ENLIGHTENMENT DARKENS BACH’S HORIZON

BACH’S increasing dissatisfaction and discomfort in the Leipzig post were certainly forboding of the future: the university in particular was approaching a period of fundamental change. One member of the university community especially regarded Gesner’s respect for the art and discipline of music as a remnant of the past, one that should be discarded. The son of the former rector, conrector Johann August Ernesti (1707-1781), vigorously opposed music as a degrading, rather than ennobling influence. He saw its emotional power not as “linking the soul to the heavenly choirs above,” as Gesner has described it in his speech, but as an anti-intellectual indulgence, confusing and obscuring clear thinking. As long as Gesner was the reigning rector of the school, of course, Ernesti kept these new and subversive ideas to himself, for he was a man of tact and diplomacy, knowing when discretion and agreement would profit him. The right moment would come for him to make his views known.

Both Gesner and Ernesti were among the leading forces revolutionizing educational methods. Both broke with the old ways of learning; both were enthusiasts for the classics—their literary, linguistic, cultural, and even philosophical value, breaking with the traditional Lutheran evaluation of pagan writers as inferior to Christian thinkers. Both humanized learning through the Greek culture. The value of the classics went beyond that of disciplinary tools. But sharp differences divided the cultures and the personalities of the two men. Two years later Ernesti assumed the rectorship of the Thomas School, when Gesner left to become professor at the University of Göttingen. Then certain personality traits became apparent and soon led to serious conflicts with Bach. The ensuing struggle involved two opposing cultures, not merely individual differences of opinion and temperament.

This clash would not have occurred had Gesner remained the leading power at St. Thomas. For despite the fact that he shared the enthusiasm for pedagogical emanicipation of his successor, he remained a devoted Lutheran by temperament and schooling. A man of 42 when he set forth his concepts of education in his school laws of 1733, he still attributed spiritual powers to music, linking its psychological function to that of faith. At this time Ernesti was 25. Although he too was inevitably exposed to thorough theological studies, his philosophical training was radically different. When Ernesti developed new school laws (1773), music was not even mentioned in his curriculum.

His indifference to music took root in the barren soil of rationalistic philosophy that was taking the universities by storm. The study of music was looked upon as indolence by enthusiastic rationalists. Luther had regarded unmusical people as wicked souls to be distrusted; Werckmeister integrated this opinion into his metaphysical, Pythagorean construction, presenting the unmusical mind as outcast from the sphere of heavenly harmony, truth, and goodness. Ernesti, however, was not a part of that generation of Pythagorean visionaries and allegorical mystics. He subjected all ideas, including church doctrines, to rational and objective reasoning, like a son of the Enlightenment; but he did take the middle road between orthodoxy and the rationalism of the universities.

In Wittenberg he had studied philosophy with Schlosser, a protagonist of the new philosophy. At the University of Leipzig he had studied theology under Borner and Deyling (the superintendent and chairman of the council that later opposed Bach in the matter of hymns), and philosophy under Gottsched. Here the traditional ties between theology and philosophy had already begun to loosen with the granting of the chair of philosophy to Gottsched, the poet devoted to the rationalistic philosophy developed by Christian Wolff.

Christian Wolff

Until the advent of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), philosophy in the German universities had been a semi-Scholastic subject, completely subservient to theology and treated only as a preparation to this superior and all-important faculty. Just as Catholic theology in the Middle Ages had formed a political bulwark for the Church with the support of philosophy, so Lutheranism under the protection of German potentates had called upon theology—and consequently its accessory discipline, philosophy—to defend national dogma against the numerous heresies. Philosophy was actually providing Protestant theology with Aristotelian weapons originally developed to preserve the Catholic faith.

This arsenal of logic was now enriched with the concepts and terminology of Descartes, Locke, Newton, and Leibniz. Theology professors in the German universities felt a pious horror toward these independent infidels, but German princes, traditionally detached from religion and culturally broader and more international than their parochial subjects, began to favor independent thinkers. Karl Ludwig, the Elector Palatine, offered Spinoza a chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1673, but this sensitive and peace-loving thinker firmly but graciously declined the honor, knowing that the trade of lens grinding would assure him more serenity than an honored position in that theological lion’s pit. Similarly no German university at that time would have welcomed a philosopher like Leibniz, who strove to unite all creeds and sects into a universal philosophical concept, and who was too much of an international figure among scientists in every branch of inquiry. As a student of international law, a historian, and a man with keen practical judgment in politics of his time, he found ready employment with three powerful princes of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

Christian Wolff was the first philosophy professor in a German university to pronounce the complete autonomy of his branch of learning. He was well versed in the philosophy of Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke, but the strongest influence upon his world outlook came from Isaac Newton. Wolff also was so devoted a disciple of Leibniz that his philosophy, to his own displeasure, was often referred to as the Leibniz-Wolffian school.

In 1706 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the newly established University of Halle. He soon branched out from mathematics, through physics, into all areas of philosophy, after the manner of Leibniz who pervaded his entire polyhistoric learning with philosophical reflections. However, whereas Leibniz had strewed his philosophical ideas about without any attention to organization,¹ Wolff proceeded systematically to expound his own natural—or rational—theology. A variety of deism, his theology could hardly support the orthodoxy of theologians, but instead glorified human intellect and natural laws that human reason has discovered in the world. Faith had no place; truth is established only by a chain of logic, which must have mathematical certainty—that is, subject to proofs that proceed from indisputable axioms and definitions through data given by experience to logical conclusions. Wolff also vigorously rejected all supernaturalism. Everything must have its conclusive reason—in philosophical terms its “sufficient cause” (der zureichende Grund)— and knowledge of the world is not enhanced by useless speculations about final or original causes, or a prime mover. Newton, despite his mechanical view of the universe, remained a deeply religious man, and believed that God was the Creator of His perfect clockwork, the universe. He even accepted the conventionally calculated time of Creation, 4004 B.C., for the idea of evolution was as yet completely unknown.

Although this deism did not inevitably lead to skepticism and atheism, it was obviously incompatible with Protestant theology and far removed from the latent awareness of noncognitive, intuitive knowledge often felt by artists, philosophers, and some scientists. He sought enlightenment through science and reason, unbounded by adoration for the Unknowable “that passes human understanding.” His natural theology had no place for biblical concepts, and he makes no mention of Christ or of any of his teachings or of the Old Testament, in his treatments of God and of the human soul. His theology is concerned only with the problem of the soul and reason versus this mechanical universe, the nature of the mind versus that of matter, and eternity versus finite existence.

It seems as if many ages lie between this new scientific viewpoint and the Pythagorean mysticism of Kircher, Werckmeister, and his pupil, Johann Walther, who transmitted their sense of awe to Bach. Yet, at the time that Werckmeister published his neomedieval reflections on the nature of music, Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy had already begun to revolutonize the traditional European conception of the cosmos; Wolff was the first to bring this enlightenment into the German universities.

Most historians of philosophy (for example, Kuno Fischer, Wilhelm Windelband, and Hegel) do not regard Wolff as a truly speculative philosopher, for although he was a disciple of Leibniz, he failed to penetrate the idea of the pre-established harmony by which Leibniz had described the metaphysical nature of the Godhead. For Leibniz, this harmony consisted in God’s power of perpetually creating the objective world of mental presentation (as it appears for man) and existence (as it issues from God’s mind). Leibniz conceived the pre-established harmony as antecedent to existence and preconditioning it, rather than as preceding it within a succession of time. Where Leibniz had attempted to describe nature as an intrinsic part of divine reason (the absolute mind), as the realization of reason, and as the immanent purpose of God’s exstence, Wolff, like all deists who thought of God as outside the world, could conceive of thought only as the process of human reasoning. Thus he interpreted Leibniz’ immanent purpose of God from the standpoint of human understanding also, stating that God created this wonderful mechanism for the purpose of man’s adoration and for his maintenance. (This parochial and vulnerable point was heartily ridiculed by Voltaire, a deist of a different variety.)

So Wolff’s philosophy was unsympathetic to the truly speculative philosopher as well as to those of religious temperament, but his rationalism influenced quite a few in Bach’s immediate environment. Among them were his colleague, Gottsched; Marianne von Ziegler, who wrote several fine libretti for Bach’s cantatas; Johann Adolph Scheibe, the organist who criticized Bach’s art after he had been rejected as organist under Bach; Lorenz Mizler, a strange pupil of Bach and the most ardent rationalist of all; and his rector, Ernesti.

Wolff’s immediate influence upon literature and art was negative. His vapid sobriety failed to inspire poets and musicians, failed to stir their hearts with spontaneous intuitive ideas. Instead, Gottsched occupied his mind with criticism and the creation of rules for poetry. Mizler tried to discover the “sufficient cause” of musical esthetics, and Ernesti wanted to abolish music altogether as obscuring those “clear and distinct” purposes of factual education.

It is not difficult to see why certain disciples of this “enlightenment” regarded music as an obstruction to clear thinking and understanding. Clarity of understanding—the true object of man’s life—required one to distrust emotion as well as all reasoning that cannot be conclusively proven. In disregarding the conception of the soul rising out of Leibniz’ idea of the pre-established harmony and the monads—that were conceived as individualized universalities—Wolff harks back to a Cartesian dualism in which the soul consists of the rational and the empirical, and the demands of the empirical determine the process of reasoning.

The theologians were equally justified in their fears of Wolff’s effect on religion. His natural theology rejected all miracles as contrary to the mechanical clockwork world created by a rational God. In his Rational Thoughts about God, the World, and the Soul of Man, Wolff writes:

The world and all that it contains are the means through which God accomplishes His ends, because they are machines. From which it is clear that they become a work of God’s wisdom, because they are machines. Whoever, accordingly, explains everything in this world rationally, as one customarily does with machines, he is led to the wisdom of God.²

If in a world everything takes place naturally, it is the work of God’s wisdom. On the contrary, when things occur that have no reasonable ground in the essence and nature of things, then they happen supernaturally or through miracles, and thus is such a world ... a work of power, and not of wisdom.³

Wolff is still more daring and to the point when he develops the idea that this intelligent machine is a much greater miracle than any breach of God’s own natural laws. It is not possible that God has done natural as well as supernatural wonders, “and therefore are the latter either fictitious or natural phenomena that one takes for supernatural by want of understanding.”⁴ He exalts that “now we have a criterion by which we distinguish true miracles from fictitious ones. . . .” This iconoclastic idea seriously undermined religion, and when Lutheran theologians began to incorporate Wolffian philosophy into their work it constituted a retreat of orthodoxy. To reconcile orthodoxy with natural theology unbelievable examples of sophism were conjured up, and rationalism emerged victorious.⁵

With the university students this transparent but shallow stream of systematic thought at first found enthusiastic response. Thousands flocked to Wolff’s lecture rooms. The theological faculty was in despair over these gullible infidels but was powerless to remove its adversary, who was a royal appointee.

King Frederick William I, the semi-barbarous King of Prussia, father of Frederick the Great, inadvertently relieved them of this troublesome colleague. He had more interest in his tall soldiers than in disputes among his professors, but listened to the cunning advice of his court tutor, who in his clever intrigue played the role of a court jester. This sophistic wit interpreted Wolff’s idea of the pre-established harmony to the king as a kind of fatalism, in which man has no free will. He convinced the king that such dangerous ideas, should they spread among the soldiers, might encourage desertion, which they could argue was the pre-established will of God. The enraged king immediately gave orders that Wolff should leave Prussia within two days on penalty of death. The theologians, who had prayed and preached against Wolff’s brand of enlightenment, saw in this sudden dismissal the protecting hand of God. Francke, the Pietist, publicly and loudly thanked God on both his knees for this deliverance from evil.

But a professor’s chair was immediately found for the rational theologian in Marburg. Moreover, the scandal caused such a stir that the Academies of Science in London, Paris, and Stockholm honored him with membership; and Peter the Great made him vice-president of the Academy in Petersburg. These honors moved the king to withdraw his decree against Wolff and invite him to return, but Wolff stayed safely out of Prussia until the king died. When Frederick the Great took the throne in 1740, one of his first acts was to recall Wolff. This enlightened prince could be trusted, and Wolff returned to Halle.

The era of theological supremacy in the German universities came to a close with Frederick, who himself had absorbed all of French and English Enlightenment, and who received Maupertuis and Voltaire as guests at his court. From these higher strata of society and learning the modern movement spread to the rest of the population, and the new conception of education in the institutions of higher learning soon filtered down to the Gymnasia. However little Wolff has contributed to the discipline of philosophy or science, his influence was one of the chief causes that led German education away from the theological purpose of learning to the primary pursuits of the sciences and positive factual information.

Ernesti fervently hoped to accomplish this emancipation at the Thomas School. All over Germany the importance of school music dwindled together with the diminishing prestige of theology. During Bach’s last years the hours for musical training in the Gymnasia everywhere began to be shortened, and more and more time was assigned to academic studies. By the close of the century the student-singers were replaced by professional outsiders. Even under Ernesti’s father, the tradition of awarding scholarships solely on the basis of musicianship had begun to weaken. Outstanding academic students were receiving special favor.

How doggedly Bach fought for the preservation of this musical tradition in the Thomas School shall soon be seen. According to his providential outlook this new academic emphasis reflected only personal sins and errors of arrogant young men. There is no direct evidence of his response to other phases of the Enlightenment but the few data and hints that are available—the contents of his library, statements about his erudition by his contemporaries, and an examination of his intercourse with leading intellectuals in his environment—point toward his persistent orthodoxy. The consistency of his religion and the character of his art also reveal the nature and direction of his attitude toward the new era.