Bach
In 1717, when Scarlatti as yet dreamed not of his Spanish renown, and shortly after Couperin’s first little pieces had appeared, the Parisian clavecinist Marchand made a journey to Germany. At the Polish court of Dresden he created a furore by his playing, and a famous contest was the result, got up, as it appears, by intrigue, between Marchand and an organist of Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach. The King was present in person. Marchand began by improvising variations on a French song, and was loudly applauded. Bach then took the same theme, but varied it twelve times over so marvellously that without further contest he carried off the palm from his famous adversary, who, when Bach proposed a competition on the organ, incontinently fled from Dresden.
Who was this Bach, and what was this sudden development of German music? Hitherto not much had been heard of it in foreign countries, and on looking at the German tablatures[73] of the older time one could only recognise an honourable but somewhat clumsy struggle. In the sixteenth century, perhaps when, in wider circles, some mention was made of the great vocal compositions of Isaac and Senfl, a certain Nürnberger, Hasler by name, proposed himself to Gabrieli in Venice as a pupil, and later his renown was heard at the courts of Vienna and Dresden. In the next century another German, Johann Jakob Froberger, was associated with Frescobaldi in Rome, and his fame also was afterwards heard at the Viennese court. He cannot have been unpopular, for a number of anecdotes clustered round his name. Froberger, and with him Pachelbel of Nürnberg, began the emancipation of the clavier in Germany. In the Hanse Towns of the north were good organists, such as Buxtehude in Lübeck and Reincke in Hamburg; but no one in Italy or France troubled himself with them.
The fame of Italian sonatas and French suites was such a matter of course, that the Leipzig organist, Kuhnau, when he in 1700 published his collections of genuinely German clavier-pieces, plumed himself mightily, in his chatty prefaces, on the fact that now at last, even in Germany, good music was to be had, which could take its place by the side of the foreign. “Even in Germany,” he exclaimed, “oranges and citrons at last bloom!” The excellent Kuhnau ventured to give the title of sonata to a piece on the model of the Italian sonata da camera, although it was written not for violin but for clavier. Hence it is often said that he was the creator of the clavier-sonata. But this piece has nothing in common with the later popular composition of that name; it was a cento of several movements in various tempi, as the suite was a cento of several dances. Nay, the Cyclopes of Rameau stands nearer to the later type than this. The suites and sonatas of Kuhnau are pure clavier-pieces, somewhat marred by the usual failings of youth, and running every theme to death, but clear, vigorous, and adapted to the fingers, smooth in feeling and modern in technique. But the most curious work of Kuhnau is his “Biblical Histories.” Here he illustrates on the clavier all kinds of Scriptural stories, like the death of Goliath, the cure of Saul, the marriage of Jacob, Hezekiah’s recovery, the life of Gideon, and Jacob’s death, in sonata-form, on the model of the programme-music[74] of the time, and with the assistance of verbal elucidations. Yet Kuhnau is as little as Froberger or anyone else a forerunner of Bach, who so overshadows the work of his predecessors that one may almost say he is independent of them.
It is indeed hard to compare Bach even with the other wonders of the history of art. For there is scarcely one who is so identical with his art as is Bach with music. A Michel Angelo does not include a Rembrandt, nor a Rembrandt a Monet; but in Bach there is a Beethoven, a Schumann, a Wagner. I believe that if the Almighty had wished to offer to men in sensible form what at that time was called music, he would then have given them the work of Bach. In it there are the deepest secrets of musical polyphony, as well as the most intense degrees of decadent expression; the mysticism of the Middle Ages is there no less than the perspective of the future. But content and form are not dissociated as they are in history; they are identical, they are one and the same, as they are in the philosophic concept of music. Once, and perhaps once only, in this world has the “Thing in Itself” been realised, and the difference between concept and actuality been reduced to nothing. The history of music can be written with almost exclusive reference to Bach. We might show how it has converged towards him and again diverged from him in search of its special partialities. We might point out how it revolves round him, comes to him, and goes from him in the course of the centuries, just as in the case of the imitative arts we show that they come from Nature and go to her.
Bach’s life was the most uneventful conceivable. He made no journeys to Rome and Paris; he learned musical literature by studying and copying. A true “Old Master,” he sits with his serious, almost severe countenance, in the midst of his large family of twenty children, all musical, and composes for instruction or for his own pleasure, without seeing many of his compositions printed. His renown had no wide extent;[75] his bold extravagances aroused only that hostility which does not bring honour, and in his successive posts at Arnstadt, Weimar, Köthen, and Leipzig, he had little opportunity for sunning himself in the rays of princely favour. A single moment of his life perhaps stands out prominently, when Frederick the Great at one of his concerts received the list of strangers in Potsdam, and interrupted the playing to say to his officers, “Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived.” He was instantly summoned, and, in his travelling dress as he was, improvised on a theme of the King’s, which, when completed and published, he dedicated to the King as “Musikalisches Opfer.” When two great men meet, the whole world feels the electric shock.
With the appearance of Bach the whole history of music turns to Germany. And clavier-music, so far as it has a particular meaning, is henceforth German. England, France, and Italy, sink either gradually or suddenly into the background.
Bach’s clavier-music is a complete world, a mirror of his music as a whole. As Nature is her whole self in every leaf, so in every piece or group of pieces Bach is the whole Bach. Thus for the first time it came about that the clavier became capable of interpreting the whole nature of a great man. With the early Englishmen it was the embodiment of the whole tone-poet; with Couperin the whole man, indeed, but a man who was nothing but a dancer; with Scarlatti a whole clavier-player; but with Bach the whole nature of a man of whom it is impossible to say whether the musician or the intellect in him was the greater. This was the first outstanding peak attained by the clavier.
The natural creative principle from which Bach works, that which gives unity to his being, is the conception of counterpoint. Music can be written in which every single voice is treated as an independent line, and in which the art of combining these lines reaches the highest possible development, as in a picture of Holbein—and this is counterpoint. Or music could be written, in which an upper melody, clearly illuminated, runs on an advancing basis of accompanying harmony without much attention to purity of voice, as in a work of Ribera—and this is the style resting on “accompaniment.” Bach’s essence lies in the contrapuntal method. He conceives the voices over against one another; and at the very moment in which he interjects a motive, there is a second or third motive introduced, embracing the other in contrapuntal wise.
Konrad Pau(l)mann, the first German
writer for keyed instruments, blind.
Died 1473. After a modern drawing
by Wintter.
Yet he has taken the accompaniment-style also into himself. Just as little as he can ever be censured for defect in melody, so little has he ever neglected the newer “secular” harmony—rather, he has carried on his counterpoint in accordance with its laws. He has of course as little respect as any other first class musician for the common Italian accompaniment with its singing melody alone. If he adopts it, it is in very discreet fashion; the richly decorated arioso soaring above the vigorously moving basso continuo in such delicate arrangement that we think rather of an ornamented contrapuntal passage than of a light singing voice accompanied by the cembalo with figured bass.
In this secularisation of counterpoint by means of the contrasting features of an arioso, the foundation of a bass, and the modern system of a network of harmony, he exhibits the characters of both musical styles in one, and gives us the unification of two epochs, which necessarily opened a boundless prospect into the future.
Two or more voices running alongside are treated in their relation to one another. Here the simple contrapuntal exercise, which sets them neatly together, and enfolds their rhythms into each other, will soon cease to satisfy. The best-sounding contrapuntal relations are those in which the voices show some slight traces of imitation. From the lighter imitations rises the stricter canon,[76] and at last the exact and regular succession of canonic repetitions is reached. The ideal is then an exercise in which every note of every voice has its imitative relations, and in which the whole is so interconnected that not a stone can be removed without bringing about the fall of the whole structure.
We see Bach himself at this work. He works more lightly and elegantly, or more heavily and massively, not by arbitrary choice, but according to his subject. He begins with a Prelude, in which a gentle interlacing of voices answers to his mood; imitations, arising as if of their own accord, are inserted here and there. Then there is the final gigue of a suite, in which a rapid 6/8 theme has to be treated, in spite of its rapidity, with a certain canonic severity, which gives solidity to the conclusion of the whole suite. Then again we have a slow movement of intertwining voices, such as is found after the first preluding bars of the F sharp minor and C minor Toccatas; the voices alternately take up the mournful themes, with no strict regularity of exact succession, wonderfully floating, according to a fixed purpose, and gently swimming in their harmonies, with no recognisable support, almost a fairy-like echo of mediæval counterpoint. Or, finally, there is a regular fugue, which stands there like a monument, with hardly a superfluous note; in regular succession the voices present the theme in single or double counterpoint, always alternately imitating at the fourth or fifth, with a never-failing reference to the tonic key; and near the close, where still greater closeness of imitation is demanded, proudly and stiffly vaulted over with diminutions or augmentations of the theme.
Bach has left us clavier-works in which we see perfected the simplest form which the contrapuntal conception could assume in his hands. These are the fifteen “Inventions” and the fifteen “Symphonies,” which in the manuscript appear with the inscription, “Straightforward directions, by which the amateur of the clavier, but especially the one anxious to learn, is shown a plain method, not only of playing properly in two parts, but also, on further progress, to undertake three obbligato parts; at the same time also not only gaining good inventions, but also personally performing them, and, above all, attaining a cantabile style in playing, as well as a good foretaste of composition.” This curious preface ends, “Verfertiget von Joh. Seb. Bach, hochf. Anhalt-Cöthenischen Capell-meister, Anno Christi 1723.”
The simple homeliness of the time speaks in this title-page; and it is well to appropriate to-day as much of this as possible, in order to lose nothing in the enjoyment of these fifteen two-voiced Inventions and these fifteen three-voiced Symphonies. Even to-day Bach demands the desire of learning in amateurs, who should feed their pleasure with diligence, and enter into the feelings of the composer. One who sits at the clavier with a zeal worthy of Bach’s compositions, will find in these thirty simple contrapuntal pieces a small storehouse of treasures. He will be captivated by the elegance of this canonic music as soon as his fingers are able to play in parts; but he will never be released from the influence of the many-coloured glittering character of these compositions. They are the drawings of a master, which in a few strokes depict great objects; sketches of a great artist, so full of scholarship that they cover the whole of life. The solemn Invention in F minor, the eccentric one in B flat major, the Symphony which sounds so mournfully in E flat major, or the chromatically gloomy F minor, the sprightly staccato G minor, the graceful A major whose traces are to be found in so many works of a later time, and the rhythmical, freely-singing B minor, with its harp-like strokes, in which Beethoven and Chopin, yet unborn, seem to meet—these pieces were then unique in literature, and still remain so.
Skull of Sebastian Bach, with Seffner’s modelling of his features.
In these fantasy-pieces the fugal conception is dealt with on a small scale; in the Toccatas on a large scale. The clavier-toccatas of Bach are free pieces of that wonderful many-sidedness of construction which a music might still possess that had not yet stiffened into conventionalism. When we sit down to play the Inventions and Symphonies, we point our fingers as if for miniature work. But when we sit down to the Toccatas, we dispose our arms and hands, as would have been said in Bach’s time, “in einer gewissenen grossartigen Freyheit,” with a certain large freedom. These Toccatas will be eternal favourites, because of their air of improvisation which develops the fughetta out of the preludic movement, and scatters the playful, pleasant technique in the midst of the severities of imitation. Inexhaustible in the apparent formlessness of their form, they stand on the threshold of modern literature as the great models of that true clavier-style which will always have a touch of the extempore as one of its characteristic features.
In the Toccatas it can be seen how Bach permits his fugal conceptions organically to grow. It is in them that we see the psychology of the fugue more purely than in the strictest formal fugal movements. Take, for example, the F sharp minor Toccata. Here the fingers preludise over the keyboard, gradually growing slower, the passages differentiate themselves into motives, which gently imitate each other, until at length they come to rest on a solid bass. This is the moment of lyric inspiration; and the soul sighs itself out in a slow movement, which weaves itself in fugal style, speedily sweeping forth in its own free, harmonious woven-work. A staccato-motive breaks in; rolling semiquavers soon crystallise around it; it grows and swells in a three-voiced fugue; loosens itself, becomes lighter, and passes off into an operatic joyousness, circling round in repetitions, which to us seem almost too wide for the narrow significance of this motive. A pause, and in the new-won freshness emerges the first chromatic adagio-motive as a lively floating fugue, soon breaking forth into four voices, and ending in a stirring finale.
Take the D major Toccata. Here there is a joyous prelude of ascending scales, running off in chords and tremoli. An insertion of a fresh capriccioso motive follows, which pursues its course mingled with playful figures. A pause in adagio; mournfully moving melodies, freely accompanied by tremoli; softly passing over into a quiet three-voice fugue, which again leads to preluding passages, speaking recitatives, broken chords, till the great wild hunt of triplets surges in its fugal power. This D major piece is in content and technique Schumann all over.
Similarly, one easily recognises the development of soul in the solemn C minor Toccata, which is dominated almost throughout by a charmingly-constructed fugue; or in the D minor Toccata, with its stirring and beautiful adagio-movement; the G minor with its bacchanalian finale; the rapid G major; and the never-to-be-forgotten E minor with its clearness and restraint. They are all built up on an inner meaning, and show a grandeur in their intimate nature such as only Beethoven has dared to express on the clavier, and a soulfulness never surpassed by a programme-musician in our century in his own style. But the fugue has in them become the indwelling soul, and the whole speech of music has absolutely ascended into their form. We see it come, grow, and depart.
One who has investigated the psychology of Bach’s fugue in the Toccatas, will no longer fail to recognise it in his pure and absolute fugues. A fugue of Bach—this sounds to the lay musical ear as the very sum of all that is academic. But in reality never were fugues written which were developed less academically, or which flow so entirely from the soul. Only take the fugal form not as the end in itself, and not as a mere example of musical architecture—only take pains to discover the spirit of its unfolding—and we shall be astounded at the endless variety of the inward musical life which is profusely showered into this form. The essence of a fugue of Bach is just this freedom from all architecture, this suppression of all calculation in favour of the spiritual development. The fugal form, that well-known series of enlargements and arrangements of the pure canon, is to him a prime datum, from which, nevertheless, he has formed no unbending principle. But he works with this material in such a way that he keeps the development of a piece always subordinate to the character which the fugal theme imposes on him. The theme is the title, the piece the contents.
His genius reveals itself in perception of the thousand possibilities of unfolding which lie in his themes—some advancing diatonically, some studded over with pauses, some with sudden stops on sevenths, some marching on in massive choral style, some humorously staccato, especially those with startling false accents, others drawn in large outlines which excite curiosity and scarcely stand forth in their clear rhythm till the ninth or tenth bar, and which he was so fond of because they gave the strongest stimulus to the coming development.
J. S. Bach.
Bust by Carl Seffner. Modelled on the actual skull. After His, J. S. Bach (Vogel, Leipsic).
Let the “layman” accustom himself not to be frightened by fugues. The fugue in the grand style of Bach, constructed with that unparalleled art which the first C major fugue in the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier” displays, or which is shown in the C sharp minor fugue, with its three themes gradually stratified one above the other, or rolling themselves off with that extraordinary ease which we daily admire in the famous A minor—this kind of fugue is a necessary speech of music: it is melody, it is a natural language which can never disappear. To grasp it, to assimilate it, until the many voices or even many themes of its development stand clearly before our eyes in their full characteristic value, is a feast for the musical epicure to which hardly anything else can be compared. Bach’s fugues are playable. They are not too easy; but they are so in the spirit of the clavier that the fingers soon lose their timidity, and the work is as a mirror in which they speedily recognise the necessary nature of their motion. And there is an eternally fresh animation in this activity, in which no deception, no dilettantism, no superfluity can exist for a moment.
The great artist, to whom the “Fantasy” is a presupposition, does not work on it, however much it may seem to the crowd a chief aim; he works on the form which requires this kind of work. We see Bach, through his whole life, labouring at the fugue; and the encyclopædic work, in the midst of which he died, “The Art of Fugue,” shows us heights of power in this form which make us dizzy. Besides certain scattered fugues, he has made a collection of different periods in the two volumes of the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier.” Here every major and minor mode of every semitone is doubly treated, with a prelude and fugue—a comprehensiveness of arrangement which was partly due to the taste of the time,[77] and partly can be referred to the secondary aim of the work, which was the introduction of a system of clavier-tuning which should be sufficient for practical purposes, in which no acoustic solecisms should be committed to suit convenience, and in which all the keys should be used indifferently and in their completeness by pupils. It is not hard to detect that the unity of these two volumes is not very complete. Even Spitta, a meritorious but somewhat tasteless biographer, who seeks to find the “higher” unity in all Bach’s works, is compelled to grant that there are varieties of style and intrusions of alien matter in the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier.” But that is no loss. The brilliant many-sidedness of its contents can support even this discontinuity of style (which, by the way, is but a slight discontinuity) and this artistic fusion of certain preludes and fugues, which originally were not composed with a view to each other. No one will fail to perceive how wonderfully the preludes combine with each other and with many of the fugues. The whole, perhaps, gains something of the character of the old composite epics, such as Homer or the Bible. Bach’s autograph of the first part bears the date 1722; there is no complete autograph of the second part, and this Bible of clavier-playing was first printed in 1800, two or three generations after its production.[78]
If we look at the original editions of the six works which were printed in Bach’s time, they speak in no uncertain tone of the taste of the age. From 1726 to 1730 appeared the “Klavierübung”—the first part, with the suites which are known as “Partiten.” In 1735 we have the second part of the Klavierübung, containing the Italian Concerto and the “Ouverture nach französischer Art” (also a suite). In 1739 appeared the third part, in which are found organ chorales along with four duets for two claviers. In these the distinction between organ and clavier is as feebly marked as it always was before the invention of the pianoforte. The fourth part, which appeared in 1742, contains the great Variations for clavicymbal with two keyboards. Besides these, in 1747 appeared the “Musikalisches Opfer,” in which the theme of Frederick the Great is elaborated; and, in 1752, two years after Bach’s death, was published the “Kunst der Fuge.” He could only venture on the printing of the “Kunst” in his later years, when the Bach fugue had made some way in the world. The “Musikalisches Opfer” came out under the protection of the King; all the other clavier-pieces which seemed to him likely to pay for the printing are of a lighter kind—suites and concertos “for the delight of amateurs,” as it stands on the title-page. The three types of the great Bach counterpoint—the miniature Invention, the free Toccata, and the absolute Fugue—then, as now, appealed to too select a circle to attain the popularity of dances and concertos.
If Bach’s greatness is in the former works stupendous, in the latter it is loveable. Here we learn to know his other side. It is his “other manner.” Here, instead of the severe canonic development of a theme, attention is paid to the voices as parts of a harmonious whole; he steps down from the cothurnus, and moves familiarly in pleasant comedy. Still, the contrapuntal conception is the basis of the structure; but simply harmonised floriations of melody are interwoven, so that the clavier almost rivals the arioso of a violin. Between the extremes of the first movement of the “Chromatic Fantasia,” with its free rhythms, arpeggios, recitatives, and song-passages, and of the second movement, the regular fugue—extremes which mark the two limits of Bach’s style—there is an endless abundance of methods of treatment, in which now the contrapuntal element and now the arioso takes the lead. We see Bach in this second group of his clavier-works, the suites and concertos, pass over into the enchanting fields of Italian sensuous music. But it is remarkable how he never loses for a single moment his unique depth and his insatiable delight in form. There is a very abyss between a suite of Bach, founded on the Eternities, and one of Handel’s, owing its popularity to the transitory charms of dexterous trivialities.
There are three great groups of Bach’s clavier-suites: the so-called Partiten, which appeared in print in his own life-time, the “English Suites,” and the “French Suites.” The Partiten, which were first published separately, must, as the earliest work of this author known to the public, have struck the whole world with bewilderment. It was the first bound of a unique genius, the elevation of a traditional form of art into quite unparalleled shapes, a storm of intellectual lightning in a region long regarded as exclusively owned by Frenchmen and Italians. Even to-day the Partiten belong to the most select class of clavier-literature; and I cannot for a moment conceive how they are not to be regarded as superior by many degrees to the English and French suites. In no book is the future of music more clearly foretold. To see in the B flat major corrente, Chopin; in the B flat major gigue, Schumann; in the C minor sinfonia, Beethoven; in the C minor Rondo and Capriccioso, Mendelssohn; in the A minor Scherzo, Mozart, is no mere enthusiastic fancy.
The Fifteenth Sinfonia of John Sebastian Bach, from the Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.
The Partiten outgrew the ordinary scheme of the suites (allemande, corrente, saraband, gigue) as Beethoven’s sonatas outgrew the old scheme of sonatas. They have given a new life and a new spirit to a traditional form. The suite, which at the end of the seventeenth century has become merely conventional, is so elevated by the spirit of Bach that it thenceforward stands in the world of actuality. Even Schumann selects a similar form for the expression of modern emotions. The suite having been thus despatched, the sonata is in similar fashion put into precise and regular form, to be transfigured later by Beethoven with the same modern spirit. Bach had the fortune and the genius to relegate the traditional suite into the past, and to see the conventional sonata dawning in the future. Thus with him the dance-piece and the free piece remained fresh and lively. Suite and sonata were only different external ways for reducing several pieces to unity. There, men took their stand on the old familiar series of dance-tunes, without ever thinking of the dances themselves; here, they found for the first movement a practical form, and, in the event, ranged the adagio, scherzo, and rondo together, just as their predecessors had used the saraband, minuet, and gigue. On this tendency to unity on the part of the clavier-pieces, from the first English variations, through Couperin’s Ordres, to Bach’s suites, Italian sonatas and German sonatas, Chopin’s Albums, Schumann’s Scenes, Liszt’s Epics, too much stress need not be laid. Even more than the orchestra, the clavier leans to short pieces, but the intellect demands some excuse for binding them together.
If we take a striking liveliness as the characteristic of the Partiten, we indeed find a feature in which they are distinguished from the French Suites, but which is far from exhausting their qualities. Solid melodies, humorous capriccios, enchanting dances, tuneful airs, everything is included in these works. In their pages we realise how the spirit of Bach strives to utter the very utmost of which it feels itself capable. And in these introductory preludes, toccatas, or symphonies, in these flowing allemandes, gliding correntes, heavy sarabands, filigree-worked gigues, in those numerous intermezzo movements, such as burlesques, rondos, airs, minuets, and passepieds, there are turns of genius, the form of which is impressed for ever on the mind. I think of the sweet running movements of the astonishing B flat major Gigue; of the brilliant structure of the C minor Capriccio, which concludes the Partita in place of a Gigue; of the D major aria, in which breathes the whole grace of the eighteenth century; of the bold and rhapsodical Saraband in D major; of the rich colouring of the introductory E minor Toccata; the rocking melody of the allemande, the sombre glow of the saraband, the wayward syncopations of the gigue.
The six English Suites, which we may certainly assume to have been put into juxtaposition by Bach himself, stand between the six printed Partiten and the six French Suites, whose combination was only probably, not certainly, due to Bach. They would seem to have been called “English” suites, because they were arranged for some Englishman; the original title was apparently “suites avec prélude.” For the English suites, like the Partiten, have each a fairly long introduction, fugal in style, but not conforming to the strictest laws of the fugue. The intermezzi, also, are as numerous as in the case of the Partiten. But that extreme intellectual severity is wanting; they are more graceful and polite. This character is especially noticeable in the introductory fugal movements and the intermediate dance pieces; and one who seeks rather a play of tone than grandeur of soul will perhaps find here a richer yield than in the Partiten. Neat, volkslied-like sarabands, ravishing bourrées, rococo gavottes, ornamental minuets, the exquisitely delicate passepied in E minor—these all lie so thick one on another, that one cannot recall a more sparkling album of dainty dances in the whole eighteenth century. It is true that in the Vienna school (as in the case of the younger[79] Muffat and others) there is in this class of dances a gentle soothing quality, which gives us the first hint of the coming beautiful Viennese dance-music; but they are, like those of Handel, too short in duration and too featureless for us to be able to return to them with the extraordinary affection with which we return to those of Bach. These are so rich in invention that they cannot in many centuries lose their flavour. The dancing underpart of the D major gavotte in the D minor suite, the multiform air of the D minor, E minor, and A minor sarabands, the filigree-counterpoint of the E minor Passepied, the extreme daring of the A minor bourrée, the transport of the A minor prelude, which even grows into a roundelay,—what a depth of originality is there in all these pieces, in which the repetitions so wonderfully satisfy the laws of the mind without becoming mechanical!
How the French Suites came by their name is hard to say. More French than the English suites they are certainly not, for they are quite as Bach-like as the latter. Without Preludes and without too many Intermezzi or “Doubles” (repetitions with variations), they are of astonishing variety. The Allemandes especially, as first movements in every suite, display such a manifoldness of form, that in fact nothing is left in common to them but the four-time beat. The song in the Saraband and the dance in the Intermezzi appear to the same effect as in the English suites, and a light tone runs through the whole. But the tone is lightest of all in the E major suite, which with its rolling allemande and courante, its singing saraband, its stiff and formal gavotte, its characteristic polonaise, its tricksy bourrée, and its cheerful gigue, is a perfect paradise of dainty devices. The flowing courante in it strikes our fancy; for it is precisely in the courantes of these suites with their heavy old-fashioned movements that we shall most often hit on the rare occasions on which we must regard Bach as already obsolete. The ornamentations tend to appear less befitting to us, scattered so profusely as they are in these movements. But to Bach, little as he could as yet succeed in emancipating himself from ornamentations, they were no longer such a matter of course as with the old French clavecinists. If we compare the different manuscripts of his works, we see the uncertainties and alterations. Bischoff, in his excellent critical edition of Bach’s clavier-music (Steingräber) has therefore only engraved large those ornamentations which were without doubt always played by Bach. Taste will fill them in in certain places on grounds of symmetry and “thematic”; but they are no longer bewildering in their profusion.
Among the suites which do not belong to these collections, we recollect with great pleasure the dainty dances and intermezzi—for example in the E flat major suite, and especially that in B minor with overture in French style (Largo—Fuga—Largo) which appeared in the second part of the Klavierübung as a piece for two manuals. It presents, among the many intermezzi, a gavotte in the style of the orchestral Partiten, which links itself with the choicest dances, in graceful style, of the preceding century. From the clavier-suites we pass to the clavier-sonatas, which, still in the style of Italian art, mingled with dances, offer free combinations of different movements. The melodious andante of the D minor sonata, and its final allegro-movement rattling off almost in one part, are perfect pearls. A step further we reach the fantasias with fugues; especially the polyphonic one in A minor, the recitatival “Chromatische” and the concerto-like C minor, fugally treated, but still not a fugue. These three fantasia-pieces were Bach’s direct bequests to the future. In the polyphony of the brilliantly rushing fantasia in A minor, rising with endlessly delicate melody, we are reminded of the “Meistersinger”; in the chromatic fantasia, with its broad narration and grandiose concluding pedal point, the clavier seems to us to speak with the freedom of a drama; in the significantly constructed C minor fantasia rests the whole formal talent of the instrumental composers of the expiring eighteenth century.
The three “brilliant” fantasias incline naturally to the concerto style, which partly abandoned counterpoint in favour of a mere accompaniment, and partly subordinated it to the careful elaboration of a single voice-part. The problem of committing a whole concerto to the clavier alone, Bach has solved in his famous “Italian Concerto”—Italian in the conception of the style of execution proper to concertos, which in Italy developed itself specially on the violin—Italian in the form of a slow movement enclosed by two quicker movements, which had emerged as the most practical method for the violin (half in rivalry with the Tutti, half in the interest of solo virtuosity). Bach has in the Italian concerto perfectly attained the object of writing in several movements a clavier piece fit for execution. The grand sonatas of a later time have been able to add nothing essential to it. The first movement is an ingenious combination of pregnant motives, which reminds us of tutti-effects, of running semiquaver figures, and melodious passages on moving quaver accompaniment, which correspond to the second lyrical theme of sonatas. The slow movement is a great recitative song with a berceuse-like accompaniment, of a structure so delicate that we are irresistibly reminded of the contours of old primitive pictures. It has the dainty grace of archaic outline, just like that in the two-part interwoven arioso[80] of the B minor Prelude, or in the crisp melody of the E flat Prelude (Wohltemperiertes Klavier I.). The third movement, which is quicker, unravels the whole into the cheerful linked play of floating parts, unsurpassed in elegant construction by any of the great formalists. Floating passages run up and down among chords, falling like drops of rain, and the voices combine in pleasant unity.
Facsimile of Title-page of Bach’s Manuscript of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier.
In the Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.
The entire multiformity of music at the beginning of the eighteenth century is expressed in the clavier-works of Bach. As yet the sonata-form with its two themes, and its “free” section in the middle of the movement, has not become the consecrated scheme;[81] and all the forces which had gradually worked towards this form exert themselves unfettered, in order to make themselves effective now in this, now in that combination of movements and parts of movements. “Thematic” is not neglected. To a series of suite-movements similar commencing motives are given, and the motives of earlier parts are taken up in the later. But this tendency to unity does not act as a restraint upon form, and does not reduce everything to one stiff mould. There is a fugue with a prelude, by Bach, that in E flat major (Wohltemp. Kl. i.), which offers perhaps the most delicate example of this unrestrained unity of motive. The Prelude, which is much longer than the fugue, begins with semiquaver figures, whose characteristic is melodious sustained passages advancing by sixths and sevenths; after this introduction, begins in toccata-fashion a kind of slow fugue, which unfolds the just heard motive in a terser form; and finally, in a third part, mingles itself with the former semiquaver figure. The fourth part is so to speak moulded in the fugue form, which in its “subject” makes use of the characteristic leap of a seventh, found in the Prelude, as a main feature, and brings the play to a conclusion in a busy and lively manner. The relations of motive are only to be felt, not seen; but they are there, and give to the formal freedom of this piece a vigour of its own. Thus, in many of Bach’s pieces, apart from the direct thematic motives, we shall find this indirect assonance, which, springing from a general feeling of unity, is, in fact, a more dainty framework for the piece than any unity that could be impressed on it from outside.
So also is it with the construction of the pieces. We find everywhere traces of the later sonata-style; and not less in the dance-forms than in free movements. It was too natural to repeat the beginning of the piece at the end, then to transpose a second theme into the main key, and in the centre to work out the main motive in a kind of free fantasia. But so long as the author held fast to the binary form of the piece, and to the Da capo of each half, as was the case at this time, so long did the parts of the “developments” and repetitions fail to concentrate themselves so completely as not to leave a rich field of varied forms in which fancy could move at ease. Bach’s imagination was keen enough to give to every one of these forms, as they developed themselves each moment, a natural and elemental strength. A toccata by him, although they are all very various in form, or a fantasia, like the C minor, which is of sonata-character, is built up so firmly and self-evidently that the later uniformity of the sonata seems rather to betray a weakening than a strengthening of style.
[That the severe forms of Prelude and Fugue are abundantly capable of expressing poetical ideas is easily shown. Turn only to the D minor Prelude and Fugue in the second part of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. Although the casual reader perceives in the one movement merely an exercise in two parts, in the other, one in three parts, it requires only a slight exercise of imagination to see that the work really pictures some such feelings as the following: In the Prelude, a man suddenly realises himself in the true “out-of-doors” of this life, with the rain and hail of difficulties and troubles sensibly battering him. Bravely, but ineffectually, he tries to push through the tempest, and sinks wearily into half-sleep, is awakened by a renewed riot of the elements around, tries harder than before, and longer too, to impress himself on his circumstances, and be master of things, and succeeds in a sorrowful kind of way, for the storm passes, sighs itself out, and he at last can rest. In the Fugue, he tries to begin his work in the world. His efforts are strong in their intention, but die down as weakly as the devil himself could wish, one after another. But though these messengers of his will return to him empty again and again, he still goes on. “It is the best I can do, and something may come of it in the end,” he seems to say. And there is in the final bars, where the subject occurs for the last time, a certain expression of savage pleasure at the thought of not having given in, mingled with the abiding knowledge of an abundant measure of continual failure, such as is no imagination to any man who cares about his work, and has arrived at the sorrowful conviction that most of his walking must be done in the dark.][82]
Perhaps the Bach Preludes show this freedom on the most liberal scale. For the Prelude is not so much a kind of form, like the Toccata, but a mere Piece before a Piece; it lays down the lines to be followed, but in itself is uncertain, unfixed in form. The Prelude may be a Toccata or a Sonata, a Symphony or an Invention; it can let its upper part, in arioso style, wander over the continuo, or it may burst forth in fullest polyphony. It may have the rhythm and regularity of beat of the dances, or may speak with the freedom of recitative without thought of a repetition. The abundance of possibilities which Bach found at his disposal in the working out of themes, construction, and style, are mirrored in the Preludes, from the real fugue to the playful method of the court-musicians.[83] Anyone who undertakes the pleasant task of simply running through the Preludes of the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier” (vol. ii.), will be able to appreciate the full spring-like freshness in which the free music of this time, so rich in promise for the future, lived out its life. And, like the discriminating observer of nature, he will admire, in just these yet unspoilt forms, the great harmony and natural unity which is exhibited by the young life of the creation. The Prelude in E major will always seem to me a blossom of this spring-time (“Wohlt. Kl.” i.)—one of the daintiest pieces ever written for the clavier. In an easy 12/8 time the poem begins with an allegretto theme, ingeniously invented, and playful in style. It is supported by two voices; but they soon take part canonically in the delightful movement. We have, in the play of cheerful thought, come to the dominant of the dominant[84] (F sharp), and from this F sharp we rest, in a humorous change, a moment on D, and even G, till, just as rapidly, we emerge through a chromatic maze at B natural once more (Bar 8). The repose of the succeeding dominant passage is gently stirred by ravishing transient modulations, on which the very spirit of happiness seems to rest. A beautiful chain of syncopations leads us through F sharp minor, and a jubilant run of semiquavers, built on a dominant chord on E, brings us to the recapitulation of the opening subject in the key of A (Bar 15), starting from which the movement repeats itself accurately (for eight bars) in its eternal cheerfulness, the piece closing with a couple of bars in Schumann’s ingenious manner, still sweetly suggesting the spring-song of its earlier strains.
We find, then, that nothing essentially new in “form” has been used by later artists, of which the germ did not already exist in Bach. Nay, even in programme-music (supposed by many to be an invention of modern times) for the clavier, which Kuhnau so quaintly worked out in his Biblical Stories,[85] Bach has entered the field in a youthful composition. He is singing the departure of his brother. The first adagio movement in anapæstic rhythms represents the flattery of the friends, who are trying to dissuade the traveller from his journey. It is time for the fugue, and this is the picture of various misfortunes which may befall him in foreign parts. A mournful arioso passage on a ground bass,[86] chromatic in character, is a universal lament of his friends. In a full-chorded Intermezzo they come and bid him good-bye, seeing that it cannot be otherwise. Now the postillion sings his air, broken with octave passages, representing the smacks of his whip; and since a fugue is the end of all good things, we hear one in four parts raise itself above the post-horn, with whip episodes to increase the realism. The young Bach did not go as far as Frohberger, who represented the assaults of robbers, crossings of the Rhine, and even forcible ejectments with violence, on the clavier; or as Kuhnau, who had given the cheating of Laban in “deceptive” cadences,[87] and Hezekiah’s doubtings in the rehearsal of a choral; yet this kind of programme-music declined in the eighteenth century precisely as it has grown up again in the nineteenth.
If we believe Spitta, Bach also left behind him one of those anagram-pieces which were so in the taste of his time—the fugue on the letters B A C H. But the composition seems too leathern and insipid for us to be able to express a decided opinion. There is in literary criticism a well-known false method—the wish utterly to deny insipidity to the great. But since Bach’s authorship of the “B A C H” fugue is not vouched for, and since he never elsewhere put together so many dull pages, we are not compelled to load his memory with its weight.
John Mattheson, at the age of 37.
As we find in Bach the possibilities of all the great forms of the succeeding centuries, so we find in him also all the germs of future expression, rhythm, harmony, and melody. Nothing is more perverse than to regard this music as academic and expressionless. Expression is never absent from counterpoint except when it sacrifices impressionism to the mere display of technical mastery. We shall even to-day seek in vain for piano compositions more full of expression than some of the preludes contained in the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. In the remarkably decadent C sharp minor, in the B minor, so full of gentle mournfulness, in the E flat minor with its grandiose solemnity, in the B flat minor with its organ-like seriousness, or in the F major with its Meister-singer melody[88] (in Part II. Wohlt. Kl.), there is an unsurpassed depth of expression. Nowhere is there a greater variety of characters than would be presented by a comparison of the fugal themes in this work. Merely to turn over a few of its pages is to see before us an abundance of content which no other music-book would easily conceal in so narrow a space. It is in the service of expression that the motives for the architecture of the fugues are unfolded; in the service of expression the rhythms are developed, whose skilful planning is only clearly seen in a piece like the G major Prelude (Wohlt. Kl. i.); in the service of expression are formed the harmonies, from their simple successions, as in the C major Prelude (W. Kl. i.) or of the C sharp major Prelude (W. Kl. ii.) to the complicated retardations and tied notes of the B flat minor Prelude (Wohl. Kl. i.), or in the B minor fugue (W. Kl. i.) on a theme so wonderfully sad that no bolder chords can be found in the days of the most furious chords of the seventh. In Bach, says Marpurg, the different talents of a hundred other musicians were united.
Bach played very quietly. In his time technique began to change its principles. The hand was no longer to be held out flat, but curved, so as to provide a series of hammers rather than levers. The passing of the fingers over each other, as practised by Mattheson, a player of distinction almost equal to Bach and Handel, gave way to a systematic under-passing; and the thumb, which Bach had seen applied by former generations only to wide stretches, began its important part as the “linking” finger. The remains of Bach’s finger-exercises, and the directions which stand in the lesson-book of his son Philip Emanuel, have been usefully compared[89] by Spitta, who has drawn a picture of the technique of John Sebastian, which in its grandeur well fits with his work. “It was a system of under-moving fingers, worked out by unparalleled practice and talent, applying not merely to the thumb but to the middle fingers, and usually so arranged that only a longer finger can pass over a shorter.[90] This produced a technique which, like Bach’s work, united past and future in one classic method. Our thumb-technique, which in essentials goes back to Philip Emanuel, is a mere fragment of Bach’s method, just as the whole succeeding art was, compared with Bach, but a fragment on a large scale.” But it is hard to be clear on these matters. Before the time of “schools” technique was a matter of personality; and reconstruction to us of a later age is utterly out of the question.
Should a diligent scholar try to reconstruct from Bach’s pieces his technique, so far as it had influenced musical form, he would soon be brought to a pause. For when we examine this literature, we see that to the master everything was possible, and that he never gave form to a conception for the sake of technique. He is a stupendous genius who does not write for everybody, and therefore his compositions are often difficult; but the difficulties are never against the genius of the clavier, and can be conquered by anything but idleness. He has, again, written some taking show-pieces, like the Prelude and Fugues in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 29), which, as “paying” salon pieces, sound much harder than they are; and, alongside of these again, are pieces which spring from the very joy in the abundance of possible techniques and of new conceptions. To this class belongs, if genuine, the Fantasia in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 8), in which pure technical fireworks are let off, of short scale passages for both hands, swinging chords and octaves, running motives with astonishing passage effects, passages of sixths with over and under accompaniments, and melodious phrases with embellishing harmonies. But here the first rank is taken by the famous “Goldberg” variations, already printed by Bach, partly set for two manuals, an album of thirty technical conceptions, in which everything possible in tone-material is contained, from arioso to canon, from grave to presto; everything, in fact, which Bach ever adopted for the setting of his ideas. The twenty-ninth variation, which can also be played on one manual, brings before us chords and passages of interwoven beauty which prepare beforehand the way for Liszt. Even in technique, then, the genius of Bach stretches over centuries.
It cannot be exactly maintained that Bach treated the clavier wholly individually, but he nevertheless has helped to individualise it. At the beginning of last century, when the clavier was still for the most part an accompanying instrument, when it sustained in the orchestra the foundation-harmonies, even if at the same time another clavier entered in concerto-wise, genius itself could not release the instrument from this corporate conception without running against the whole spirit of the time. It is remarkable how Bach left it the character of a thorough-bass instrument, and yet allowed it so much independence. It has at one time the divided nature of the unifying organ, as organ-pieces were then regarded still as practically ready for the clavier; at another the pizzicato and running character of the lute. Bach could entitle his formally interesting E flat major piece, Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro (Steingräber, vii. 30) as Prélude pour le luth ò çembal.[91] From the traditions of the lute and organ the peculiar nature of the clavier comes into existence, and it was in the maintenance of the via media between these less delicately expressive extremes that its future lay. How individually Bach regarded the clavier is seen in the pieces in which it is combined with flute and viol da gamba or violin, or in the concertos with one, two, three, or even four claviers. Among these the C major and D minor concertos with three claviers, now combined, now isolated, represent the highest points of this older form of the concerto, as yet not adapted for solo-virtuosity. But yet plainer is his insight in the direct transcriptions which he has made of violin pieces for the clavier. He interpolates in the freest fashion middle voices, which are kept together by “pedals;” ornamentations which draw out the air of the melody in clavier-style; or rapid vibrating over-parts which make up for the loss of the long-drawn violin tones. And by this insight into the peculiar character of the clavier, he makes it more capable not only of speaking with its own voice, but also of spreading over wider circles the literature of other instruments by means of suitable and self-intelligible transcriptions. Bach’s extreme love of this instrument, which so often gave him the means of expression for his musical conceptions, contributed not the least to such an interpretative mission. Slowly the world accustomed itself to understand music, not per chorum, but per instrumentum.
It is at this point that the great need is felt. A mechanical advance is required to bring the expressive capacity of the clavier into a line with the demands of genius upon it. The rivalry between the clavicymbal and the clavichord[92] was not yet quite decided. In Romance lands the former was the favourite; in Germany the latter. On the former great effects could be better produced; on the latter the more soulful tone, and the unique embellishment called “Bebung.” Bach wrote much, including the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, for the clavichord, which even his son Philip Emanuel still preferred to the clavicymbal. But he was so unable to disguise from himself the counter advantages of the fuller and broader quill-instrument, that he published pieces for “Kiel-flügel”[93], with two manuals and registers for forte and piano. These registers were the only means for giving light and shade to the monotonous note of the “cymbal”; to give light and shade by turns, as in the organ, so that on the upper manual a melody could be played loud, and on the lower the accompaniment could be played soft. In Kuhnau we see the forte and piano, which he aimed at by simply striking on the clavichord, used as a means of expression. In the Biblical Stories Jacob has just been cheated by Laban, in receiving Leah for Rachel. “The bridegroom is contented,” as a minuet shows us; but “his heart prophesies misfortune,” and the measure rushes on, becomes piano and più-piano; suddenly Jacob takes heart again—forte; after a bar or two he goes to sleep—piano; he wakes—forte; falls into deep slumber—piano. In his “Italian Concerto” Bach had made a much more specialised use of this by the register. He had mingled loud and soft parts, and each hand alternately is marked forte or piano. In these, and similarly in the echo-movement of the suite with “Ouverture à la manière française,” we are led to think of a splendid clavicymbal, such as the one preserved ostensibly as Bach’s in the Berlin Museum of Instruments. In that, every one of the combinations of four strings can be altered by pulling a register: the manuals admit of coupling, and a soft lute-stop is provided.
Pedal-clavichord. Consisting of two manual clavichords, with two strings to each note, of (8 ft. and) 4 ft. tone, and a pedal-clavichord with four strings to each note, two 16 ft. and two 8 ft. Inscribed “Johann David Herstenberg, Organ-builder at Geringswald, made us, 1760.” De Wit collection.
We know of a hundred attempts to improve the sound of the clavier, and make it more expressive. Here, too, the eighteenth century is the experimental preparation for the happy successes of the nineteenth. Now the string-choruses were tuned in octaves, now pedals were added for low notes, now the sound-boards were strengthened, now the lower strings were made of copper, and the higher of steel; and throughout a rich experience was acquired as to the best way of constructing the separate parts. Leather plectrums appear everywhere in order to make the tone softer and less metallic. The clavier, in fact, was made to imitate all possible orchestral instruments, and even such natural phenomena as thunder and lightning, by means of register-stops. Or, the forte and piano stops were combined, ever more artistically, into as many as two hundred and fifty permutations, so that an endless number of shades was possible.
The solution of the problem was the modern hammer-clavier or pianoforte, in which the strings are no longer plucked but struck with hammers, so that every nuance of touch depends on the fingers. The story of the pianoforte is the usual Story of Inventions. While people were labouring to solve the problem by theoretical calculation, it had long lain solved in an unsuspected fashion before them, and those who were slowly working at the practical realisation were personally forgotten, until a positively sufficient experience made the new invention popular. The beginnings of the pianoforte are therefore, as usual, obscure. The striking of the strings with hammers had long been the method employed in the dulcimer. At the beginning of the last century an artist named Pantaleon Hebenstreit was much talked of, who played the dulcimer so perfectly, that everyone was astounded at the new sound-effects. It is possible that his success gave the impulse: in any case, in the year 1711 there emerges in Italy an instrument called the pianoforte—because it could be played piano as well as forte—elaborated by a certain Bartolommeo Cristofori, who was soon forgotten. This instrument is clearly pictured in writings recently recovered as a hammer-clavier; Cristofori, as curator to Ferdinand de’ Medici, had a splendid collection of Belgian, French, and Italian Flügel-instruments to look after, the study of which, without doubt, aided him in his invention. His pianoforte, which at first shows a still more primitive technique, gradually draws sensibly nearer to the modern system; yet, on account of its unaccustomed tone and touch, it was unable to gain any appreciable results in the following decades. Cristofori could not have dreamt that an Italian society of our time would build a monument to him as inventor of the world-charming pianoforte, in the national sanctuary, the Santa Croce of Florence.
Whether Hebenstreit built on Cristofori, Cristofori on the French, or the French on the Germans, is unknown. Possibly the pianoforte was invented thrice over, in Italy, France, and Germany. In France appears Marius in the year 1716 as the inventor; in Germany it would seem that a certain Schröter, incited by the success of Hebenstreit, invented it in 1717; at least he himself says so in a writing first published in Freiberg in 1763, ten years after the death of the instrument-maker, Silbermann. But Silbermann had in any case the merit of having, at a more fortunate time than Cristofori, worked so hard at the perfecting of the pianoforte, that from him its increasing spread and the gradual displacement of the clavicymbal and clavichord may be dated. Yet this very Gottlieb Silbermann had constructed a “cimbal d’amour,” which by a cleverly devised mechanism heightened the tone of the clavichord—so “lonesome, melancholy, and inexpressibly sweet.” But his later renown rests on his exquisitely manipulated pianoforte. He had a good master in this difficult work—John Sebastian Bach. When he brought his first model to Bach the latter found it too weak in the treble and too hard to play. Silbermann was first vexed, then stimulated by this censure. He then sold no more, and went on making improvements in it until the old Bach, as Agricola[94] says, gave him unmixed commendation.
If we play Bach to-day on our extremely refined pianofortes, we are inclined to imagine that his fine effects are solely due to the perfection of the instrument. And this opinion is not wholly false. Though in the cembalo there sounded in his ear something of the accustomed solemnity of the organ, there is yet in his music a cry for a subtle and expressive instrument which he as little possessed as Beethoven possessed an orchestra suited to his ideas. In every great tone-creator lives a superabundance of imaginative form which the instruments of the time cannot embody, and to which the instruments instantly strive to become equal. Because Berlioz was, the modern orchestra is. Because Bach was, the pianoforte is, which knows how to express with justice the subtleties of his soul-music. I think for example of the never-to-be-forgotten theme of the C sharp minor prelude in the first volume of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. The clavichord could only give this theme in a thin lament; the spinet in a rigid and unmanageable form. But what features does not the motive show as the piece runs on! Now it has the slow-breathing rhythm of a noble aspiration, now the opening eyes of an expectant Cecilia, now the heavy oppression of a martyr soul, now the holy rage of a last noble complaint, now the sweet weariness of Christian humility. And with these various tints the piece builds itself up into a broad picture, which leads from renunciations through pain to renunciations; with these tints every line, every note of the theme is given an active life, as it pursues its course. Composition like this demanded an instrument which should be capable of a new expression in every touch. All that Bach dreamed of, the pianoforte gave, awakening the gentle soul of the clavichord to an unthought-of fulness of existence, and changing the mechanical force of the clavicymbal to a sudden consciousness of personality. The voices of a fugue-passage would now be personally separated from each other; every line in the great lacework could be brought out at the moment according to the feelings of the performer. What, under the sacred laws of Bach’s music, slumbered in the depth of the breast, found in the new instrument its unreserved interpretation.
[95]It seems at first sight almost tragic that Bach himself can never have realised these effects, which are so familiar to us in connection with his music as it is nowadays interpreted on the pianoforte. But perhaps it is the wisdom of Fate to ordain that the cup of the artist should ever be dashed by a certain bitterness, the conscious falling short of attainment as it appears in complete idea before his mind.
“Bundfrei” Clavichord (i.e. with a separate string to each key), by Chr. G. Hubert,
Bayreuth, 1772. De Wit collection.
When an artistic form reaches perfection, its active life is over, and it is a subject of contemplation, no longer a tool to be used.
And just so, when the instrument necessary to the full interpretation of Bach’s clavier-music, the pianoforte, had arrived within measurable distance of perfection, then did Bach’s own Art reach its highest formal expression, then once more did the fashion of things suffer a change, and his work began to take its place as a colossal monument pointing on the road towards the House Beautiful.
Bach is, as it were, the priest of modern music. His congregation sit at his feet daily. Wherever a pianoforte is found, there is his temple. But though the priest cannot utterly control the worship of his hearers (nay, many will bow the knee to Rimmon in the house of the God), still his voice is strong, his words are true, and they may hear if they will.] This is the significance of Bach, and the longer we live, the more we shall believe it.
[73] The word “Intavolata” was used about 1600 to describe the “arrangement” of a many-voiced madrigal for the keyed instrument. Hence “intavolatura” comes to mean a “copy” presenting all the parts at one view, and such “arrangements” for clavier were common and popular.
[74] More than a century before Kuhnau, an English clavier composer, John Munday, composed a piece of “programme-music,” with the various sections labelled, e.g.—Faire Wether, Lightening, Thunder, Calme Wether, A Cleare Day. It is the third piece in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
[75] Bach died in 1750. Hawkins published his great History of Music in 1776, and in spite of the fact that he had his information direct from Bach’s son, John Christian Bach, then living in London, he appears quite ignorant of any of his works but the Clavierübung (1731-42), from which he prints three short harpsichord pieces.
[76] This is certainly not so, historically speaking. The strict canon is far older than what we understand by “imitation.”
[77] Long before Bach was born, we find an English composer anticipating this comprehensive treatment of the scales. Before 1667, John Jenkins wrote a series of “Fancies” on each degree of the alphabetical scale, three movements to the set. The keys actually used are C, D, E, F, G, A, B flat, all minor except F and B flat. But, as is mentioned in a previous note, in one of the three movements in F, Jenkins modulates nearly through all the flat keys, at any rate as far as D flat, thus showing that already in the middle of the seventeenth century an Englishman contemplated Bach’s accomplished work of using the scale on every semitone. And this by no means fixes the ultimate limit. Bull’s fantasia on Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La—piece number 51 in the Fitzwilliam book—modulates into all the twelve keys. Though this does not prove that instruments were as yet tuned with an equal temperament, it does prove that Bach was in no sense the originator of the idea, and the probability is very great that the system was in practical use in England in Elizabethan times. Bull was flourishing in 1590.
[78] The date of the first edition of the “Forty-eight” is uncertain, namely, 1799 or 1800, London. (Author’s note.)
[79] August Gottlieb Muffat, of Vienna, 1690-1770, son of Georg Muffat, organist of Strassburg Cathedral.
[80] This movement is in three parts, and the allusion is to the two upper voices, which maintain a duet in cantabile on a gently moving quaver bass.
[81] The idea of the two subjects, and of the “free” section after the central double bar, was already realised incompletely. In the shortest “binary” movements the scheme of keys is found to be P, Q. (double bar) || Q, various, P.
[82] This paragraph is suggested by a corresponding one in the author’s German edition.
[83] The author means such composers as Rameau, Galuppi, Couperin, who wrote for their audience to a great extent.
[84] This expression may be misunderstood unless reference is made to the music. The passage arrives at the key of B (the “dominant” key), but the F sharp mentioned is merely the bass note.
[86] A “ground” bass is a short passage repeated an indefinite number of times through an extensive movement. In this case it consists of four bars, and is not repeated so strictly as usual, though its general figure is kept up throughout.
[87] This expression, “deceptive” cadence, is a translation of cadenza d’inganno, one of the several cadences or closes which had names given to them by the old theorists. The “inganno” cadence was something like the “interrupted” cadence, but was supposed to lead into another key, hence the “deception.”
[88] The author possibly refers to the flowing freedom of the counterpoint in the quintet in Wagner’s opera. But there is no need nowadays to demonstrate that the Bayreuth master is as necessarily a contrapuntist as he of Weimar.
[89] Meaning, of course, that the fingering methods of the father and son are by no means identical. The former employed the crossing of the fingers over one another freely; whereas Philip Emanuel’s notions of fingering are practically ours. See his “Exempel nebst achtzehn Probe-Stücken, etc.,” date 1780.
[90] This method is still commonly practised. Chopin, Liszt, and others, supply innumerable examples, particularly of the passing of 4 over 5.
[91] That is, “for the lute or clavier.”
[92] It is necessary once more to remind the reader of the essential difference in “action,” power of expression, and strength of tone, between these two instruments; and of the unfortunate ambiguity which exists in the use of the name “clavichord.” Vide supra, pp. [21] and [89, note].
[93] Kiel = quill, flügel = wing, i.e. a keyed instrument with a plucking “action” of quill plectrums, with a case made in the shape of a bird’s wing. Grand pianofortes are still made in this shape, and therefore are still called “flügel” in Germany. Kiel-flügel is synonymous with clavicymbal (hence “cembalo”), and means “harpsichord.”
[94] Agricola was a pupil of John Sebastian Bach, and in 1754 helped Bach’s son Emanuel to write a biography of his father.
[95] Suggested by corresponding paragraphs.
Philip Emanuel Bach, as he was in his Hamburg period.