It is curious to observe that the fugue which follows it played a part in the inspiration of Die Meistersinger, in its analogous figures, and in resuming the subject at the close, this time in augmentation, like a chorale melody.
Is it not of some interest to see brought together, in a work of Bach's, these extremes in music? Froberger, with all his inheritance of past centuries; Wagner, proclaiming the dawn of a new art?
[THE CHORALE]
PRELUDES (VORSPIELE)—TRIOS—FANTASIAS—FUGUES
We have seen to what an early period of Bach's life his first free compositions revert; perhaps of still earlier origin are the works which the Chorales inspired in him.
Liturgical in character, and thus all the more closely identified with the popular sources from which he sometimes drew his own inspirations in order to idealize them mystically in a sort of "procession en Dieu," the chorale is the soul of Lutheran religious music. Far more; this universal prayer, the spiritualized communion of the faithful (their sole participation, really, in a dogma freely interpreted), passed from the inner temple to the outer court, like the reading of Holy Writ; the Bible was the book of the family, the volume of chorales its musical breviary.
The very first arrangements of chorales made by Bach convey a little of that intimate charm, of that impression of "home" and its domestic circle, where in the evening the hymns are sung between the reading of two chapters from the Evangelists; it would seem as though the young man, an orphan, in imparting to them their expression of quiet sympathy, desired that they should take the place of those same intimate pleasures which had been denied him.
In fact, the "Partite," these two sets of variations upon "Christ, der Du bist der helle Tag" and "Gott, Du frommer Gott,"[125] lend themselves but poorly to the somewhat formal solemnity of a public service.
The influence of the style of G. Böhm, which betrays itself from one end to the other of these compositions, and their resemblance to clavecin pieces, would seem to indicate that they belong to the Lüneburg period, when Bach had but rarely, at best, an organ at his disposal. Here we find heavy, solid chords, undoubtedly intended to augment the tone of the weak instrument, as the profuse ornaments were to prolong it. They are written without pedal, or, at most, in one variation, for the pedal of a clavecin; for the pedal part of this last variation of Christ, der Du bist der helle Tag cannot be played upon the organ as it is written; the whole design of the sixteenth-notes in the left hand would be covered up. On the contrary, entrusted to the basses of the clavecin, which do not prolong the tone, they merely serve to accentuate the rhythm.