BACH—ONCE, LAST, AND ALL THE TIME
I'm an old, old man. I've seen the world of sights, and I've listened eagerly, aye, greedily, to the world of sound, to that sweet, maddening concourse of tones civilized Caucasians agree is the one, the only art. I, too, have had my mad days, my days of joys uncontrolled—doesn't Walt Whitman say that somewhere?—I've even rioted in Verdi. Ah, you are surprised! You fancied I knew my Czerny et voilà tout? Let me have your ear. I've run the whole gamut of musical composers. I once swore by Meyerbeer. I came near worshiping Wagner, the early Wagner, and today I am willing to acknowledge that Die Meistersinger is the very apex of a modern polyphonic score. I adored Spohr and found good in Auber. In a word, I had my little attacks of musical madness, for all the world like measles, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, and the mumps.
As I grew older my task clarified. Having admired Donizetti, there was no danger of being seduced by the boisterous, roystering Mascagni. Knowing Mozart almost by heart, Gounod and his pallid imitations did not for an instant impose on me. Ah! I knew them all, these vampires who not only absorb a dead man's ideas, but actually copy his style, hoping his interment included his works as well as his mortal remains. Being violently self-conscious, I sought as I passed youth and its dangerous critical heats to analyze just why I preferred one man's music to another's. Why was I attracted to Brahms whilst Wagner left me cold? Why did Schumann not appeal to me as much as Mendelssohn? Why Mozart more than Beethoven? At last, one day, and not many years ago, I cried aloud, "Bach, it is Bach who does it, Bach who animates the wooden, lifeless limbs of these classicists, these modern men. Bach—once, last, and all the time."
And so it came about that with my prying nose I dipped into all composers, and found that the houses they erected were stable in the exact proportion that Bach was used in the foundations. If much Bach, then granted talent, the man reared a solid structure. If no Bach, then no matter how brilliant, how meteoric, how sensational the talents, smash came tumbling down the musical mansion, smash went the fellow's hastily erected palace. Whether it is Perosi—who swears by Bach and doesn't understand or study him—or Mascagni or Massenet, or any of the new school, the result is the same. Bach is the touchstone. Look at Verdi, the Verdi of Don Carlo and the Verdi who planned and built Falstaff. Mind you, it is not that big fugued finale—surely one of the most astounding operatic codas in existence—that carries me away. It is the general texture of the work, its many voices, like the sweet mingled roar of Buttermilk Falls, that draws me to Falstaff. It is because of Bach that I have forsworn my dislike of the later Wagner, and unlearned my disgust at his overpowering sensuousness. The web he spins is too glaring for my taste, but its pattern is so lovely, so admirable, that I have grown very fond of The Mastersingers.
Bach is in all great, all good compositions, and especially is he a test for modern piano music. The monophonic has been done to the death by a whole tribe of shallow charlatans, who, under the pretence that they wrote in a true piano style, literally debauched several generations of students. Shall I mention names? Better disturb neither the dead nor the quick. In the matter of writing for more voices than one we have retrograded considerably since the days of Bach. We have, to be sure, built up a more complex harmonic system, beautiful chords have been invented, or rather re-discovered—for in Bach all were latent—but, confound it, children! these chords are too slow, too ponderous in gait for me. Music is, first of all, motion, after that emotion. I like movement, rhythmical variety, polyphonic life. It is only in a few latter-day composers that I find music that moves, that sings, that thrills.
How did I discover that Bach was in the very heart of Wagner? In the simplest manner. I began playing the E-flat minor Prelude in the first book of the Well-tempered Clavichord, and lo! I was transported to the opening of Götterdämmerung.
Pretty smart boy that Richard Geyer to know his Bach so well! Yet the resemblance is far fetched, is only a hazy similarity. The triad of E-flat minor is common property, but something told me Wagner had been browsing on Bach; on this particular prelude had, in fact, got a starting point for the Norn music. The more I studied Wagner, the more I found Bach, and the more Bach, the better the music. Chopin knew his Bach backwards, hence the surprisingly fresh, vital quality of his music, despite its pessimistic coloring. Schumann loved Bach and built his best music on him, Mendelssohn re-discovered him, whilst Beethoven played the Well-tempered Clavichord every day of his life.
All my pupils study the Inventions before they play Clementi or Beethoven, and what well-springs of delight are these two- and three-part pieces! Take my word for it, if you have mastered them you may walk boldly up to any of the great, insolent forty-eight sweet-tempered preludes and fugues and overcome them. Study Bach say I to every one, but study him sensibly. Tausig, the greatest pianist the world has yet heard, edited about twenty preludes and fugues from the Clavichord. These he gave his pupils after they had played Chopin's opus 10. Strange idea, isn't it? Before that they played the Inventions, the symphonies, the French and English Suites—Klindworth's edition of the latter is excellent—and the Partitas. Then, I should say, the Italian concert and that excellent three-voiced fugue in A minor, so seldom heard in concert. It is pleasing rather than deep in feeling, but how effective, how brilliant! Don't forget the toccatas, fantasias, and capriccios. Such works as The Art of Fugue and others of the same class show us Father Bach in his working clothes, earnest if not exactly inspired.
But in his moments of inspiration what a genius! What a singularly happy welding of manner and matter! The Chromatic Fantasia is to me greater than any of the organ works, with the possible exception of the G minor Fantasia. Indeed, I think it greater than its accompanying D minor Fugue. In it are the harmonic, melodic, and spiritual germs of modern music. The restless tonalities, the agitated, passionate, desperate, dramatic recitatives, the emotional curve of the music, are not all these modern, only executed in such a transcendental fashion as to beggar imitation?
Let us turn to the Well-tempered Clavichord and bow the knee of submission, of admiration, of worship. I use the Klindworth, the Busoni and sometimes the Bischoff edition, never Kroll, never Czerny. I think it was the latter who once excited my rage when I found the C sharp major prelude transposed to the key of D flat! This outrageous proceeding pales, however, before the infamous behavior of Gounod, who dared—the sacrilegious Gaul!—to place upon the wonderful harmonies of the master of masters a cheap, tawdry, vulgar tune. Gounod deserved oblivion for this. I think I have my favorites, and for a day delude myself that I prefer certain preludes, certain fugues, but a few hours' study of its next-door neighbor and I am intoxicated with its beauties. We have all played and loved the C minor Prelude in Book one—Cramer made a study on memories of this—and who has not felt happy at its wonderful fugue! Yet a few pages on is a marvelous Fugue in C sharp minor with five voices that slowly crawl to heaven's gate. Jump a little distance and you land in the E flat Fugue with its assertiveness, its cocksure subject, and then consider the pattering, gossiping one in E minor. If you are in the mood, has there ever been written a brighter, more amiable, graceful prelude than the eleventh in F? Its germ is perhaps the F major Invention, the eighth. A marked favorite of mine is the fifteenth fugue in G. There's a subject for you and what a jolly length!