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Johann Ernst von Sachsen Weimar (Composer, Bach's Pupil?) |
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Born: December 25, 1696 - Weimar, Thuringia, Germany
Died: August 1, 1715 - Frankfurt (Main), Germany |
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Johann Ernst, Prince of Saxe-Weimar, was a German composer and string player, who may have studied with J.S. Bach and of whose concertos J.S. Bach made transcriptions. He was born the son of Duke Johann Ernst of Saxony-Weimar. He studied the violin with G.C. Eylenstein and composition with Johann Gottfried Walther, who in 1708 dedicated to him his Percepta der musicalischen Composition. He was brother of Duke Ernst August von Sachsen-Weimar (1688-1748), who was co-regent from 1709, and was blessed with precocious and formidable talent for music. Between 1711 and 1713 he was in Utrecht and Amsterdam, where he encountered, through the organist of the Nieuwe Kerk, Johan Jacob Grave (or jan Jacob de Graaf, 1672-1738), the practice of transcribing Italian instrumental concertos for keyboard. On his return to Weimar he induced both J.G. Walther and J.S. Bach to do the same.
Of poor health, the Prince died in Frankfurt when he was only 18 years old, leaving - as J.G. Walther informs us in his Lexikon (1732) - 19 compositions. To honour his memory Georg Philipp Telemann, who early in 1715, just a few months before the Prince's death, had dedicated to him a volume of six sonatas for violin and harpsichord, published Johann Ernst's Six Concerts . . . Opera I.ma (Frankfurt, 1718), a volume of six concertos in Vivaldian style.
During his activity in Weimar, J.S. Bach came into close contact with Prince Johann Ernst. Two of his concertos (Nos. 1 and 4) were transcribed for harpsichord by J.S. Bach (BWV 982 and BWV 987), who also arranged two other concertos by the Prince (not included in the publication and now lost), one for harpsichord (BWV 984; its first movement exists also in a version for organ, BWV 595) and the other for organ (BWV 592). When his elder brother, Duke E.A. von Sachsen-Weimar, who was co-regent from 1709, married Princess Eleonore Wilhelmine of Anhalt-Köthen, in 1716, J.S. Bach provided the music for the ceremony. And it was on this occasion that the bride's brother, Prince Leopold (later his employer in Köthen), came to know and appreciate him.
Löffler apparently only assumed a student relationship based on J.S. Bach's transcriptions after concertos by Prince Johann Ernst. In addition to this fact, it can only be documented that J.S. Bach was paid for the preparation of the harpsichord by Johann Ernst, but not for his lessons. In addition, in his Lexikon article on Johann Ernst, Johann Gottfried Walther mentions the court musician Eulenstein as his violin teacher and himself as a composition teacher; on J.S. Bach, however, says nothing in this connection.
References: Koska: C-6; GND: 118712357; Bach Digital: 00002978 |
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Sources:
1. Wikipedia Website
2. Christoph Wolff: Bach - Essays on His Life and Music (Harvard University Press, 1991)
3. Article by Alberto Basso in Oxford Composer Companions J.S. Bach, edited by Malcolm Boyd (Oxford Uunversity Press, 1999), p 250
4. Bernd Koska: Bachs Privatschüler in Bach-Jahrbuch 2019, English translation by Aryeh Oron (May 2020)
5. Bach Digital Website (July 2019)
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (November 2008, May 2020) |
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Works arranged by J.S. Bach |
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Concerto for organ No. 1 in G major (after Duke J. Ernst), BWV 592
Concerto for solo keyboard G major (after Duke J. Ernst), BWV 592a
Concerto for organ No. 4 in C major (after Duke J. Ernst), BWV 595
Concerto for solo keyboard No. 11 in B flat major (after Duke J. Ernst, Op. 1/1), BWV 982
Concerto for solo keyboard No. 13 in C major (after Duke J. Ernst), BWV 984
Concerto for solo keyboard No. 16 in D minor (after Duke J. Ernst, Op. 1/4), BWV 987 |
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Links to other Sites |
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Johann Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Weimar (Wikipedia)
Johann Ernst, Prinz von Sachsen-Weimar (Bach Digital) |
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Bibliography |
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Sources 3:
Hans-Joachim Schulze: `J.S. Bach's Concerto-Arrangements for Organ: Studies or Commissioned Works?', Organ Yearbook, 3 (1972), 4-13
U. Siegele: Kompositionsweise und Bearbeitungstechnik in der Instrumentalmusik J.S. Bachs (Stuttgart, 1975), 89-96
Sources 4: Dok II, Nr. 49; Walther L, S. 331; Löffler 1929/31, Anh. Nr. 2; Löffler 1936, S. 108; Löffler 1953, Nr. 15; Schulze BachÜberlieferung, S. 157
References 5: NBA I/21, 41; IV/1, 5, 6, 8; V/11; VII/7; IX/3; NBArev 2; Dok I, II, III, IV, V, IX |
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