No Two Snowflakes

When Gottfried Heinrich Bach was born, Johann Sebastian Bach and his second wife, Anna Magdalena, were overjoyed. It had been their second baby in two years, and the first boy from the new marriage. Bach was beginning to forget about the pain of losing his first wife, Maria Barbara. He even put away the small sketch of her that he kept on his desk in the study.

But in the second week, they knew that something was not quite right. Gottfried moved his arms in the most agitated manner and refused to take Anna Magdalena’s breast. The doctor came and examined him. He told them that it was still too early to form any conclusions but recommended, as Anna Magdalena was already breast-feeding her previous child, Christiana, and was responsible for the four older children, from her husband’s first marriage, that she should obtain the help of a professional wet nurse. The doctor also advised her to have Gottfried swaddled in order to minimise his dangerous arm spasms.

Swaddling was common practice in the eighteenth century. As a baby, Anna Magdalena had been swaddled, bound on a wooden board and hung on a peg behind the hot oven where she would stay warm, and out of the way, while her mother attended to other business. The local church rector’s wife promoted swaddling as especially beneficial for boys. She believed it helped them with firmness and uprightness of moral character.

Anna Magdalena engaged a wet nurse, a large and quiet woman, who also served as the local midwife. Gottfried was bound with three separate cloths. The headband was a tri-cornered cloth in which the baby’s head was tightly wrapped and two ends of the cloth drawn down and crossed over the chest, then brought under the arms and secured behind the back. After six months, this piece was discarded, when the baby demonstrated he could hold up his own head. The pelvis was wrapped in the second cloth, placed under the buttocks. Two corners were brought around his waist and then down into the inguinal fold. The third corner was brought up under his bottom, between his legs, to the navel. Finally, his trunk was wrapped, in the remaining material, with arms at the side.

In this way, Gottfried’s arm movements were restricted. He was rarely bathed and it was very difficult to hug him, and impossible for him to hug his mother, which distressed her. Occasionally, Anna Magdalena would accidentally bind him too tightly and his little face would turn purple, but for the most part it was a simple matter that did seem to keep him quiet.

The wet nurse suggested weaning him slowly, by letting him suck for a while on a nipple-shaped plug of bread, steeped in sugar water. But, by the age of two, it was clear that Gottfried was a slow child requiring special attention. Anna Magdalena made a decision to give him that focused attention, and he became her major purpose in life.

She taught Gottfried to draw and would spend hours painstakingly teaching him about colour and paint. She made his teething as painless as possible by easing out the milk teeth when they were ready to go and by rubbing a mild narcotic on his sore gums.

Her husband Johann Sebastian’s behaviour with Gottfried was initially atrocious. His good Christian spirit seemed to evaporate when the child entered the room.

Anna Magdalena never hit Gottfried and she would not allow her husband to strike him as he did their other boys. She preferred to discipline him with kindness.

Johann Sebastian was initially ashamed of his son Gottfried. The boy was different from his other children. Some said slower. Retarded. But Anna Magdalena never allowed him to use those words. She thought Gottfried possessed the most beautiful eyes. A unique way of looking into you.

Bach thought him simply dull. He refused to speak to him. He wouldn’t hold him. He would never let the child anywhere near his clavier.

“For God’s sake!” Anna Magdalena admonished. “He’s only a small child. You’re his father.”

Bach couldn’t understand why God would give him a child like this. Why was he being punished?

Anna Magdalena felt that the Lord had given them a gift; those little hands would soon open a necessary doorway into themselves.

Bach was always calling for the oldest daughter, Catharina, or Anna Magdalena, to take Gottfried away so that he could work. But it wasn’t only that. Bach seemed genuinely afraid of the boy. He couldn’t concentrate when Gottfried was watching.

One day, Bach had the string scores to the Sunday cantata spread out on the floor. He left the room for a moment and when he returned Gottfried was standing there, stark naked, diaper off, urinating all over the viola part.

Bach exploded. He stomped out of the house. Catharina came in, saw the mess, Gottfried standing there naked, and just broke into giggling. Anna Magdalena came in and picked up the baby and then she started giggling too. Both of them laughing until they were crying.

Bach returned to the house after a short while. He had calmed down somewhat. He gathered up his soaked score and tried wiping it but it only made it worse. The ink had run. Anna Magdalena was holding Gottfried. She just looked at him. He looked at her. Then something happened. Bach started laughing, too. He reached out and took Gottfried from Anna Magdalena and held him for the first time.

After that, he treated Gottfried differently.

He began to sit Gottfried on his lap and teach him how to play simple melodies on the keyboard. The child developed a fascination for the clavier. He loved to listen to his father play and Bach created playful little tunes with sudden dynamic changes to make him laugh.

One day, when Gottfried was five years old, Bach was arranging one of Luther’s hymns for the Sunday service. He had created a fairly straightforward four-part harmonisation, and was playing it through on the clavier. He got up to fetch something from the sitting room. Suddenly, he heard the melody. Gottfried was standing at the clavier, not only playing the tune accurately but also ornamenting it in the most violent and chromatic manner. He repeated the simple tune, over and over, each time at greater volume, and each time with more complexity. It sounded like an irritating banging noise to Anna Magdalena, but Bach had tears in his eyes and it was clear he understood some kind of logic in what Gottfried was doing. He thought it beautiful.

Bach often told Anna Magdalena, later, that he gained much inspiration from listening to Gottfried’s unfettered compositions, and felt that Gottfried had the most unique gift for harmony of all the boys.

Anna Magdalena accepted Gottfried the way he was and was grateful for the little miracles. She often told friends, “The weaker, the more helpless the babe, the greater the parent’s fondness for him.”

It was unfortunate that Gottfried was unable to learn more musical discipline from his father. Some regarded it as a tragedy but Bach never saw it that way. He often sat Gottfried on his lap and moved his small hands over the keys. Gottfried had amazing short-term memory but was unable to retain long-term pattern recognition. Sometimes he would play an idea, that his father had just shown him, instantly with his right hand and then follow the line with his left hand practically instantaneously—only one note behind the right hand! It was uncanny. He had no traditional respect for harmony or structure but an almost mechanical ability to imitate and isolate. Something that Bach was not even able to do. This created very unusual harmonic colours.

Gottfried particularly loved the snow and he loved playing outside. His father would bundle him up and take him out after a good snowstorm. Often drifts would completely cover the front door. Bach would hack and shovel tunnels and carry Gottfried through, telling him that they were going to the White Kingdom of Crescendo, that the snow was frozen music and that they had to create special instruments for the blizzard angels to play to bring back warm weather.

Bach would build snowmen with Gottfried—but not traditional shapes. Snowmen playing celli, a conductor holding a birch stick for a baton, with broken coal for eyes. Timpani. Gottfried tried to fashion smaller instruments—the violas, the oboes—with tiny stones for the keys.

The frozen musicians were popular amongst the other children. The neighbours would stop and watch.

Then, the sun would come out and Bach and Gottfried would sit on the front step in silence and watch the whole orchestra melt.