A Bach Family Christmas
Program Note

Der Zippelfagottist is a 20-minute mini-opera that tells the true story of how the young Johann Sebastian Bach got into a public brawl with one of his music students.

The word Zippelfagottist is the untranslatable insult that J.S. Bach called this student, thereby provoking the brawl. Or I should say allegedly called, and allegedly provoked, for there are as many different accounts of what exactly happened as there were persons present at the scene.

The scene is set in 1705. Bach is 20 years old, and has been hired to his first real job as a professional musician, as organist at the Neue Kirche in the town of Arnstadt, Germany. He got the job two years ago, in 1703, and the church liked him so much that they agreed to pay him twice the going rate.

He was hired as the church organist, and only the organist, as we can clearly read in his contract with the Consistory, which survives in a library in Germany. And yet he finds to his dismay that he is also expected to serve as a Director musices, which means conducting the choir.

Now this choir is made up of students drawn from the local Gymnasium. Here is a contemporary description of these students: “They have no respect for their teachers.… They wear a rapier not only on the street, but also in the school…. They even frequent unseemly locales. They spend their free time playing dice and drinking and doing other wicked things which one shrinks from naming. All night long they make a racket with shouting and music-making.…” (Complaint to the Consistory by the Town Council of Arnstadt, 1706.)

It is one of these students that Bach allegedly offends with the word Zippelfagottist. Some kind of a brawl later takes place in a public square. The very next day, Bach comes before the Consistory, bringing a formal complaint with his version of the events. It is here that our play begins.

The text has been drawn from the real eighteenth-century church records of the dispute, which are preserved in a library in Germany. It is printed in your programs together with an English translation, in case your eighteenth-century German happens to be a bit rusty.

But first, there is one other character in the drama who needs introduction. This is Bach’s cousin, Barbara Catharina Bachin, who, according to the church records, witnesses the brawl. Confusingly, Bach has two cousins named Barbara Catharina Bachins living in Arnstadt at this time. One of them is the sister of Johann Ernst Bach, who will later take over for J.S. as the organist at the Neue Kirche when he gets a job elsewhere. (Unfortunately, this is not the same Johann Ernst Bach who wrote the other piece on tonight’s program: that Johann Ernst was a more distant cousin.) The other Barbara Catharina Bachin is the sister of Maria Barbara Bach, whom Bach will marry in 1707. No one knows for sure which Barbara Catharina is meant.

Before I let you go, I should at least attempt to offer a translation for the untranslatable insult of the title. Fagottist is clear enough: it means “bassoonist”. But what is a Zippel? Here the dictionaries are of little help. Grimm’s offers Zippeler “a student”, Zimpel “a simpleton”, and, most intriguingly, Zippel “a small onion”.

The lesson, at any rate, is clear: If your choral conductor dares to call you a “scallion bassoonist”, do not punch him in the face (not even allegedly). For if you do, some scallion composer may cast you, without your consent, as a character in a play, three hundred years in the future.

© Jonathan Breit 2016