Bach to the Future: Fans Want to Rebuild Composer's House

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/fans-want-to-rebuild-home-of-composer-bach-in-weimar-a-962020.html



In the city of Goethe and Schiller, classical music fans want another famous former resident to be honored in Weimar. They're seeking to rebuild the home of Johann Sebastian Bach, who composed some of his most important works in the city.

Bach to the Future: Fans Want to Rebuild Composer's House
By Karoline Kuhla
April 03, 2014 – 03:17 PM



It may be a small city, but Weimar is the pinnacle of German high culture, more densely populated with great historical figures than perhaps any other in the country. Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, Nietzsche, Gropius, Feininger, Kandinsky, Klee and Thomas Mann have all called it home. Most of these luminaries get their due in some form in the city. But one is conspicuously absent: Johann Sebastian Bach.

The composer lived in the city for 10 years during the 18th century at Markt 16, right in the city center. The building he called home was torn down long ago, and the only things to be found at the site today are a bratwurst stand and a parking lot. There isn't even a plaque to note that an important Renaissance-era vaulted cellar is located beneath the cars. Bach likely kept his personal supplies there, including the generous provision of "30 kegs of beer" allotted him each year in addition to his wages for the musical services he rendered to the dukes of Weimar. Calculated over a year, that means that the Baroque composer had about nine and a half pints of tipple available each day.

"We need this site to commemorate Bach," says Myriam Eichberger, a professor at the Liszt School of Music who has organized an impressive roster of supporters for a petition on behalf of her campaign. The signatories include Nobel prize for medicine recipient Günter Blobel of Germany, South African Nobel prize for literature recipient John Coetzee, as well as star Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, known the world over for his televised annual performances of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's New Year's Concert. Around 11,000 Bach fans worldwide have signed the online petition at change.org. They are seeking the reconstruction of the former building Bach lived in and for the historical cellar to be made accessible to the public.

The composer, of course, lived in other places around the state of Thuringia where he is commemorated today, with Bach houses located in Wechmar, Arnstadt and Eisenach, not to mention quite a number of churches where the musician played the organ, got married or had his sons baptized.

[BeyondGeography]

1. There's a scene in one of the many Bach bio-films out there where a poor man's family implores him

to play at their's father's funeral. The son told him, in so many words, that their father went to church every Sunday and wasn't sure of the existence of God, particularly during sermon time, but that Bach's music gave him more happiness than he had ever felt in life, making it possible for him to believe there may even be a God.

Bach, who was overworked and underpaid, played at the funeral.