When: 1717 – 2 December 1717

Bach in the Bastille, 1717

The court organist asked to leave, and the duke had him locked up for four weeks before letting him go in disgrace.

Weimar's most famous employment ended in a cell. When Johann Sebastian Bach pressed to be released from the ducal service for a better post, Duke Wilhelm Ernst had him shut in the palace's Bastille for close to four weeks. He was let go on 2 December 1717 "mit angezeigter Ungnade" — with the duke's displeasure formally noted.

What the quarrel was about

Bach had been in Weimar since 1708 as court organist.^[1] By 1717 he had an offer elsewhere and wanted out. A servant of a small court did not simply hand in notice: leaving required the ruler's consent, and pressing for it against the ruler's wishes was insubordination. The duke's answer was custody in the palace's own lock-up, the room the town called the Bastille.

Four weeks and a formula

The Thuringian Bach festival's account gives the length as close to four weeks and the release as 2 December 1717, with the phrase that makes the whole business unmistakable: he went "mit angezeigter Ungnade", with disfavour indicated.^[1] It is the administrative language of a court that wanted the departure on record as a punishment rather than a permission.

What it cost the town

He went to Cöthen and never worked in Weimar again. The palace burned in 1774 with the chapel he had played, and what a visitor finds today is a plaque on the Bastille noting the imprisonment. A small residence had employed a musician of the first rank for nine years and closed the account with a note in the file — which is, in its way, a very precise portrait of the Baroque court.