De Institutione oratoria … [Gesner on J. S. Bach] — Göttingen 1738

De Institutione oratoria libri duodecim collatione codicis Gothani Iensonianae editionis aliorumque librorum ac perpetuo commentario illustrati a Io. Matthia Gesnero … Goettingen, Vandenhoeck, 1738.

4to. (18) ff., 640 pp., (95) ff. Contemporary half calf, spine gilt, morocco label.

„There is a lengthy footnote in Gesner’s 1738 edition of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria that describes J. S. Bach in performance; indeed, it is the only eye- or ear- witness account published during Bach’s life-time.“ (R. A. Leaver, Musicology Australia 41, 2019)

Gesner on Johann Sebastian Bach, footnote on p. 61, transl. from the Latin by A. Clayton:

„You would think but slightly, my dear Fabius, of all these [the accomplishments of citharists], if, returning from the underworld, you could see Bach (to mention him particularly, since he was not long ago my colleague at the Leipzig St. Thomas School), either playing our clavier (polychordum), which is many citharas in one, with all the fingers of both hands, or running over the keys of the instrument of instruments [organum organorum], whose innumerable pipes are brought to life by bellows, with both hands, at the utmost speed, with his feet, producing by himself the most various and at the same time mutually agreeable combinations of sounds in orderly procession. If you could see him, I say, doing what many of your citharists and six hundred of your tibia players together could not do, not only, like a citharist, singing with one voice and playing his own parts, but watching over everything and bringing back to the rhythm and the beat, out of thirty or even forty musicians [symphoniaci], the one with a nod, another by tapping with his foot, the third with a warning finger, giving the right note to one from the top of his voice, to another from the bottom, and to a third from the middle of it – all alone, in the midst of the greatest din made by all the participants, and, although he is executing the most difficult parts himself, noticing at once whenever and wherever a mistake occurs, holding everyone together, taking precautions everywhere, and repairing any unsteadiness, full of rhythm in every part of his body – this one man taking in all these harmonies with his keen ear and emitting with his voice alone the tone of all the voices. Favorer as I am of antiquity, the accomplishments of our Bach, and of any others who may be like him, appear to me to effect what not may Orpheuses, nor twenty Arions, could achieve.“ (in: P. Badura-Skoda, Interpreting Bach at the Keyboard, Oxford, 1993, Appendix 3.)