For More Pianos, Last Note Is a Thud in the Dump

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Beethoven, Daniel J. Wakin, gravicembalo col piano e forte, Lester Piano Company, Mozart, Philadelphia, piano, Piano Adoption, Steinway & Sons, Wm. Knabe & Co.

The Knabe baby grand did a cartwheel and landed on its back, legs poking into the air. A Lester upright thudded onto its side with a final groan of strings, a death-rattling chord. After ten pianos were dumped, a small yellow loader with a claw in front scuttled in like a vicious beetle, crushing keyboards, soundboards and cases into a pile.

The site, a trash-transfer station in a town twenty miles north of Philadelphia, is just one place where pianos go to die. This kind of scene has become increasingly common.

The value of used pianos, especially uprights, has plummeted in recent years. So instead of selling them to a neighbor, donating them to a church or just passing them along to a relative, owners are far more likely to discard them, technicians, movers and dealers say. Piano movers are making regular runs to the dump, becoming adept at dismantling instruments, selling parts to artists, even burning them for firewood.

“We bust them up with a sledgehammer,” said Jeffrey Harrington, the owner of Harrington Moving & Storage in Maplewood, N.J.

Pianos consist of hundreds of pounds of metal, wood and intricate machinery able to channel Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, along with honky-tonk, “Happy Birthday” and holiday tunes. It is strange to think of them as disposable as tissues. Yet economic and cultural forces have made many used pianos, with the exception of Steinways and a few other high-end brands, prone to being jettisoned.

With thousands of moving parts, pianos are expensive to repair, requiring long hours of labor by skilled technicians whose numbers are diminishing. Excellent digital pianos and portable keyboards can cost as little as several hundred dollars. Low-end imported pianos have improved remarkably in quality and can be had for under $3,000.

“Instead of spending hundreds or thousands to repair an old piano, you can buy a new one made in China that’s just as good, or you can buy a digital one that doesn’t need tuning and has all kinds of bells and whistles,” said Larry Fine, the editor and publisher of Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer, the industry bible.

Used pianos abound on Web sites like eBay, driving prices down and making it difficult to sell Grandma’s old upright. With moving costs of several hundred dollars, even giving a piano away can be expensive. Abandonment often becomes the only option, especially for heirs dealing with a relative’s property.

Many pianos are also dying of old age. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before radio and recordings, pianos were the main source of music, even entertainment, in the home. They were a middle-class must-have.

So from 1900 to 1930, the golden age of piano making, American factories churned out millions of them. Nearly 365,000 were sold at the peak, in 1910, according to the National Piano Manufacturers Association. (In 2011, 41,000 were sold, along with 120,000 digital pianos and 1.1 million keyboards, according to Music Trades magazine.)

The average life span rarely exceeds eighty years, piano technicians say. That’s a lot of pianos now reaching the end of the line.

Piano dealers also blame other changes in society for a lack of demand in the used-piano market: cuts in music education in schools, competition for practice time from other pursuits, a drop in spending on home furnishings with the fall of the housing market.

Whatever the reason, people in the piano world agree that disposals are mounting.

O’Mara Meehan Piano Movers said it takes five to ten pianos a month to the debris transfer site here. The company was founded in 1874 by the great-grandfather of the brothers Bryan and Charles T. O’Mara Jr.

Bryan O’Mara and an employee, James A. Fox, drove their truck into a hangarlike structure one day last week. Inside the truck were six uprights and four grands. Several came from the Philadelphia school system and one from a retirement home. “This was Mrs. Dombrowski’s from New Hope,” Mr. O’Mara said, patting the Knabe.

Mr. O’Mara and Mr. Fox pushed them off the back of the truck one by one. The top of an upright popped off when it landed. Mr. Fox tossed amputated piano legs and a pedal mechanism. Sprayers from above sent out a swirl of dust-settling mist, adding to the surreal atmosphere.

Mr. O’Mara had charged the former owners about $150 per piano. The trash site charged him $233.24 for dumping them all. A recycling company would pick up the debris and separate the wood from the metal.

Beethoven Pianos, a restorer, renter, mover and dealer in New York, has a 34,000-square-foot warehouse at the base of the Third Avenue Bridge in the Bronx, with scores of pianos awaiting disposal, said the owner, Carl Demler.

“In wintertime we burn them,” he said, pointing to a round metal stove. “This one has eaten many pianos.”

He watched as a worker, James Williams, dismantled a grand. “Ashes to ashes,” Mr. Demler said.

“Dust to dust,” Mr. Williams added, unscrewing pins that held the strings.

The junking of the modern descendant of the “gravicembalo col piano e forte,” the Italian precursor, can evoke strong reactions. A video posted on YouTube by one mover showing pianos being dumped drew violent remarks. Commenters said they felt sickened and called the scene barbaric, painful, outrageous, even criminal. “Stop the horror!” one wrote.

When the video was described to Madeleine Crouch, the administrator of the National Piano Manufacturers Association, she responded with a sharp intake of breath. “That makes me cry,” she said. “Pianos are lovable. You wouldn’t want your pet horse to be thrown out into the glue factory.”

Such reactions emphasize the abyss between the emotional value of used pianos and their worth in the marketplace.

“It is the most emotionally charged piece of furniture that there is,” said Martha Taylor, a rare restorer of uprights, whose Immortal Piano Company is based in Portland, Ore. “When I have to say: ‘You’ve buried your grandmother. You have to bury her piano,’ it’s a really hard thing.”

Many movers say they strive to find homes for abandoned pianos, making the rounds of nursing homes, schools and other institutions.

“You hate to see them go,” said Mr. O’Mara, whose company tries to give away discarded pianos. Any rescued piano, he noted, is also a potential future move for O’Mara Meehan. But there is just so much room in his warehouse for adoptees. He has to cull them like a herd. Churches and schools often do not have room or the means to maintain them.

Brian Goodwin, who owns Piano Movers of Nashua, N.H., and who had thirty pianos in his warehouse ready for the dump recently, said he created the Web site Piano Adoption partly as a clearing house to find homes for unwanted pianos. He posted the video of the dumped pianos that drew such shocked responses.

When owners ask where a cherished piano is going, he said, he tries to avoid the subject or tells them it will be put up for adoption.

“The last thing they want to hear is that it’s going to a landfill,” he said.

But piano movers can also take a clinical view of piano disposal, since they understand the economic realities. While noting that piano disposals can be painful, Mr. Goodwin said: “To be honest with you, the guys enjoy it. They try so hard all day not to scratch anything. And all of a sudden they get to throw it off the back of a truck.”

Daniel J. Wakin – The New York Times

Support for a Cartoon About Bach’s Students

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André Martini, cartoon, comicstrip, Die Thomaner, Eventfilm, Leipzig, Singen Beten Halleluja, St. Thomas Church, violin

The Leipzig company Eventfilm is producing a cartoon about the musical training and everyday living conditions experienced by Bach’s students at St. Thomas Church. The twenty-five minute long film Singen, Beten, Halleluja, created by comicstrip artist André Martini, will be funny and entertaining as well as ambitious and informative. Martini devoted more than two years of research to prepare for it, and a first impression is available here. Plans for a feature-length version of the film are underway as well.

The filmmaker is seeking collective financing by numerous individual donors. The web page www.startnext.de/totenmesse contains information about the project and how to support it.

The project needs to attract as many supporters as possible by Tuesday, 31 July 2012. With a donation as small as 1-€, anyone can become a supporter and vote for the film. (Note that only the votes of paying supporters count, not the number of votes by fans!) A minimum of 4,500-€ must be collected by 31 August 2012 before any funding can be awarded to the project.

– Bach-Archiv Leipzig

Sacred Emblems and Bach’s Cantatas

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Bible, canine, cantata, chorale, chorus, church year, classical mythology, Detlef Gojowy, dog, emblem, engraving, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, Johann Mannich, liturgical year, Michael Heer, Nuremberg, philology, poetry, Rudolf Wustmann, Sacra emblemata, Salomo Franck, Weimar

Oh Jesus, my rest, my light, where are you? / Behold, O Soul, I am beside you. / Beside me? But here there is nothing but night! / I am your faithful friend who, too, is on the lookout for scoundrels dwelling in the darkness. / Then break forth with your splendor and consoling light! 

– Dialogue between the Soul and Jesus in Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21)

In 1914 the musicologist Rudolf Wustmann wrote, “Bach’s church cantata texts are the product of an earlier generation, and anybody wishing to take a narrow, contemporary point of view will probably find great fault in them. Sometimes their poetry seems to us to be greatly exaggerated and, at other times, too sober. What they derive from a Sunday gospel reading often does not seem to us to be its main point . . . and many other details seem strange to us.” Nearly a century after Wustmann, audiences still find it difficult to fully comprehend the Baroque poetry that Bach set in his cantatas, but twentieth-century research in German philology by Detlef Gojowy and others has revealed that an understanding of the graphical emblems popular in Bach’s day can help us to decode the origins and meanings of his texts.

Collections of Christian emblems were an important source of inspiration for Bach’s text writers and were generally as familiar to the educated classes as the Bible and classical mythology. By referring to these well-known emblems, authors had an additional means of conveying their ideas to their audiences.

The emblem reproduced above, which Johann Mannich tied to the Third Sunday after Trinity, is from the collection Sacra emblemata that he published in Nuremberg in 1674. For each Sunday and feast day in the Lutheran church year, Mannich provided an engraving by Michael Heer that graphically related to the Bible readings of the day, which Mannich then cross-referenced with other biblical passages. In addition, he composed a poem that established links between each picture and the scriptures.

Likewise, each of Bach’s church cantatas were composed for a specific Sunday or feast day of the liturgical year. The readings, excerpts from the gospel and epistles, determined the contents of the sermon for the occasion, the selection of the chorale to be sung by the congregation, and the theme of the cantata to be performed by the soloists and chorus.

It was typical for cantatas to be composed as annual sets, not as individual pieces, and evidence suggests that Bach attempted to compose as many as five yearly series of cantatas. Most of the librettists that he selected for his cantatas published multiple sets of cantata texts that were suitable for adaptation by composers, according to their individual requirements.

Shortly after he was appointed to the concertmaster position in Weimar in 1714, Bach composed the cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis for the Third Sunday after Trinity. Based at least partially on a cantata text by Salomo Franck, who frequently took inspiration from Mannich’s sets of emblems, Bach musically depicted the Soul’s trust and hope in Jesus with the same gentle expression that Herr had created when he showed a reclining sinner taking comfort in the companionship of his faithful canine friend.

The New Brandenburg Project at Boulder’s Chautauqua

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A Brandenburg Autumn, Aaron Grad, Aaron Jay Kernis, aria, bass, Berlin, Brandenburg, Brandenburg Concertos, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, cello, chant, Charlottenburg, Christopher Theofanidis, Colorado Music Festival, concerto, Concerto with Echoes, dance, English horn, English Suites, Frederick the Great, harpsichord, horn, Michael Christie, Muse, New Brandenburg Project, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, percussion, Potsdam, ricercar, Stephen Hartke, suite, toccata, trumpet, Veni redemptor gentium, viola

In 2006, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra began the New Brandenburg Project, an effort to commission six new works inspired by Bach’s original Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-51). Under the direction of Michael Christie, the Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra will present Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos nos. 1, 3 and 6 (BWV 1046, 1048 and 1051), along with three works from the New Brandenburg Project; A Brandenburg Autumn by Stephen Hartke, Muse by Christopher Theofanidis, and Concerto with Echoes by Aaron Jay Kernis; on Sunday, 29 July 2012 at 7:30pm at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder.

A Brandenburg Autumn was composed in response to a request from Orpheus for a new work using the same instrumentation as the first of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. This had, in fact, long been a particular project that I had wanted to pursue, and, as fortune would have it, I found myself in Germany as a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin at the very time I had to compose it. Thus the piece emerged as something of a musical diary of my impressions of living not far from the palace of Charlottenburg where the dedicatee of Bach’s Brandenburgs himself lived.

The area of Brandenburg itself is, in fact, a land of lakes, and my studio was quite close to the Wannsee, the lake that borders on western Berlin as well as Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg. The first movement – Nocturne: Barcarolle – is a musical sketch of the lake, even incorporating suggestions of the sound of halyards striking against the masts of the sailboats moored at a nearby marina.

The second movement is a more playful piece – Scherzo: Colloquy – about conversation and, more particularly, the speech rhythms and dynamic of a dinner table discussion among scholars. Against a background of polite expectation, a proposition is set forth, then elaborated, questioned perhaps, even misunderstood, and so forth. Other ideas arise, some only tangentially related to the topic, and each in a different mode of speech. In the end there has been some transformation but of an inconclusive sort and the underlying politeness of the encounter prevails by quietly drawing a halt to the proceedings (coffee is served in the next room?)

The third movement – Sarabande: Palaces – is the most autumnal of the movements, being very much about my strolling through the parks of Potsdam admiring the many Hohenzollern palaces and other buildings there. It is all very beautiful, especially that time of year with the trees changing color and the sky dark and feeling so very close. It was hard not to think about Bach coming here to visit his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was working at court, and, in the end, the movement came to have a few more overt references to the Baroque period. The idea of doing a sarabande came from my regular recreational playing-through of the Bach keyboard suites, in particular the English Suites – my favorite being the one in D minor (BWV 811). The harpsichord textures in this movement, then, spring from those of the Sarabande Double in that suite. A harmonic juxtaposition in the opening seems to have led me to quote a Hohenzollern melody: the theme by Frederick the Great that Bach elaborated in the Musical Offering (BWV 1089).

Lastly, the fourth movement – Rejouissance: Hornpipe – was inspired by a desire to hear three English horns playing in unison fortissimo, and thus it begins, setting off a celebratory dance that I hope is reminiscent in spirit of the more outdoor sort of orchestral pieces of the High Baroque.

Stephen Hartke

Upon hearing the music of Christopher Theofanidis for the first time, one likely will not be surprised that it has been performed more than that of any other living American composer in recent years. His vocabulary is at once sophisticated and guileless; with his affinity for blurred consonances, he conveys the repose of standing in a medieval church in the middle of a modern city.

Much of Theofanidis’ music does in fact reference early music and liturgy, so in a sense he and Bach have dipped from the same wellspring. In Muse, the newest contribution to Orpheus’ New Brandenburg Project, Theofanidis ruminates on where Bach came from as well as where he arrived. With an instrumentation based on the Brandenburg Concerto no. 3, Muse further subdivides the triplicate string parts and grants the harpsichord an independent and prominent role.

The brisk first movement seems to expand on Bach’s own kaleidoscopic prelude style. Theofanidis establishes a dark, neo-Gothic harmonic spectrum of old church modes darting through surprising pivots and chord changes, all whirled together with nearly perpetual motion handed off among the sections. The second movement, marked with the indication to perform it “with a light touch, ornate,” is quintessential Theofanidis: note its cascading major scales and arpeggios, nostalgic ornaments, and patient elaboration of material. The third movement explores directly Bach’s relationship to the past, specifically the Gregorian chant Veni, redemptor gentium which was adapted into the Bach chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (BWV 599).

Aaron Grad

The essential element in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 6 that inspired Concerto with Echoes comes from the very first measure: the opening passage with two spiraling solo violas, like identical twins following each other breathlessly through a hall of mirrors. I also had in mind other Bach works that I think of constantly, such as the Ricercare, keyboard Toccatas, and the organ Passacaglia in C minor (BWV 582). The concerto also echoes some of my own recent works, as well as other composers I love who have paid homage to Bach in their music.

Each of the Brandenburg Concertos is exceptional in its use of instruments. This concerto mirrors the sixth by using only violas, cellos and basses, while gradually adding reeds and horns to loop back to the sound world of the first Brandenburg Concerto (and extending it with trumpet and percussion).

The first movement begins with a soft introduction that lays out some of the important building blocks of the concerto’s harmony, followed by a fiery, toccata-like virtuosic display. The lines in the movement are constantly mirrored and layered in a maze of sound. The heart of the piece, the slow movement, is essentially a Passacaglia built on slowly moving bass lines, mirrored layers of melody, and open harmonic spaces. Strongly consonant, its harmonies are built in imitative spirals, while the more angular climax uses compressions of the work’s opening harmonies. Rather than closing with a faster dance movement, the brief, slow Aria suggests a courtly dance, and is expressive and pensive, ending with a sigh rather than a flourish.

Aaron Jay Kernis

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra – The New Brandenburgs

The Palace Church Is Reconstructed

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acoustics, Bauhaus-University Weimar, cantata, chorus, Florian Scharfe, Himmelsburg, Himmelskönig sei willkommen, Jörg Arnold, Liszt School of Music Weimar, organ, painting, Palace Church, Weimar, Wilhelmsburg Palace

In a joint interdisciplinary research project between The Liszt School of Music Weimar and the Bauhaus-University Weimar, architects, engineers and musicians, using a computer model, have spatially and acoustically reconstructed the Palace Church at Weimar’s Wilhelmsburg that is often referred to as the “Himmelsburg.”

Originally, Bach’s music was performed in an attic room high above the sanctuary, and this sound energy made its way down into the marble-walled nave via a large, rectangular opening in the ceiling. Worshippers described the resulting experience as being “heavenly.” During a fire in 1774, however, the sanctuary and its musicians’ gallery, including the organ that Bach had played from 1708 to 1717, were completely destroyed.

Today, historic building plans, the outer walls of the church and a painting depicting the interior are all that remind us of the Palace Church, but from these architect Florian Scharfe has been able to generate an interactive model of the entire church. Cyber-visitors can visit Bach´s former workplace in the musicians’ gallery and consider how space limitations forced choristers and orchestral musicians to stand shoulder-to-shoulder around a narrow walkway, while facing each other across the opening in the ceiling, during cantata performances.

Computer-assisted calculations by engineer Jörg Arnold indicate that acoustical conditions within the musicians’ gallery itself were not very reverberant and would have enhanced the accurate performance of Bach’s polyphony. Below, in the open volume above the pews and at Duke Wilhelm Ernst’s middle-level balcony at the rear of the church, listeners would have enjoyed a resonance more typical for a church, yet the finest details of the musicians’ performance would have remained audible. The sound quality at the side galleries, however, would have been much less distinct.

Because Bach created a large part of his most important organ works and cantatas for this architecturally unique space, the Palace Church is of special interest to musicians who wish to inform their own interpretations with an understanding of the specific details of Bach’s performance conditions. This seems especially appropriate as the text and musical language of Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (BWV 182), the first of the cantatas that Bach composed during his Weimar period, draws a parallel between its introductory theological theme and the lofty architecture of the Palace Church.

– Neue Musikzeitung

The Two Weimar Households

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Arnstadt, Cöthen, harpsichord, Johann Gottfried Walther, Mühlhausen, primogeniture, Red Palace, Saxe-Weimar, Weimar, Wilhelmsburg Palace

The Wilhelmsburg Palace

Bach had two periods of employment in Weimar, with two different employers, and keeping track of the details of these sojourns can be difficult as the given names of his employers were similar, yet the locations of their residences were different.

Duke Johann-Ernst II had two sons who, in the absence of the right of primogeniture, inherited shared rule of Saxe-Weimar. The elder and more dominant of the two was named Wilhelm Ernst, and he resided at Wilhelmsburg Palace. The younger, Johann-Ernst III, whose health was failing, temporarily employed Bach for a few months at the beginning of 1703 as a violinist in the private chamber orchestra that he maintained at his residence at the Red Palace.

Following intervening assignments in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, Bach returned to Weimar in 1708 and went to work for the older Wilhelm Ernst Bach as a court musician at the Wilhelmsburg. Johann-Ernst III was now dead, and his eldest son, Ernst August, had ascended to the position of co-regent with Wilhelm Ernst, but he, too, was generally the more deferential of the pair.

The Red Palace

Ernst August resided at the Red Palace, and whenever Bach’s official duties for Wilhelm Ernst had been completed, Bach had permission to turn his attention to the musical activities taking place there. Ernst August’s younger half-brother also resided in the Red Palace, and this youngest Johann Ernst studied keyboard and counterpoint with Bach’s cousin Johann Gottfried Walther. Johann Ernst’s musical skills must have been more than adequate as Bach transcribed three of his concertos for his own use as solo harpsichord concertos (BWV 982, BWV 984 and BWV 987).

Increasing friction between the two competing Weimar households at the Wilhelmsburg and Red Palaces eventually caused Bach to seek alternative employment in Cöthen.

Conservatory Hosts Bach Soloists’ Academy

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American Bach Soloists, athletic club, Corey Jamason, Davies Symphony Hall, Jeffrey Thomas, Loma Prieta earthquake, Mass in B minor, Purcell, Rameau, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, War Memorial Opera House

For the next two weeks the San Francisco Conservatory of Music is the site of an advanced training program for emerging professionals and accomplished students of historically informed performance practice. Under the co-direction of Jeffrey Thomas, artistic director of the American Bach Soloists, and Corey Jamason, director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s program in Early Music, the American Bach Soloists’ Academy will offer advanced conservatory-level students and young professionals unique opportunities to study and perform Baroque music in state-of-the-art learning facilities.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music lies at the heart of the city’s arts district. Located near Davies Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Opera House, the Conservatory features performance halls, classrooms, practice rooms and teaching studios residing behind the historic façade of an athletic club that barely survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. While the resonant audience chamber of the concert hall has been fashioned from the original building’s elaborate ballroom, its performance platform is housed within new construction that replaces an adjacent structure that was too badly damaged to be repurposed for music education.

In addition to in-depth coaching and technical studies with masters of their particular instruments, Academy string players, wind and brass players, continuo and keyboard players, and singers will join their faculty in the presentation of public concerts including programs of chamber music and concert versions of Rameau’s Pigmalion and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. In collaboration with a festival chorus consisting of artists selected from Bay Area vocal ensembles, Bach’s Mass in B minor (BWV 232) will be performed on 15 July 2012.

The Lutheran Bach Speaks Italian

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Alps, Bach Biennale Weimar, Brandenburg Concertos, concerto, Corelli, improvisation, Italian Concerto, jam session, Legrenzi, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Vivaldi, Weimar

Computer rendering of Bach’s house in Weimar around 1700

The Bach Biennale Weimar, under the patronage of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, is Germany’s only festival devoted to the performance of Bach’s works, and those of his contemporaties, on period instruments. Because Bach was employed in Weimar, Thuringia on two occasions and some festival events can be performed in the same buildings where Bach worked, the festival is particularly attuned to Bach’s musical language. Each year the festival concentrates on a specific topic by linking programming to cultural and historical contexts, searching for new types of events that can complement the “classical” concert, and providing ample opportunities for improvisation.

With international artists and ensembles performing solo, chamber and orchestral music, a high-profile architecture forum and panel discussion on Bach’s house in Weimar, improvisation and jam sessions, lunchtime concerts, and concerts featuring young artists, this year’s festival, 9-15 July 2012, is entitled “Weimar Anno 1712: The Lutheran Bach Speaks Italian.” It investigates both the spiritual and secular sides of the “Weimar Bach” by focusing attention on traditional Lutheran church music and traveling the same musical journey, through the concertos of Vivaldi, Corelli, and Legrenzi, that brought Italy to Bach in Weimar. With this, the festival shows how these works tinged Bach’s own musical language with an Italian accent and suggests that the Italian Concerto (BWV 971) and the Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-1051) would probably not have been composed if Bach had not experienced music from south of the Alps while living in Weimar.

Sweet Sounds and Smells in Sangerhausen

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Europa-Rosarium, Harz mountains, Hermann Eule Orgelbau, Jena, Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach, Lüneburg, organ, Partikularschule, rose, Sangerhausen, Saxony-Anhalt, St. James Church, University of Jena, Zacharias Hildebrandt

In the autumn of 1702, shortly after the principal organist at Sangerhausen’s St. James Church had passed away, seventeen year old Johann Sebastian Bach applied for the position. Having just completed his studies at the Partikularschule in Lüneburg, Bach had ventured south in hopes of finding gainful employment, but in spite of a very successful audition, Duke Johann Georg of Saxe-Weißenfels intervened in the selection process and directed the Sangerhausen Town Council to appoint an older, more experienced candidate to the post instead. Being denied this position must have been something of a disappointment to Bach as Sangerhausen was a thriving city in sight of the Harz mountains, deriving significant wealth from its position at the junction of important roads and its nearby copper mines.

Between 1726 and 1728 Zacharias Hildebrandt constructed a large organ in the west loft of St. James, and so when the position of organist once again became vacant in 1736, Bach enthusiastically recommended that his son, Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach, vie for the position that he had lost thirty-five years earlier. Johann Gottfried Bernhard won the competition and took up residence in Sangerhausen in 1737, but already in 1738 he resigned the job as organist at St. James, registered at the University of Jena in 1739, and mysteriously died shortly thereafter.

St. James Church, a late Gothic hall church with a nave and three aisles, was built between 1457 and 1542 and still stands. Through the years its interior has been richly painted, and its 61m tall, Baroque-domed bell tower has begun to lean. Now in Saxony-Anhalt, the great organ at St. James Church in Sangerhausen sounds more sweetly than ever as the instrument of thirty stops, with two manuals and pedal, was thoroughly restored by Hermann Eule Orgelbau in 1978.

In addition to its Bach connections, Sangerhausen attracts many visitors with its Europa-Rosarium, the largest rose collection in the world with more than 8,300 rose varieties and species.