Hamburg cantorate. Reipsch's presentation introduced a new source of information in the form of notes on a manuscript wrapper once in the possession of Georg Michael. It provides the first fresh clue in decades about Bach's elusive first years.
Session three was devoted to the cantatas of Telemann and Bach. Mark W. Knoll (Packard Humanities Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts) focused on Bach's Easter cantata ‘Gott hat den Herrn auferwecket’ (Wq244). The genesis of this piece has long been mysterious, but recent findings suggest that Bach originally wrote the piece while in Berlin with Hamburg performances in mind, perhaps as part of an informal application for his ageing godfather's position. Ute Poetzsch (Telemann-Zentrum, Magdeburg) followed with a look at Telemann's ‘großer oratorischer Jahrgang’ (great oratorio cantata cycle), for which a single poet, Albrecht Jacob Zell, provided the librettos. Emanuel Bach once praised an aria from this cycle to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, presumably on the basis of its literary as well as musical quality. Finally, Nicholas Taylor (Washington, D. C.) remarked upon the Telemann cantatas that were once owned by members of the Bach family. Wilhelm Friedemann and his brother Philipp Emanuel both made use of Telemann's cantatas in their professional capacities as church musicians. They were not alone: the source record reveals widespread use of Telemann's music in Lutheran churches across much of German-speaking Europe and beyond.
Rashid-S. Pegah (Würzburg) began the conference's penultimate session by introducing new archival research demonstrating the appeal of Telemann's music, along with Philipp Emanuel Bach’s, among members of a well-established collegium musicum in eighteenth-century Memmingen. The collegium's records reflect a predilection for Telemann's Passions and instrumental music, and show that it also performed Bach's Israeliten in der Wüste, Wq238. Similarly, Timo Evers (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) presented yet more evidence of international affection for the two composers, this time beyond the German-speaking realm. His source was music biographies produced in England around 1800. These writings present a different perspective on the music and lives of Bach and Telemann, one that continues to inform Anglophone music historiography.
The final session of the conference was unique. It was a long paper given in ‘two-headed-musicologist’ format. At times it seemed almost like a radio drama. The presenters, Axel Fischer (Berlin) and Matthias Kornemann (Berlin), each had their own podium and microphone. They took turns sharing research that sought to expose certain generational parallels between the career trajectories of Telemann and Johann Friedrich Fasch on one side, and Emanuel Bach and Fasch's son Carl Friedrich on the other. Fischer and Kornemann suggested various points of cultural change that seem to have influenced the different professional moves made by the younger generation of composers. They posited further that Carl Friedrich Fasch, in particular, might have played a more significant role in the shift around 1790 toward bourgeois music culture than has previously been appreciated.
Although Telemann's home city of Magdeburg bears the marks of every significant ravage in German history, it proved to be a warm and welcoming host (despite the cool weather) and is justifiably proud of its musical accomplishments. The tone of the conference was relaxed and congenial, as befitted both its subjects, who were so adept in the language of sociability. Seeing the eighteenth century from the perspective of the small but expanding world of Telemann studies was refreshing and enlightening. Proceedings will appear as the next instalment of the Telemann Konferenz-Berichte.
