FROM FUGUE TO SONATA
If a pianoforte recital which begins with a Bach fugue continues with a Beethoven sonata, it does not require a very discriminating ear to note the difference between the two. The Beethoven sonata is in a style so entirely distinct from that of the fugue, and sounds so wholly unlike it, that it seems as if Bach had exerted no influence whatsoever upon the greatest master of the period that followed his death. Although Haydn and Mozart were nearer Bach in point of time than Beethoven was, a sonata by either of them, if it chanced to be on the program, would show the same difference in style, the same radical departure from the works of the master of counterpoint, as the Beethoven sonata.
The question naturally suggests itself, did Bach’s influence cease with his death? And the fact that this question calls for an answer and that this answer leads to a general consideration of the interim between Bach and Beethoven, again shows how broad in its scope as an instrument is the pianoforte and how comprehensive in its application to music as a whole is the music of that instrument. Two works on a recital program furnish a legitimate basis for a discussion of two important periods in the development of music! 79 Who would have thought there was so much to a pianoforte recital?
“It would have been an eminently pardonable mistake for any intelligent musician to have fallen into, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, if he had concluded that Johann Sebastian Bach’s career was a failure, and that his influence upon the progress of his art amounted to the minimum conceivable. Indeed, the whole course of musical history in every branch went straight out of the sphere of his activity for a long while; his work ceased to have any significance to the generation which succeeded him, and his eloquence fell upon deaf ears. A few of his pupils went on writing music of the same type as his in a half-hearted way, and his own most distinguished son, Philipp Emanuel, adopted at least the artistic manner of working up his details and making the internal organization of his works alive with figure and rhythm. But even he, the sincerest composer of the following generation, was infected by the complacent, polite superficiality of his time; and he was forced, in accepting the harmonic principle of working in its Italian phase, to take with it some of the empty formulas and conventional tricks of speech which had become part of its being, and which sometimes seem to belie the genuineness of his utterances and put him somewhat out of touch with his whole-hearted father.”
This passage from one of the most admirably thought-out books on music I know, Sir Hubert Parry’s “Evolution of the Art of Music,” is no exaggeration. 80 For many years after Bach’s death, for nearly a century in fact, his influence was but little felt. And yet so aptly does the development of art adjust itself to human needs and aspirations, the very neglect into which Bach fell turned music into certain channels from which it derived the greater freedom of expression essential to its progress and gave it the tinge of romanticism which is the essence of modern music.
The greatness of Johann Sebastian Bach, on the technical side at least, now is so universally acknowledged, and professional musicians understand so well what their art owes to him, we are apt to think of him as the only musician of his day, whereas his significance was but little appreciated by his contemporaries. There were, in fact, other composers actively working on other lines and turning music in the direction it was destined to follow immediately after Bach’s death—and for its own ultimate good, be it observed. The simple fact is, that pure counterpoint culminated in Bach. What he accomplished was so stupendous that his successors could not keep up with him. They became exhausted before they even were prepared to begin where he left off. And yet the reaction from Bach was, as I have indicated, absolutely necessary to the further progress of music.
The scheme of musical development which the reader should bear in mind if he desires to understand music, and to arrive at that understanding with some kind of system in his progress, was briefly as follows:
Three Periods of Musical Development.
First we have counterpoint, the welding together of several themes each of equal importance. This style of composition culminated in Bach. Its most elaborate form of expression was the fugue; but it also employed the canon and impressed into its service certain minor forms like the allemande, courant, chaçonne, gavotte, saraband, gigue, and minuet.