Read the Review. Springs of Musical Talent and Lifelong Influences. By an auspicious coincidence, Sebastian Nagel, town piper of Gotha and friend of Johann Ambrosius Bach, happened to be in Eisenach on the third weekend in March Whatever brought him to the town at this time, he most likely joined his fellow town piper Bach for a performance, probably one in need of reinforcement by outside musicians.
They were used to helping each other outโit made sense for the musicians from the two towns, eighteen miles apart and seats of neighboring ducal courts, to team up for special occasions.
Nagel and Bach, each in his capacities as town piper, director of town music, and member of the ducal capelle, the court's performing ensemble, were in charge of such events. Thus it was that on the day following Oculi Sunday, four weeks before Easter, Sebastian Nagel and his colleague Ambrosius Bach, together with the ducal forester Johann Georg Koch, arrayed themselves around the ancient baptismal font inside St.
George's, Eisenach's main church. Magister Johann Christoph Zerbst functioned as the officiating minister at the baptism of the child born to Ambrosius and Maria Elisabeth Bach on the previous Saturday, March Nagel was given the honor of holding the baby over the baptismal font because he was the one of the two godfathers from whom the boy was to receive his middle nameโSebastian.
The short ceremony took place on a historic site at the foot of the Wartburg, the medieval hilltop castle overlooking Eisenach. The Wartburg had formed the setting in for the famous Tourney of Song, a historic highpoint of German minstrelsy, and three centuries later provided refuge to Martin Luther while he translated the Greek New Testament into German. The venerable St. George's Church, an ancient structure whose origins date back to , had witnessed the wedding in of Landgrave Louis IV of Thuringia and Elizabeth, daughter of Hungarian King Andrew II later canonized as Saint Elizabeth, she led a simple life and personally tended the sick and the poor.
