V
Handel’s instrumental music is, like Bach’s, based on the solid German fugal technique, but, unlike that master’s, it is strongly influenced by Italian violin music, and especially by that of Corelli. It is characterized by distinguished simplicity, clearness of outline and terseness of utterance. By virtue of their broad thematic formation and the direct force of their expression, his violin sonatas, trio sonatas, and concerti grossi are superior to those of Corelli. He wrote also a number of pieces for the harpsichord, and as early as 1720 had published ‘Lessons for the Harpsichord,’ which was reprinted in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland. Before 1740 he composed no less than twelve sonatas for violin or flute with Figured Bass, thirteen trio sonatas for two violins (oboes or flutes) and bass, six concerti grossi, known as the oboe concerti, and five other orchestral concerti, twenty organ concerti, twelve concerti for strings, and many suites, fantasies, and fugues for piano and organ. But it is not evident that he attached great importance to his instrumental works. He regarded them rather as great storehouses of material upon which he drew (as we have seen) at will for his larger vocal compositions.
The last of Handel’s labors were the production of the English version of ‘The Triumph of Time and Truth’ (originally composed in 1708) at Covent Garden in 1757,[153] and the conducting of the annual performance of the ‘Messiah’ at the Foundling Hospital in London. This charitable labor, as well as his support of the fund for helpless musicians and other acts of benevolence, betokens Handel’s generosity. He attended another performance of his most popular oratorio at Covent Garden, April 6th, 1759, eight days before his death, which occurred at his house in Brooks Street on the fourteenth of that month. The master was buried in Westminster Abbey among the nation’s great. Englishmen may well claim him as one of their own, notwithstanding his German birth and parentage, for not only had he become a naturalized British subject in 1726, but he had entered thoroughly into the spirit of British society and adapted himself to its habits of mind. Throughout its later period his career was closely identified with the British crown. Upon taking the oath of allegiance he became officially composer to the court. As such, upon the coronation of George II in 1727, he composed four great anthems for the occasion, and conducted an exceptionally large orchestra, in which a double bassoon, constructed under Handel’s supervision, was used for the first time. Again, in 1737, he wrote a deeply affecting mourning anthem for the burial of Queen Caroline, and, altogether, he came to share in an unusual degree the patriotic veneration of the English people. Moreover, his ideals were in a large measure shaped by English public opinion. It is doubtful, indeed, whether his work would ever have attained its great lasting value had it not been turned away from the channels of Italian opera by the sheer force of popular taste. What his genius would have brought forth had he, like Bach, remained within the local sphere of his birthplace, is an interesting speculation.
Handel’s fame increased steadily until the time of his death. Though the opposition against him had lost much of its force, it was a more or less constant irritation and embarrassment to him till late in his life. His own character, his irascible temper, and his stubbornness no doubt were in a measure responsible for this. But men who are aggressive and successful not uncommonly incur the wrath of jealous rivals, and few men have been as successful as Handel, notwithstanding his repeated failures. He was a big man, built on a large scale both mentally and physically—he rose to heights rarely attained by men of his profession, and it was inevitable that his pride should sometimes go to the length of arrogance. Many are the anecdotes testifying to his tyrannical nature, his ruthless manners, his ponderous pomposity, his abnormal appetite. Some of all that is reflected in his work. We often hear the vain, self-sufficient boor through the interminable roulades and runs, the ponderous chords, the diatonic sonorities of his scores. On the other hand, the man of the world, the successful courtier, the shrewd homme d’affaires shines through. As Maitland says, ‘Studying all but a very few exceptionally inspired pages of his works we remain conscious of the full-bottomed wig, the lace ruffles, and all the various details of his costume.’[154]
But those two pages are enough to place him among the greatest of the great. If we can justly say that he sums up the achievement of his own generation of music, as far as it corresponds to the taste of the period, it must not be thought that he passed nothing on to the next. The oratorio, his special gift to the world, will always remain inseparably connected with his name. Had he left nothing but his inspired works in that form, to serve as models for posterity, his claim to immortality would be assured.
C. S.
FOOTNOTES:
[141] We shall hereafter adhere to the English spelling of the name, without the Umlaut.
[142] W. S. Rockstro: ‘Life of Handel,’ p. 62.
[143] John Christopher Pepusch (b. Berlin, 1667; d. London, 1752) was not only an able, practical musician, but an authority in theory and musical history. He went to England in 1700 and joined the orchestra of the Drury Lane Theatre, where he became subsequently accompanist and composer. In that capacity he compiled ‘English’ operas from Italian arias. As founder of the ‘Academy of Ancient Music’ he made a serious effort toward the revival of sixteenth century music (Purcell, etc.). He was Handel’s predecessor as organist to the Duke of Chandos and as such composed services, anthems, cantatas, etc. After writing a number of English operas for the Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields Theatre (‘Venus and Adonis,’ ‘Death of Dido,’ etc.), he arranged and produced the famous ‘Beggar’s Opera’ (a ballad-opera by Gay), which attained tremendous popularity and created a serious competition to the Italian operas of Handel.
[144] It was followed In January by Teseo, which, though more successful, did not warrant many performances. A benefit performance was later given by the company for Handel, who, up to that time, had received no remuneration.
[145] Giovanni Battista Bononcini (or Buononcini), son and pupil of Giov. Maria Bononcini (maestro di capella at the cathedral of Modena, composer of chamber music, theoretician, etc.), was born about 1660 at Modena, d. about 1750. As first maestro of S. Giovanni in monte, he wrote masses and oratorios, among which are Davidde, Giosue, La Maddelena a piedi di Christro. His instrumental works include Sinfonie a 5-8 (op. 2, 1685), Sinfonie a 3 with Basso continuo (op. 3, 1686), Sinfonie a piu strumenti (op. 5), etc. In 1691 he went to Vienna, and, beginning 1694, devoted himself largely to the composition of operas (Tullo Ostilio, La fedo pubblica, Proteo sul Reno, Polifemo, etc.), produced in Rome, Vienna and Berlin, where he became court composer to Queen Sophie Charlotte (1703). Before his engagement in London he returned to Vienna and produced a number of new operas, from Tomiri (1704) to Muzio Scevola (1710). His fame was perhaps second only to Handel’s, and the direct popular appeal of his pleasing, simple melodic style fully explains the keen rivalry which ensued between the two. His London operas include Astarto (1720), Ciro, Crispo, Griselda (1722), Calpurnia (1724), and Astianatte (1727). His productivity was no less great in chamber music, of which he wrote ayres, various dance movements, divertimente da camera, and sonatas for strings and for clavecin. He fell into disrepute in England through the discovery that he had published a madrigal by Lotti as his own—strange as it may seem that his rival’s offenses in that direction passed without censure.
[146] Cf. Chap. XV.
[147] Nicola Porpora (see Vol. II, Chap. I) was made conductor of the rival opera, and as the teacher of Farinelli and nearly all the great singers of the time he was easily able to rally around himself a most formidable force of artists.
[148] We may remind the reader of the valiant efforts made by Dr. Pepusch and other Anglo-Germans against the English public’s absolute surrender to the Italian opera and Italian monody, holding out for the more serious contrapuntal music of the sixteenth century, and for the use of the native tongue. The immense success of Gay’s ‘Beggar’s Opera’ in 1728 was another proof of this demand for a native popular entertainment.
[149] Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, II².
[150] In ‘Deborah’ the overture for the first time becomes dramatically identified with the work itself. In it two of the choruses are utilized.
[151] Arnold Schering: Geschichte des Oratoriums.
[152] Riemann: Op. cit.
[153] His introduction of choruses in the new version aptly illustrates the metamorphosis which the Handel oratorio underwent, and how indispensable the choral element had by this time become.
[154] Oxford: ‘History of Music,’ IV, 3.
CHAPTER XV
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Introduction—The life of Bach—Bach’s polyphonic skill and the qualities of his genius—Bach’s contribution to the art of music and the forms he employed—The revision of keyboard technique and equal temperament—Bach’s relation to the history of music.
That Bach lived at a time when the musical public was opera mad, when the Italian singers were dictators, when the grace and ease of Italian melody were bewitching and relaxing all music, yet that he himself never wrote for the stage nor ever surrendered in spirit to the force of the new movement, inevitably obscures and misrepresents his relation to the past and present of his day. By the peculiar nature of his genius which has filled his music with a seemingly forever unweakening power to stimulate, because of its perhaps unmatched greatness, he will always stand a little above and apart from other composers and will appear unlinked in the slow development of music. Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, even the greatest and most original composers of the present age, all have hailed him as the father of modern music, have drawn inspiration and knowledge from him as from an inexhaustible source, and this unfailing tribute and dependence from nearly all subsequent composers has helped to fix our conception of him as the source and ultimate scope of music. His gift of expression was indeed all-comprehending, if not infinite. The freshness of his music has been judged immortal. He partakes of the superhuman. He seems perfection. Yet one has but to look through the eyes of devoted historians to see a man human and simple, straightforward, stubborn, sometimes quarrelsome, quite independent, even defiant, and an artist standing as firmly rooted as an oak in the work of his predecessors, thoroughly awake to the music of his day, and drawing in his own fashion many of the features which marked it.
Like Beethoven, he invented no new forms, but took the forms at hand, property common to all composers of his day, and, by his most uncommon genius, gave the touches which transformed them into monuments of imperishable beauty and perfection. But, more than in the case of Beethoven, it was the quality of his own inspiration which gave to these forms their first and last glory. There are symphonies of Haydn and Mozart written ten or a dozen years before Beethoven wrote his first symphony which we can hardly believe will ever lose their hold upon the public, which seem destined to immortal life, for which no apology of time nor circumstance need ever be made; but before Bach there are no fugues, no suites, no cantatas, no settings of the Passion for which such apologies are not necessary, which must not henceforth conceal defect or weakness in the respectable toga of antiquity. This distinction, of course, offers no ground for a comparison of the two men. It is the result of circumstance, of accident.
The seventeenth century, of which Bach and Handel were the two great results, was a period of experiment fraught with more tentativeness and uncertainty than have ever since hindered composers. We need only recall how, before the beginning of that very century, which was to prove the most fruitful of all in the long history of music, the vocal art of polyphony, the consummation of a century of effort, had been shattered into various parts, each of which had almost to begin life anew, to mold itself to strange needs and surroundings; how the invention of opera had smashed down the last restraining barrier of mediæval scholasticism and let loose a thousand restless composers to wander at will in lands hitherto all but undreamed of. The improvement of the organ and of other instruments, the perfection of the violin had yet to come; the principles of form which should give music a foundation apart from that of a text were yet to be discovered; the modern art of harmony was to develop from the seed; and the vigor of rhythm to be accepted little by little into the constitution of serious music. Music was still either old-fashioned or weak or unsettled to the very day of Bach and Handel. Through them it emerged from its period of probation and experiment, splendid and secure. They therefore appear to the later eye in the glory of creators, and especially Bach, because, for all the vast number and proportions of his choral works, he is fundamentally an instrumental composer and instrumental music was the greatest bequest of the seventeenth century to the future of music.
Only one branch of music had developed relatively independently of the Italian influence—music for the organ. Though this, as we have seen, was given its first impetus by Italian composers, it had grown to its fuller proportions among the Germans, of whom mention has been made in Chapter XI. By the time of Bach organs were well-made and effective instruments, a line of virtuosi in both north and south Germany had developed an astonishing technique, and certain fairly definite types of composition had been established. Of these the toccata, the fugue, and the chorale-fantasy or chorale-prelude received the most attention. The toccata was primarily a piece for display and was looser in structure than the others. Series of brilliant runs, scales and arpeggios over a foundation of rich and varied chords formed the most general and characteristic features, with which were alternated, for effect of contrast, passages of slow moving harmony and thematic significance. The fugue was a piece of music developed contrapuntally throughout from a definite subject and countersubjects, the direct outcome of the old imitative polyphonic music of the later Netherland masters. Both toccatas and fugues were treated with great skill and ingenious variety by Bach’s predecessors—Buxteheude, Reinken, Böhm, Pachelbel and others—but none of these organists succeeded in giving to either form the perfect balance and proportion, the organic unity, the architectonic grandeur, the definitive outline and shape wherewith Bach wrought them into enduring masterpieces. The same is true of the chorale fantasies and preludes. Three distinct types had come into being before the activity of Bach, one dignified and smooth, consisting actually of several short fugues upon sections of the chorale melody, lacking therefore breadth and power; one singing and serene, in which the flowing melody was set above or below an intricate contrapuntal web; and one in which, in the fiery words of Albert Schweitzer, the chorale melody was torn in fragments and tossed into a rushing torrent of virtuosity. The first of these forms was disjunct, the second lacked variety, the third was out of keeping with the simplicity and noble dignity of the chorale. It was Bach who united what was best in all three into a type of prelude which, inspired by the very spirit of the chorale melody, was built up out of the range of organ technique into a structure of faultless proportion. In the department of organ music, therefore, Bach seized upon the materials gathered for his use by men who had gone before, and, for the first time, made of them perfect temples. He was not misled by experiment, he did not falter through lack of power to sustain; he worked with absolute sureness and with the instinct of only the highest genius for perfect form.
In other instrumental music, in suites for clavier, for violin, for violoncello, for orchestra, in sonatas and concertos, he found forms already perfected. Nor can it be said that he did anything to develop or refine the style suitable for these instruments, since his own style was unmistakably influenced by the organ, and is sometimes heavy in comparison with Couperin’s, with Domenico Scarlatti’s, with Corelli’s, and Vivaldi’s. To these branches of music he brought a richness of feeling, an emotional depth and warmth, too, which hitherto had not been expressed in music. Nearly every emotion worthy of expression in music is to be met with in, for example, the Well-tempered Clavichord. On the one hand, liveliness, wit, gaiety; on the other, melancholy, deep sadness, religious exaltation, the lightest, the most serious shades of feeling, the most vivid and the most subdued expression. Thus the equable cool forms of Corelli, so justly proportioned between grace and calm emotion, the scintillating sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, become suffused with a new, a real, personal life and are neither distorted nor dulled, but animated for all time.
As to organ music, he brought the power to construct and to unify, and to chamber music the warmth of his deep feeling. Vocal music—and his vocal works are, with inconsiderable exceptions, for the church—he made sublime by the true spirit of German religion which has found in him its perfect expression. He wrote in forms which were, as we have said, common to all composers of his day. Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann wrote not only in the same forms as he, but actually set many of the same texts. Undoubtedly they were men of inferior genius, but they were, none the less, excellent musicians, and had remarkable control of the technique of composition; and it is almost incredible that the stupendous numbers of their compositions are lying forgotten in libraries. Many a phrase, many an aria, and many a movement have a real beauty of form and a grace of content, but they are dead and not likely to be restored. The reason, not to be found alone in the second-rate quality of their genius, is, however, not far to seek. The development of opera in Italy during the seventeenth century influenced the whole course of music over Europe. The enthusiasm for opera spread veritably like wildfire. Forms were invented which were obvious and immediate in their appeal to the general public, and these forms were taken over into church music, even in Germany, where the tradition of a more profound and more fitting style still lingered. Cantatas, oratorios, even settings of the Passion, gave way to the universal demand for dramatic and easily pleasing music, were composed of arias and recitatives, and accompanied by instruments just as operas were. It would be absurd to say that church music could not gain, did not gain, as a matter of fact, by the injection of new and extraneous forms. Some few conservatives, notably the austere Johann Kuhnau, cantor of the St. Thomas school at Leipzig, where Bach was to pass the last half of his life, set themselves deliberately against the new movement. Many clergymen waxed bitter and polemical; but by far the majority of musicians, among them the men above mentioned, hailed the new forms with delight and, always more or less closely associated with the theatre, deliberately tried to give to church music the glamour and brilliance of music for the stage. Bach was himself far too much aware of the drift of music in his own day not to take advantage of the new forms which were the outgrowth of the opera. He adopted them into cantata, oratorio, and Passion. But whereas the sacred works of Keiser, Mattheson, and Telemann breathed only the light spirit of the trivial opera of the time, the arias and recitatives of Bach seemed to be the very flower of the meditative religious spirit peculiar to the Teutonic races. Thus his works stand at once with and aloof from his age. Outwardly the same, inwardly different. And that his cantatas and oratorios and Passions, cast in the mold of the Italian opera at the beginning of the eighteenth century, are glowing with the inspiration that was the religious voice of a whole race, is the reason why they live when those of his contemporaries are dead. They brought a trivial style into the church, he made a style glorious by filling it with an intimate, profound, and indescribably tender and genuine devotion. They tried to secularize church music, he to make a secular music the priestess of the temple.
Grandeur of conception, warmth and depth of feeling, nobility and often exaltation of spirit he brought to music, and transformed the materials which were, as the accumulation of a long century, at the service of a hundred of his contemporaries, into masterpieces of imperishable beauty. The cast of his genius seems almost out of place in the general spirit of music at his age. That which makes his music supremely great sprang from out the depths of his own nature, depths which are to-day unsounded and mysterious, the never-failing source of highest inspiration. Famous in his own day as an organist, and a performer on the harpsichord of astounding skill, as a composer he passed unnoticed or misunderstood save by a few pupils and friends. The ideal toward which he worked was fast losing hold upon the world of musicians. He was considered recondite and dry.