Rebuke to Bach: excerpt from the consistory proceedings
Actum, February 21, 1706
Reprove him for having hitherto made many curious variationes in the chorale, and mingled many strange tones in it, and for the fact that the Congregation has been confused by it. In the future, if he wished to introduce a tonus peregrinus, he was to hold it out, and not to turn too quickly to something else or, as had hitherto been his habit, even play a tonus contrarius.
Recent scholarship by bwv1080 points to this disciplinary note as the largest contributing factor to J. S. Bach’s infamous Arnstadt nude streak of 1706.
